CALLING OUT HATERS: 8 Personal Best Blogs of 2014

Do not envy the people who have to clean this up.
New Year’s Eve in Times Square New York City working with NBC by Anthony Quintano
Use Protected Under: Creative Commons as long as it’s attributed

Another year came and gone, and a lot has changed over the past year, for one thing people now know my real name Brian Myers.  But there was so much that happened, that I kind of wish I had written more, topics like Ferguson, Gamergate, our war with ISIS that we don’t call a war because of using drone strikes, how much the loss of such a big actor like Robin Williams really meant to me.  To say the least, 2014 was less of a political year for me and COH, and I think if anything the reaction to my rant on Men’s Rights Activists kind of put me off of doing political blogs as often, part of the reason why you won’t see it on this list.Still doesn’t mean there weren’t some blogs I’m proud of or felt was very fun to do, and here is eight of them:Diversity and America

This past Super Bowl, Coca-Cola wanted to show America as it truly is, a stew of cultures who are of different ethnicities and like to speak multiple languages yet still feel American.  But of course the ignorant in this country decided to exposit some toxic sludge that says Coke did something un-American.  These people are just the bile that feeds into a system that brushes off the cold-blooded killings of African-American youth as “just something that happens”, a showing of widespread human apathy, not caring that people exist in this country beyond their narrow perspectives of what an American is.  America isn’t just some guy who has the flag waving on his front porch, it’s a great many things, and Coke really did show that, even if it’s shoving an unhealthy drink on us.

 

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy Part 1, Part 2

People just love to put down the old Spider-Man films in favor of the new ones, and yet for all it’s faults, still I felt was the better experiences than both of Marc Webb’s films, especially the second one which (SPOILERS) fridges Gwen Stacy in a matter that makes just about all of her development pointless, no other film from 2014 has made me so angry at how it ended.  There was just something that I felt more emotionally attached with the Raimi films, maybe because they aren’t too worked up on trying to tell a convoluted mythology that stops the film dead in it’s tracks, villains that have much better development (Yes, even Edward Brock Jr.), and importantly have emotional beats feel like emotional beats and not feel like just stepping stones to the next plot point.  Heck I even found Spider-Man 3 to be not as miserable to watch compared to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, even if Raimi himself doesn’t think back too fondly on it.

And for all that the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy did, what it didn’t do is put Sony in a situation in which they are seriously considering selling the property back to Marvel or at least coming to an agreement. As well it seems any plans for Amazing Spider-Man spin-off films seem to be dashed, so it looks like those plans for a Sinister Six and a female-led Spidey film are dashed, though with the latter I really would have been curious to have seen.  Marvel also has plans to do another reboot of Spider-Man but without an origin story, which thank glob we’ve had enough of reboots and rebooting origins.  I don’t think the Sony hacking scandal has done them any favors either, but needless to say Amazing hasn’t really worked out for them and it looks like we won’t be seeing anymore Andrew Garfield Spidey.  Tragic I know, but they were going in a really bad direction to begin with IMO.

 

Advent Rising: Gem or Turd?

Funny what I feel one of the best blogs of last year was a game from 2005 that no one really remembers.  But it is definitely one I feel deserves to be included because it is my first attempt at a really comprehensive game review, and one that I hope to do again in the future, even if I don’t have as much time to blog or game anymore.  This game didn’t make a great impression on me when it first came out and most certainly hasn’t actually playing the darn thing, just felt like a game that tried to be ambitious but wasn’t anywhere near polished enough to actually pull it off, it’s buggy, it’s clunky and ultimately it just feels like it needed far more development time.  I don’t know if I’ll ever do that blog in which I’d write what I’d do to improve the game, but needless to say I’d think it’d be pretty apparent from what I’ve written what it really needed to do to finish off a trilogy.  Well maybe the developers now known as Chair Entertainment may visit it again after they are done with Infinity Blade 17.

 

Shipping (w/ Jashykins)

It had been years since I did my last cross-over and I decided to do it with someone different this time: Jash Derin Kor-Ze also known as Jashykins who writes about fanfiction and shipping extensively in her blogs, which inspired by to do a first in what I’d hope to be many co-op blogs.  First topic was of shipping and basically me playing the role of the person who doesn’t really get what all the shipping is about (Which pretty much echoes reality for the most part), and I feel like I had more than I needed to know from Jashykins.  We discuss various ships we’ve either noticed or felt strongly about, makes for very enlightening conversations.  But you might find The Legend of Korra rant I had to be particularly dated especially when SPOILER ALERT, the final canon pairing is of two bi-sexual characters, something I hope to get back to in the future.  This was still a fun little blog to do with Jashykins and I am still happy to ship with her.

…

That still sounds wrong.

 

The Ending to The Last of Us (Big SPOILERS)

I was late to the party of The Last of Us only taking time last year to finally finish the game (On PS3, didn’t have the PS4 Remastered version at the time), and have actually heard quite a bit of controversy about the ending beforehand.  Having finished the game, I found my own conclusion of why it’s controversial, the lack of choice made by the player, that Joel’s actions at the end people didn’t feel that easy by, especially when it’s forced onto the player.  I didn’t find how the game concluded to be bad mind you, but I understood why many were frustrated and the fact you have to go along the developer’s path as opposed to pave your own.  I almost felt it when I was forced to kill sneak and kill Fireflies in order to achieve a goal, like “I don’t think I want to do this” sort of way.  In general though, the game is pretty solid and worth playing, no matter what Spoony Ones will tell you and how somehow dramatic stories make “games less fun.”

 

10 Worst Movies I’ve Seen in Recent Memory #10-6, #5-1

To compile this list I had to really remember which movies just gave an utterly rotten taste in my mouth.  Targets like The Last Airbender, Sucker Punch, Transformers, Dragonball: Evolution, A Good Day to Die Hard, and Birdemic were easy enough, but how many really talk about The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Spirit or Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem?  I almost feel like they’ve been the forgotten pinnacles of cinematic excrement, ones that we tried to block from our memory only to be reminded once in a while.  But I remember, and I really dread them for what they tried to do, and ended up failing utterly.  To do a Best List however will be a much more difficult task and one I would put much more thought right into.

 

Booty

This is what over two weeks of sleep depravity does to you, makes you do topics that on a more rested mind might not have thought of.  But 2014 was the year of the Booty and with people being “All About That Bass”, years-old singers popularizing on their infamous assets and singing about Anacondas walking with buns many years after Sir-Mix-A-Lot, it was hard to ignore.  The result is one blog that I thought would be shark jumping but actually wasn’t that badly received when I posted it.  I also tried to avoid trying to be too rash on the subject matter, because it might be easy to put people at the butt end of the joke, but I tried to be respectful to women who decide to take pride in their rumps, whilst also acknowledging that it’s not a sole standard of beauty.  Also maybe admitting something about myself more than people may like to know.  Like I doubt many would even know who Muhler Melancia (meaning “Watermelon Woman”) is, yet I do and I’m not entirely certain if I should celebrate or just feel a bit unclean admitting to knowing about a Brazilian celebrity who is famous for her butt.  Well now I hope no one thinks I might be this uber-pervert who lives in a basement.

 

Favorite Blog of Last Year:

Loss (RIP Justin “JewWario” Carmical)

I like many others felt utterly devastated last year when Justin Carmical took his own life, and decided to make a rant about how we cope with loss.  Just because we never knew this person doesn’t mean we can’t be affected.  Justin was someone who just about everyone who knew him said he was one of the nicest people they’ve ever met and tragically it seems like he had some personal demons that he never could quite get over.  This might be some of the reasons why I didn’t write a rant about Robin Williams, another person who was said as one of the nicest people in life sadly had his own personal demons get the best of him, because I don’t know if I could say anymore about the concept of loss and why it affects us all.  It’s just tragic in general who we have lost this past year, making 2014 feel all the more worse.

But one thing I will say lastly, fuck the guy who decided to question AngryJoe’s grief on his friend’s passing.  I will not link to the person’s utterly detestable videos make on the subject, nor his Twitter that seems to read across as the tell-tale signs of a sociopath, but needless to say, I fucking weep for humanity who sees how a person expresses their grief for a fallen friend as something more insidious.  This person didn’t fucking know Justin as well as Joe did, so what the hell can he really say?  Does he fucking know more about JewWario than one of his closest friends?  He’s also the same guy who decided that TotalBiscuit getting bowl cancer was “justice.”  This person is just a horrible human being by using a tragedy to spew out some of the most vile things I’ve seen on the internet this past year.

*breathes out*

Can 2015 be any better please?

End of Rant