#i love working in retail in the months of November and December as a person who doesn't celebrate Christmas :)

[florida3exclamationpoints]

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[inevitably-johnlocked]

HI STEPH! How has your December been?

Hey Lovely *HUGS*

LOL do you want the "Tumblr happy place" version or the "might be a bit depressing" version??

Tumblr-mask version: It's been alright. We've got some snow now, and it feels a bit more Christmassy. Glad I'm on holidays and just enjoying the time off :)

Real life version: We've got some snow now, and I hate snow. And life's been a bit of a gong show for the past month or so. (cw below cut, medical, retail frustration, and depression mentions)

TL;DR: It's December. Hopefully the new year looks a bit more promising <3

As you all know, this kind of all started back when my job was very uncertain. I had a bit of a brief break when I got my raise and talked with the chief of staff. Few weeks, maybe, then just the desire to have a holiday started to kick in because I realized how EXHAUSTED I was.

I recently went though a pain in the ass experience with my car's manufacturer regarding a small repair on my car that was only supposed to be a one day thing and turned into nearly 3 weeks of me not having a car and them refusing to give me a rental because I don't have an "extended warranty" even though I'm still covered under a warranty. Because of the kind of person I am, this spiralled me into a nightmare scenario of me stressing about not having a car three weeks before Christmas, fighting with the dealership to give me SOME sort of compensation (and failing) and them not being able to tell me when I get my car back – I wanted it back before my Christmas break this week because I prefer to go out during the work week when it's less busy. Anyway, coincidence or not, the missing part MYSTERIOUSLY arrived two days after I escalated my situation with the head office telling them their customer service was shit (in a nicer way, of course, LOL), so I at least have it back now. But not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy, it was THAT stressful.

Leading up to Christmas, work was insane. We're short-staffed and just... no one was "feeling it" this year. We're all tired and we all just want holidays. I took off three extra days since I still had time to book off, so my holidays started sooner than everyone else, and I am so glad I did it. I'm not looking at anything work-related for the next two weeks, thanks.

I don't like winter at all where I live (it's always gloomy and wet; rarely any sun at all), and it feels like my brain is rotting from all the Christmas shit being shoved down my throat. There, I said it. I don't like Christmas, haven't since my dad passed away 2 weeks after Christmas over a dozen years ago. I like the aesthetics of it – the lights, the decorations, the hot cocoa and fancy drinks – but it's TOO MUCH for TOO LONG, and by the time Christmas is here I am DONE. I'm TIRED of people being SHOCKED that I don't like Christmas... ugh. PLUS my seasonal depression spikes badly at Christmas because all people seem to do is like to remind me how alone I am. Like thanks, appreciate it. UGH. The only thing I like about Christmas is that my work gives us 2 weeks every year between Christmas and New Year, and I spend most of that alone watching movies, drinking cocoa or playing video games. It's wonderful. I hear about everyone in my extended family having to visit all these people on Christmas day and I'm like LOL I'm in my jammies watching the Avengers, thanks, you keep that stress.

Christmas is EXTRA kinda poopy this year because one of my closest extended family members found out they have throat cancer at the beginning of November. They're in chemo right now and in good spirits, so I'm trying to stay positive about it, but it's hard to not think about, you know?

Discovering a lot about myself in therapy, and it's mentally draining. That's all I'm comfortable sharing right now.

I'm just all around TIRED and LONELY and feel like no one cares about me, y'know? I feel like I'm never going to be anyone who accomplished something worthwhile (and before y'all say it, my BRAIN LOGICALLY KNOWS THIS IS ALL FALSE, but my wires get crossed and the depression sinks in instead with the intrusive thoughts – My therapist finds it fascinating that I have this kind of awareness and she's trying to find a way to work around it). Some days are worse than others, especially in the winter in this city going on month 2 of no sunshine, UGGGHHH. Having moods that change with the weather REALLY fucking sucks.

AND I've been looking again at getting a cat, but I think I might have to once again put it on the back-burner, because my phone is finally crapping out (it's an iPhone 6S Plus, so it's OOOOOOOLLDD by today's standards) with the camera jittering and the battery barely lasting 4 hours in standby mode, so I might have to get a new one sooner than later. AND I also want to re-look at getting a mortgage again so I'm ready when the housing market inevitably crashes and I can get a condo cheaper than 500K :/ My rent is still cheaper right now because I'm so grandfathered in that I'm paying under 1000$ right now for rent, so staying where I am is the SMART thing, but I'm miserable because the space is too small now. ANYWAY, money. Can't get a cat right now AGAIN because of money. Ugh. I'm not broke by any means, I just.......... am so annoyed my single-person groceries have gone from 50$ a week to 150$ a week, and I HATE HATE HATE it. It's ridiculous. Finally get a raise but I can never catch a break, it seems :/ It's not Avacado Toast, Karen, it's the whole damned economy.

So yeah, that's basically it. I don't talk about myself that much here because I am a fairly private person. I don't like bothering people with my problems because I always feel like a burden. Sometimes, though, I just wish I had a human person I could visit regularly to chat with (that I don't have to pay for, LOL), is all. AND my blog is my happy place, so I try to keep it positive where I can.

Hope you're having a good month, and I hope the holidays treat you well <3

[flewis]

More personal stuff 😎 (literally 3am thoughts)

I've been working since I was 15. I'm 24 now and spent 8 years as a cleaner at a school while I was studying there. Was from end of the school day to like 8pm. Every day. So as you can see, not the most sociable life I've had. And I've definitely.... Suffered as such.

Don't take this as a joke. I litterally have no friends. But I'm really close with my family so I don't mind too much. In fact I 'came' to the conclusion that I was aromantic. As I never really cared to be in a relationship (if that's because my undeveloped social skills idk) but I don't mind.

In December I left my cleaning job as a bunch of shit went down and I left. I then finally decided to get help with stuff. (Not like I had anything else going on. Was jobless at the time luuul)

In November I went to seek mental health help at my local doctors and they did just that. A private therapy company got in contact with me and that's when I first started my Therapy. (Love u Alex. You helped me a bunch)

I'm on a couple meds that help as well as doing things I was taught during therapy to help my day-to-day life. And I've even got another job! I work at my local Game store. Which yes, my second job ever and it's retail???? Lord help me.

I've been here a month now and it's been fun. Different for sure but fun. Learning a new life pretty much. Going from a slow, lonely life as a cleaner with no time for friends to litterally the busiest I've ever been. I've actually got coworkers and the constant stream of random people I have to serve is definitely getting me out of my comfort zone. I couldn't imagine 5 year ago me doing this without breaking down.

Now? I want to try and get back into friends. I know I'm treating it like a game but it's true. How tf do you make friends at this age? I've never gone to a bar and got a drink before? Do I go by myself? Maybe my brother and a couple of his mates to help me slowly get back into it? How tf do I talk to people. Am I really aromantic or have I litterally never had the chance to explore how I feel.

Fun times. If you made it here. I🧡U

[plush-anon]

You worked at joanns? 😍 dream job

In all fairness, a large part (and I do mean a LARGE part) of why I enjoyed working at Joanns were the managers.

The store manager was a guy named Richard, one of maybe two or three men who worked there total, and this man was practically a saint as far as retail goes.

This was a man who would, with no hesitation, get on the floor to help customers, or hop on the registers to check customers' purchases out, or pop on to the cutting counter to cut fabric. He remembered the names of regulars, would chat and smile while getting shit done, and was the type of guy to speak slowly and softly when we had shitstains explode at us measly peons for not giving them the full cost of an item back in a return (ex $200) when they used a coupon to purchase an item to begin with and only paid a portion of the cost (ex. $150). No joke, this actually happened to me on Black Friday with a man who stood at about 6 foot with a crewcut and a snarl (the military Karen, if you would)

Richard, of course, stood at about 6 foot 5 inches, and reminded me of a ginger grizzly bear in some ways. Very few customers continued to be assholes when they asked to speak to the manager and Richard came over, smiling wide. He encouraged us to chat with the customers while we worked the cutting counter - it was a good way to learn about what they were making, encouraged general conversation and lent itself to a better environment for everyone, worker and customer alike, so we weren't just awkwardly standing in silence the whole time.

The assistant store manager (aka his second in command - we had two other assistant managers, but she wielded more power than both of them) was Farrah, and she was basically Cool Wine Aunt, but with weed. She was open about smoking it (but not in a pressure-the-underlings kind of way, but more of a 'yeah, it calms me down' kind of way) but never on the clock, and was just really chill in general. She was also a 'jump on the registers' type of manager, and on occasion would take the closing staff out to get a drink from the texmex place next to us in the shopping center, and cover one for each of us - particularly during the Holiday Clusterfuck of October, November, and December (their Frozen Kahlua Mudlslide was my alcoholic drink of choice - they also had these spicy chicken strips that were amazing with it, but I digress).

Both of them were amazing people who would support and back us up without hesitation (if they weren't dealing with corporate or stock trucks coming in), and both routinely worked 15 to 20 hours UNPAID overtime during the Holiday Clusterfuck so that we the underlings could get more hours without Corporate jumping up our ass about going over budget.

They were also refreshingly upfront in our monthly meetings about profits and meeting them, as well as why company policy was the way it was, and how to work within the boundaries so we got more hours. One of my favorite moments was when they said the fabric sales essentially covered their own cost (production and delivery); the rest of the cheap crap in the store was what covered our paycheck and electricity, so hawk it as much as you can if you want extra in the bank (paraphrasing here, but that's not that far off what they actually said tbh).

With some Karen-y exceptions, the customers were honestly pretty chill. There were two women from a nearby church who bought well over 200 yards of cut fleece to make no-sew fleece blankets for children and the poor in December (it took forever to do, but they were so cheerful about it and told some funny anecdotes in between, kept the counter clear as soon as they were cut, etc. Took them three carts to haul everything to the register XD).

There was the slew of quilters making everything from baby blankets to anniversary gifts to quilts for their grandkids attending the local university that they could wear to football games in the colder weather, while still showing team pride. They always bought quarters and eighths and the end of the bolt for half price, digging thru our remnants bin for something they might have missed they could get for half price. They always talked about what they were working on, and spoke in great detail on their kids or cousins or niblings or grandkids. I saw so many pictures on phones, in wallets, and they loved them to absolute pieces.

There were cosplayers making their first costume to comicon, halloween goers trying their hand at making their own outfits, and a few furries making custom suits for order or just updating their own personal outfit. There were the usual school and church Christmas plays that needed costumes, and folks making custom table runners and place settings for family holiday meals.

One notable young man bought out 30+ yards of our 65" inch wide bolt felt for JEWELRY projects he was making as a part of his business and as a part of his art program (you can major in art with a concentration in jewelry making, and he was using it for that). He didn't leave a card, but the pictures he showed us were STUNNING.

We had a few elderly mothers come in with their daughters, to pick out fabrics so they could make their own wedding dresses, or quinceanera outfits, or veils; they showed us the patterns they had, or the pictures they were basing the designs off of, and all of them were STUNNING. (One came back in with the finished dress in the bag, this intricately beaded poofy dress that had to have taken days, hot pink and shiny).

We had local restaurant owners pop in for re-upholstery projects and curtains and vinyl; same with teachers and deck dads and furniture restoration workers that would gush about the design, what they had planned. Some would bicker with their spouses on the pattern, but it felt good-natured on the whole.

We had some elderly men come in to peer over our sewing machines - "How much it run for? My wife's birthday is coming up and her old machine's about done, and I want to surprise her. She had a Singer, but she hates the electronic screens on some of these newer ones, they hurt her eyes." - and moms coming in to sew some custom bed sheets for their kids - "My son really likes the new My Little Pony show, but he's a little shy about it. Do you think the blue's okay? Only he like yellow more, but they don't have any back there and he doesn't MIND blue really but - Actually scratch that, how wide is the fabric? My pattern says it needs to be at LEAST 22 inches wide, does it say on the box?" - and people coming up with some WILD craft ideas that were always a delight to hear them gush about - "So this MAY seem crazy, but I can turn these plastic pumpkin trick-or-treat pails into SNOWMEN heads with felt like this. We fill them with treats for the kids since we don't have a fireplace and they like it fine, but someone said I should sell these on Etsy and people really like them! But I've run out of pumpkins, and you have NO idea how happy I am that you guys still have some left."

The group we had to work with was also pretty crafty; a few were chronic call-outs, some a bit lazy, some perpetually done-with-this-nonsense, but we were mostly on the same page on shift, and all of us were crafty as heck. The employee discount was a blessing AND a curse, lemme tell you.

Stock was the best part, for me. Hours before the store opened at 9 AM, we would rip open the boxes and stuff everything onto the shelves, organizing anything the closing shift missed the night before along the way, updating new stickers or shuffling pegs over for new product arrangement, etc. We could listen to music or podcasts as we worked, and I ended up impressing some of them bc of how fast I tore through everything some mornings (the music definitely helped out there).

I was actually about to be promoted to assistant manager after 6 months, but then I got my job with the university, and they had federal health benefits AND dental, so... yeah, no contest there. Richard actually laughed when I told him I'd been hired at the university and was giving my two week notice, since it meant he didn't have to do the slew of paperwork that accompanied new assistant manager hires. He congratulated me on the job, especially the health benefits - he said that was a perk worth leaving any job here for. I nearly cried with relief that he wasn't mad.

He and Farrah chipped in and got me a small music box that plays Man of La Mancha's Dream the Impossible Dream on my last day. It still sits on my desk at work.

It was honestly my favorite retail job out of the bunch I've suffered through. Surprising at first, since I initially received a rejection email bare HOURS after my interview with Farrah, but about a month later (as I trawled endlessly through interview after interview, desperate for anything those first few months ), I got a call back from them asking if I was still interested (which I was, bc hey a job!). They remembered me specifically bc I had missed my bus to the interview, called ahead to let them know I would be late, then walked the whole way there in the rain to get there. (It was only about a mile and a half away, so not a terrible journey, but flooding is an issue in our flat-ass city; I looked like a drenched afghan hound holding a useless umbrella, so enjoy that imagery).

They were particularly impressed by the calling-ahead part.

Unfortunately, both of them ended up moving on to different paths over the year after I left - apparently they had been friends with benefits (? I say hesitantly, since I ran into one of my coworkers at an art show later on and she spilled the beans there - she was a bit flighty in nature though, and got caught up in gossip a LOT, so who knows. Lovely brocade custom projects though), and his ex girlfriend had called corporate on them and got both fired.

I think Farrah came back some time later, but the damage was done after that - the new manager came in and operated SOLELY to corporate policy. A LOT went to pieces in terms of store cleanliness, order, and general camaraderie after that - the new fabric counter folks look and sound dead inside, and barely interact with customers (not even a 'whatcha making' in passing, which is kind of sad - the stories I got helped to pass the time, and kept me from using up all of my Set Conversation Phrases for customers that actually WOULD leave us standing in silence). Corporate also stopped some of the smaller store policies that made our job easier and gave the customers a little something extra (the 'end-of-the-bolt' discount - if, after the customer orders say, 2 yards of fabric on the bolt, and there's say, a half yard "remnant" left on the bolt, we can sell them the remnant for half-price. A LOT of quilters LOVED this, and we did too, since it saved us from filling out the remnant tag and printing a sticker later on).

Just goes to show how important good management is in a business; especially when it can kick a store previously part of the top 50 stores in the NATION (while being a medium store at that - smaller place, NOT Hobby Lobby size like the Large stores) to something much less pleasant. I could be rose-goggling the situation thought - retail is still retail, no matter how nice some aspects are - but it still sticks with me as to how good he experience was even taking into account that it WAS minimum wage retail.

Food for thought, lads, food for thought.

[cecilsstorycorner]

30 Questions Tag Game

Thanks @teriwrites for the tag! I’m all cooped up on a mountain alone so it was nice to have something to do lol

rules: answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better 

Name/nickname: Cecil

Gender: No (agender)

Star sign: Pisces

Height: 5’10”

Time: 8:39 am (an anomaly, everyone got up real early to head out and I got swept up in it)

Birthday: March 13th

Favourite bands: The Crane Wives, The Tiny, Bitter Ruin, Charming Disaster

Favourite solo artists: April Smith, Radical Face, Shayfer James

Song stuck in my head: Ways to Love - Jason Webley

Last movie: Oh gods it was Twilight. For context I was feeling down and my mum went ‘hey you know what cheers you up- making fun of bad movies with someone’ and she was right

Last show: Superstore (my family’s been watching it after dinner while we all do our separate work things. It’s not bad actually, very therapeutic if you’ve ever worked retail or even any customer service job)

When did I make this blog: Sometime around November or December I think??

What I post: My own art/writing nonsense, occasional thoughts no one wants to hear

Last thing I googled: schlaflied die ärzte (I’m trying to get better at my pronunciation through songs and this one is simplistic enough and also just very fun)

Other blogs: Mostly just my main @dontdropthejam, I have a bunch others but they’re not really used anymore

Do I get asks? Sometimes! Mostly for ask games. I quite like them though! (I know so unique)

Why I chose my URL: My typical handle for art and stuff is cecilstrinketbox, but since I’d already used that to make a now abandoned art blog here, I made a version more fitting to writing! Plus I literally ran a story time at my old job for a while so it felt appropriate

Following: 504

Followers: 150 (which is insane and I’m very grateful so many people wanna see my nonsense)

20. Average hours of sleep: From 5-11, depending. It’s never enough I am so tired

21. Lucky number: 13, but not because I’m trying to be ✨quirky✨ or something, it’s just that my 13th birthday was on Friday 13th on the 3rd month at 3am and I think that’s very sexy of me. Also 42 because I grew up with a nerd dad and it rubbed off on me

22. Instruments: Basic ukulele, by-ear fingerpicking/single key guitar and piano. I like to pick out songs on the guitar and sing alone. It’s rarely in my range but that’s okay I do it only when no ones home

23. What I’m wearing rn: Pyjamas and a big cozy blanket sweater thing. I’m a warm lump and I love it

24. Dream trip: I guess like... Germany or some Scandinavian country or something? For both personal background reasons and because I really wanna learn more about the folklore there. I also wanna go back to Scotland but I’m planning to live there so that’s less a dream trip and more a hopeful future plan

25. Favourite food: It’s more a meal than individual food, but sometimes on special occasions my family makes this Sunday roast with roast potatoes and the best Yorkshire Puddings you’ll ever taste. But it takes a full day to make so its a rarity. Luckily my dad knows how to make cheaper ingredients taste fantastic though so if we clear a day in advance it’s not too tricky to set up from that side

26. Nationality: British/German and living in Canada atm

27. Favourite song: Holy Branches by Radical Face

28. Last book I read: I just started A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland and I’m very excited to actually get back into reading again!

29. Top three fictional universes: Ooh I’m not really a worldbuilding person but probably 1. My friend’s dnd world (she’s making a whole source book for it it’s incredible I fear and respect her so much), 2. the alternative world that Bly Manor takes place in (I know this is a stretch but I just really like their ghost rules), 3. Whatever Spirited Away’s got going on

30. Favourite colour: Depends on my mood tbh. Sometimes a really soft blue, sometimes a deep warm purple, sometimes heavy forest green, and so on

I am absolutely not tagging 20 people oh gods. This isn’t a writing thing so I don’t really know who to tag even more than usual, so I’ll try @little-boats-on-a-lake and @chayscribbles if you want to, plus anyone else who’s as bored as me!

[daleisgreat]

15 Years of Xbox 360: Flashback Special!

I am usually timely with these, but the holidays has resulted in this 15th Anniversary of the North American launch of the Xbox 360 Flashback Special to be about a month late. The 360 was one of the first major consoles to have a near simultaneous global launch in the three major market territories. With the United States and Canada launching first on November 22, 2005, followed by Europe on December 2nd and finally Japan on December 10th with most other smaller markets over the following year. The 360 had an extraordinarily long life cycle, with it being eight years until Microsoft launched its successor, the Xbox One. I had major highs and lows with the 360 so get ready to take in my journey with the system. Like with past system specials here, I recorded podcasts based on RPG games and comic book games that released on the 360, PS3 and Wii and have embedded them at the bottom of this entry for supplementary material if you crave even more 360 games to learn about. Be forewarned, this is my lengthiest Flashback Special yet, so I have implemented bookmarks for ease of navigation you can click or press on below! With that out of the way, the last special I did here was on the PS2, and I want to begin the 360 Flashback Special the same way by expanding upon its unavoidable….. CHAPTERS Part 1 – The Hype Part 2 – The Launch Part 3 - Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements Part 4 - Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles Part 5 - An Awesome Debut Year of Games Part 6 - Upgrade to HD Part 7 - Three Red Lights Part 8 - Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Part 9 - Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Part 10 - For the Love of Online Co-op Part 11 - Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs Part 12 - Becoming a Pinball Wizard Part 13 - Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre Part 14 - The Fad that was Plastic Instruments Part 15 - Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Part 16 - Wanna Wrassle? Part 17 - Sports-ball Forever! Part 18 - No Russian, No Cauldron Part 19 – Dubious Honors Part 20 - Lightning Round Quick Hits Part 21 - ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) Part 22 – You’re Still Here!? Well then…. (STINGER!!!) The Hype Microsoft garnered a lot of attention by pulling the plug on its original Xbox early because of the PS2 being an unstoppable global force, and was determined to launch its system a year before the PS3. The Dreamcast had huge success in North America for its first year by launching ahead of the PS2 a year early, so I could see where they were coming from. I covered E3 2005 for the long defunct gaming site, VGpub. I recall getting a closed door tour with a few other gaming press members for the Xbox 360 and was shuffled around to a few isolated booths that showed off the 360’s “blade” dashboard interface and went over some of the functions of the system. I recall being shown Kameo running side-by-side an unreleased build on the original Xbox to demonstrate the 360’s horsepower. 360 had a couple games playable on the show floor that year with Top Spin 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. From my brief time with those two games what I took away the most was the much-improved controller being lighter, slightly more ergonomic, and the much appreciated inclusion of the shoulderbumper buttons to replace the peculiar white and black buttons from its predecessor. Of the several games I was shown and/or played from E3 2005, the one that impressed me the most was Saints Row. I walked out of that demonstration thinking it looked like the first viable open world contender to Grand Theft Auto after countless watered down GTA-clones were flooding the market. Sure enough, Saints Row did not disappoint the following year and would have three more successful sequels over the years.

Back when cable TV mattered before the dawn of streaming, this MTV reveal event delivered on building anticipation for the 360.

Microsoft’s E3 press conference, which happened in tandem with a much publicized MTV reveal event of the 360 filled with all kinds of celebrities made it impossible to avoid the 360 launch hype building up to its November launch. Then there was Microsoft’s truly extraordinary “Zero Hour” launch event in the Mojave desert to give people the opportunity to travel all the way there just to buy an Xbox. Then there was the Mountain Dew contest where they were giving away 360s every so minutes and you increased your chances to win by entering more codes on their website, and yes, I must have entered at least a 100 codes from weeks of gathering bottle caps from co-workers to no avail. All this blitz of marketing engagement made it impossible to not pay attention to the 360’s launch. I was a huge fan of the original Perfect Dark on N64, and thus was eagerly stoked for the prequel, Perfect Dark Zero which made it a day one buy for me. Amped 3 wound up as the second game I pre-ordered for launch day, and it was a solid snowboarding game, which got a significant boost from its irreverent narrative that pushed me through playing it. The Launch With my pair of launch games pre-ordered I went on to count down the days until the 360’s launch. I thought I had my launch system guaranteed on November 22nd, but last second shenanigans prevented me from buying it at the final hour, yet I was able to procure dibs on the first batch of second wave systems that hit retail three weeks later. Launch window systems came with a couple limited pack-ins in the form of a DVD remote control (yay?) and the downloadable XBLA puzzler game, Hexic HD. Hexic HD was a perfectly fine hexagonal based puzzler from Alexey Pajitnov, the same designer who invented Tetris, but I mostly played Perfect Dark Zero in those opening months of the 360. I only got about halfway through the campaign, but I played a ton of deathmatch with friends and/or solo against bots. Like the previous game, PDZ had a plethora of multiplayer options and maps and tided me by splendidly during the first months of the 360’s lifecycle.

Perfect Dark Zero and Amped 3 were my first two 360 games and both held me over nicely during those initial launch window months! Over the next few weeks I played a fair amount of launch games my friends brought over and picked up/rented a couple more. Top Spin 2 I played far more than I thought I would and wound up finishing its lengthy career mode. Call of Duty 2 was a local multiplayer hit that friends repeatedly brought over. A few years later I eventually picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted and got immersed working my way through its “blacklist” of rival racers to vanquish. Launch title Condemned: Criminal Origins I did not start playing until recent years, and I am kicking myself for not starting it sooner as it is a trip of a suspense/thriller first person game consisting of intense hand-to-hand and melee weapon combat over traditional firearms FPS weaponry. The game is still fun to this day and I have made it a ritual to play it on Halloween for the past three or four years. Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements

Also worth highlighting here during the launch was familiarizing myself with the much-loved “blade” dashboard in the launch window. The four blades were filled with many options to separate game, videos, photos and music media. I made heavy use of custom soundtracks on the original Xbox, and loved how the 360 had support for it built into the user interface so they could be dropped into any game. Dashboard and online features on the original Xbox like friends list, voice chat, game invites and more carried over on the 360 and later evolved into so much more through system updates that introduced must-have features like Party Chat that made it so several users can voice chat together regardless of what game any of them are playing. It made catching up with family and friends on weekend game nights more manageable. The biggest hit of the UI during that launch window was Microsoft debuting achievements that were mandatory for all games. These became an instant sensation among any ardent game player when accomplishing the criteria for an achievement and hearing the endorphin-rush of a sound effect and accompanying on screen graphic that indicated you unlocked another achievement. Most of the launch window games had straightforward achievements like finishing campaign missions or getting X amount of wins in sports and racing games, but they eventually evolved and encouraged users to play games in new ways I never thought of (Crackdown was a great early example of this with its achievement design). Also the way the Blades made it easy and irresistible to compare what achievements you accomplished in a game against other people on your friends list that it only upped the friendly competition between friends to see who could unlock more achievements. It is gratifying to see Microsoft allowed each Gamertag’s linked Gamerscore to carryover from 360 to Xbox One and now Series S|X. While achievements are still around today, and I occasionally dive into going out of my way to unlock some if I am enjoying my time with a game, they do not compare to the early years of the 360 where achievement-mania was running wild. Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles

This was also the first time a major console had an online digital store implemented at launch. The original Xbox had a scaled-down store they experimented with late in its lifecycle with about a dozen smaller classic arcade hits and smaller sized web browser-esque “flash” games of its era that could be purchased, and the 360 expanded on this bigtime. Initially, the 360 digital game marketplace known as “Xbox Live Arcade” launched with games maxing out at 50meg download limits so the game could fit on a memory card, so all of the first year or so worth of XBLA games were mostly re-releases of smaller-sized arcade classics like Smash TV, Contra and Gauntlet along with similar simple browser-based flash game of its era like Bankshot Billiards 2. Over the 360’s lifecycle though they kept increasing the game size limits to the point where disc-based games were coming out digitally and were multiple gigs in size as memory card and hard drive storage options increased. During the first few months of the 360 after launch developers were not flocking to releasing XBLA games because they were unsure if they were going to take off like digital games were slowly starting to on PC at that point. The launch dozen or so XBLA games were met with success, but developers were not anticipating it so in those early months only one or two new XBLA games hit a month. The big breakout XBLA success was a straightforward adaptation of the card game, Uno that launched in May 2006. I can attest for many sessions of simple, pick up and play rounds of Uno while catching up with friends over voice chat online. Microsoft eventually patched in support for the 360’s first webcam, the “Vision” camera, which lead to some peculiar matchups with strangers online who wanted to make sure to demonstrate all their adult substances they were consuming that evening. Later throughout 2006 and 2007 XBLA grew to releasing a game every Tuesday, and Microsoft enforced every XBLA game have a demo/trial so it was an eager experience to see what game would be hitting that Tuesday, because most of the time Microsoft did not announce the game until maybe a day before at that time.

It took over 20 years, but it was worth it to relive the iconic X-Men arcade game with online co-op, and EA did a bang-up job bringing back NFL Blitz for two of my most played XBLA titles! There are so many success stories of XBLA games to go on about, but I want to highlight a few of my favorites. Seeing the re-release of many classic arcade, 8 and 16-bit titles with enhanced graphics and online support was a big win for XBLA in this department. I remember interviews with the XBLA executives from this time answering fans demands and going through the legal hoopla with Konami to bring back arcade favorite beat-em-ups like TMNT, X-Men and The Simpsons, and all with online play! This treatment went doubly so for fighting games. It started with Street Fighter II: Turbo receiving the XBLA treatment, and within years Capcom, SNK, Namco and other studios were porting over their greatest hits onto XBLA like the first two Marvel vs. Capcom and Soul Calibur titles, many King of Fighters re-releases. My personal favorite is the remake, Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix that saw all new gorgeous artwork and a new officially endorsed ReMix soundtrack from the fantastic ocremix.org community.

Non-fighting game wise I was surprised by EA Sports’ revival of NFL Blitz. It is one of the few games I somehow got addicted to online, and become somewhat legitimately good at too and was able to genuinely earn the 10 straight online wins achievement against random ranked opponents! Renegade Ops is an addicting twin-stick shooter in an mini-open world unleashing destruction as pint-sized vehicles with a gruff CO barking orders from the chaotic minds from the team that also made Just Cause. Valiant Hearts I originally played on 360, and loved the passion they showed on their unique adventure/action take on a World War I game. I 1000% related to Double Fine’s take on being a wide-eyed kid caught up in the whimsical spirit of Halloween in both of its RPG-lite Costume Quest titles. Fans of past Sega consoles like the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast were well treated, and new fans emerged after a plethora of XBLA re-releases of titles like Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, both Sonic Adventure games, Daytona USA, Ikaruga, Virtua Fighter 2, Nights, Jet Set Radio, Sega Bass Fishing, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Rez and others saw new life in XBLA form. The Genesis saw packs of three games re-released in bundles themed around best-sellers in the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe 16-bit entries. Although I would recommend skipping the XBLA Genesis packs in favor of the 360 disc release of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection that has 40 Genesis games and bonus unlockable Arcade and Master System titles. Sega obviously treated its back catalog well on the 360, and I put in many hours revisiting these past favorites. I bought into the hype for Shadow Complex, and it became the first “MetroidVania” I ever finished. Hydro Thunder Hurricane perfectly captured the nature of the 1999 arcade boat racer, while successfully evolving its gameplay into the HD era. Adorable puzzle-platformer Ra-Skulls brought back pleasant memories of Mr. Driller! Twisted Pixel’s Comic Jumper made smart use of implementing FMV-video into its charming superhero platform-action title. Despite its stomach-turning title, Deathspank is a lighthearted action-RPG I saw through to the end with a twist ending I did not see coming. That same developer, Hothead Games, released the first two turn-based RPG Penny Arcade games I ate up that perfectly encapsulated the popular web comic in videogame form.

Two of my best-of-class XBLA recommendations are Trials HD and its sequel, Trials Evolution. It is an exemplary example of the adage, “easy to learn, tough to master.” Its quirky, bouncy motorbike and instant reloading spawns made it easy to succumb to endlessly retrying its inventive stages after each wipeout. It also had innovative use of implementing Friends List leaderboards with their ghost times appearing as you play, just teasing you more and more upon each crash when coming close to usurping their times! The sequel added online multiplayer that clicked and made perfect use of Trials unique gameplay. Microsoft I recall got a lot of flak for their curating policies for XBLA at the time because they would only allow one game to release each Tuesday, and there were many indie developers lashing out for being on the short end of the stick for not getting their game slotted for release on XBLA. Eventually Microsoft upped it two XBLA games a week, with usually a more anticipated game hitting on Tuesday and a lesser known title from a smaller studio hitting on Friday. Looking back on this the obvious downside is the lack of quantity of XBLA titles with only one or two releasing a week, but the curation process lead to the hit-to-miss ratio of them being significantly in favor of the hit range. Sure there were some stinkers that creeped in their like the disappointing Turtles in Time Re-Shelled remake, but the good outweighs the bad greatly in the XBLA market, especially compared today to the ridiculous amounts of low-rent DIY shovelware hitting every week on all consoles with there being seemingly no restrictions for any developer to get their game on a current console, for better or worse.

The digital store also made game demos more easily accessible instead of the traditional demo disc, and downloading demos in the early years of the 360 was kind of a big deal, especially when they had major opening acts of action and intriguing narratives like the Prey and Just Cause demos that made a huge impression on me and triggered me to rush out and buy them. This also worked against games, with the most egregious case being EA Sport’s planned reboot of its basketball series with NBA Elite ‘11’s demo being so plagued with bugs and glitches, that EA infamously flatout cancelled the game days before its street date release and forced retailers to return their copies of the game. That last minute recall tempted overzealous retail employees to snatch up precious copies to make it one of the rarest physical releases on the 360, with copies going on eBay for many thousands of dollars. An Awesome Debut Year of Games

I have no idea if it was happenstance, or intentionally planned, but it worked out pleasantly in the 360’s favor in its first year of next-gen exclusivity they had one or two AAA exclusive games launching per month. Noticing multiple users on my friends list playing the latest AAA game, and with the dawn of podcasts in 2005 featuring their affable hosts discussing the latest games in exhausting detail on launch week is what I feel created the horribly named sensation, “Fear of Missing Out.” I ate up gaming podcasts upon discovering them in 2005 with 1up Yours, The Hotspot, Broadcast Gamer and Team Fremont Live being early favorites of mine and influencing my gaming purchases with their genuine positivity on the latest games that made it difficult to ignore their top picks. They, along with traditional print and online gaming press made it easier to keep up with the latest must-have game of the month for the 360’s first year. A month after launch Dead or Alive 4 snuck in at the end of 2005. It was the first fighting game on the system, and with it having a Spartan character from Halo’s universe as a guest fighter, and an innovative-for-the-time pre-fight lobby system lead to me spending many hours in it online and offline. I was terrible at it, but still had countless hours of fun, even while legitimately earning the dubious zero point achievement for 25 straight online losses.

Oblivion’s Adoring Fan I loved seeing respawn every couple of in-game days to tag along on my adventures before quickly getting slaughtered, and Test Drive Unlimited was an unprecedented always-online open world racing title that laid the foundation for Forza Horizon and The Crew! A couple months later, the first big RPG hit on 360 with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was a huge improvement from Morrowind, and this Western open-world RPG was publisher Bethesda’s first mainstream console hit. It took me well over a hundred hours to finish that I spread out over the course of five years (just in time for Skyrim!). I had to resort to abusing the hell out of the dupe glitch for infinite invisibility potions to get past those dastardly Oblivion Gates, but it was an immensely gratifying experience to complete and fully 1000 gamerscore Oblivion! Pro tip, make sure to avoid a near freak-out experience like I had and have a bow in your inventory on the final Thieves Guild mission where you steal an actual Elder’s Scroll!

The string of big-release games kept rolling through 2006. Test Drive Unlimited broke new ground for the racing genre with its always connected open world! Before From Software had blockbuster success with their string of Souls games, they were known at this time for their niche mech games, and had their most success yet with the release of Chromehounds in 2006. The online-focused mech game was more accessible from their previous feature-extensive Armored Core titles. A pair of popular third-person Tom Clancy games hit in 2006 with the first Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Rainbow Six: Vegas titles. I rented both of these and was terrible at them online, but I do recall having fun as the decoy in Vegas to draw out enemy fire so my friends could pick off my assailants! My anticipation for Saints Row paid off, and it wound up being an awesome GTA-clone done right that year! The first Gears of War was the big 2006 holiday release from Epic Games, riding the success of several hit Unreal FPS games, but long before their current Fortnite fame. It lived up to the hype and delivered with its unapologetic brand of in-your-face gore, and smooth drop-in/drop-out online campaign play. It became one of my favorite franchises on the 360, and I would up playing through the campaign of every single game released to this day! The final big 2006 release I want to highlight is Dead Rising’s brand of campy, zombie mayhem from Capcom that became a huge new IP for Capcom and also the catalyst for many 360 owners to… Upgrade to HD Up through most of 2006 was when I used a traditional CRT (AKA “Tube TV”) as my main gaming television. HDTVs were first noticeable on the market during the PS2/Xbox/GCN era, and a fair number of games supported HD resolutions (especially on Xbox), but HD graphics were never a marquee bullet point of that gen. That all changed with Dead Rising. For the first several months I remained content with the CRT visuals of launch window 360 games, then when playing the Dead Rising demo, I could not help but notice the game’s text was rather tiny and kind of difficult to read. Upon listening to podcasts I learned I was not alone on this and it turned out the game’s text was optimized and quite readable for HD resolutions. Many more games would soon follow this trend in the following months. I noticed this even more when a friend brought over a smaller HDTV and we put them side-by-side running Rainbow Six: Vegas and I saw for myself the difference in the legibility of the in-game text. So yeah, the core graphics for all games where shinier and crisper in HD, but my primary reason for upgrading at the end of 2006 was just to read the damn text. History is repeating itself in recent years with text starting to look smaller and requiring more eye-squinting again to read in games like Wreckfest and MLB: The Show for me, when I later learned that is so because the visuals are optimized for 4KTVs (which I finally upgraded to several weeks ago).

Did you experience the ‘Look and Sound of Perfect’ with 360’s HD-DVD player, along with its killer app of a film in Tokyo Drift? HD movies also arrived to the 360 in 2006 with the release of the ill-fated HD-DVD add-on. Sony getting the better end of the stick in exclusivity deals with studios lead to it losing the physical HD format war against BluRay, and movies stopped releasing on HD-DVD by the end of 2008. I almost impulse-bought the add-on upon seeing it on the clearance rack for $50, but thankfully I held off. By that time however HD streaming was starting to take off with TV shows and movies available to rent and purchase from 360’s online marketplace, and the 360 nabbing a year exclusive on being the first non-PC device to offer streaming Netflix. Streaming movies and TV shows exploded in popularity and before I knew it, almost anytime I logged on nearly half of my Friends list was making use of one of many streaming apps that would become available on the 360. A couple years before the 360 got to this level of success, it had a couple major hurdles to overcome, especially the right-of-passage a vast majority of early 360 owners fatefully dubbed…. Three Red Lights There have been a fair number of platforms that have been notorious over the years for noteworthy faulty hardware ratios like the first three original PlayStations and the problematic powering on trickery required to boot NES games, but those all pale in comparison to the atrocity of the launch year 360 units. Within a few months after launch more frequent whispers started to become prominent of knowing someone who had a 360 that failed on them with the telltale indicator being three flashing red lights on the system. Users would then have to call Microsoft to set them up with a shipping container to mail to Microsoft to repair and mail back. I was the first among my local friends and peers to get the three lights of doom, and I have painful memories of it because my system was lost in UPS transit for three months before I finally got it back after visiting the local UPS center’s lost and found.

360 #2 only lasted several months before red-lighting in 2007, and the third met its expiration date in 2011. I will refrain from going into the nuts and bolts of the architecture problems, but in layman’s terms Microsoft was in such a rush to get that year head start on Sony, that a high amount of faulty chips made their way to manufacturing and resulted in the system’s high failure rate. To Microsoft’s credit, they gave all launch year 360 owners an extended three year warranty to get their system replaced free of charge, which I took advantage of twice. The third one died after the extended warranty, but by that point Microsoft had a slim version of the console on the market releasing alongside Gears of War 3 that I snatched up, and **fingers crossed** have had no issues yet with. Being the first to be hit with the three red lights amidst my immediate local circle of friends and co-workers made it interesting. Over the next year every couple of months another friend would call or text me, and/or another co-worker would catch up with me at work and relay to me their troubles of their 360 bricking and I would be their unofficial tech support on how to get ahold of Microsoft to the point where I still remember the phone number to this day (1-800-4MY-XBOX) to get set up with the replacement system. I wound up buying a hard drive transfer cable to transfer data to new hard drives when switching systems and I recall at least a handful of people borrowing it from me when they switched systems due to switching systems and/or upgrading hard drives. In a bizarre twist, I will put a curse on Hollywood Video for my first two 360s red-ringing! The first time it happened I was playing a rented copy of Chromehounds. The Hollywood Video curse struck again in 2007 when renting Shadowrun caused my 360 to crash!!! As ubiquitous as the three red rings became, Microsoft wanted to ensure a 360 makeover image with a marketing assault for the 2010 launch of… Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Nintendo’s Wii launched Holiday 2006, and the motion-based console was an initial sales juggernaut, and it took over two years before it was commonly available on store shelves. Both Sony and Microsoft initially had meek responses to it with Sony essentially patching in motion controls in time for the PS3’s launch with the Six Axis controller that was not that well received or regarded for its precision, and the 360 had the aforementioned Vision Camera, which was essentially Microsoft’s take on an Eye Toy that only saw a handful of games support it for motion controls. Holiday 2010 saw both companies with a meaningful response with PlayStation Move on PS3, and Kinect on 360.

Microsoft pulled the same marketing strategies as Nintendo did years earlier intentionally marketing the Kinect towards families and advertising it heavily on daytime television. Most of Microsoft’s Kinect games were more-or-less their takes on the hit Wii versions. This is when Microsoft implement cartoony characters that could be implemented across games called “Avatars.” They were especially prominent in Kinect games, and one cool side effect for them was the many digital clothing items for them that could be either bought off the Avatar Marketplace, or unlocked for free by playing through games. I am especially proud of my You Don’t Know Jack dummy, and goofy oversized head ornament I unlocked from finishing Comic Jumper. A fair amount of late gen 360 titles supported Avatars in-game, which made for some interesting sights like having your Avatar onstage in Guitar Hero 5 jamming out next to Kurt Cobain. Microsoft’s gamel paid off, and for two-to-three years, the Microsoft moved millions of units of that camera. It is safe to sumrise that the 1-2-3 punch of Kinect, Move and smartphones all combined to steal the “casual gamer” userbase that the Wii was known for and the Wii’s console sales in America plummeted from 2011 onwards. The Kinect boosted 360 console sales so much from the Holiday 2010 period until the Xbox One and PS4 launches in Holiday 2013 that in that three year timeframe Microsoft sold the most systems in America for all but a handful of months. By the Holiday 2013 launch of the Xbox One/PS4, the 360 overcame the Wii’s sizable lead to become the best-selling console of the Wii/360/PS3 generation in America.

Only Kinect game I ever played was the river-rafting follies seen in Kinect Adventures, but surprise hit games like the Gunstringer seen above tempted me to almost get a Kinect on multiple occasions. I never bought a Kinect, but did play Kinect Adventures at a friend’s….yes, it was that damn river raft mini-game. I paid attention to the games releasing for it and supporting the peripheral, and a few looked like genuinely entertaining games and went on to have critical acclaim. Many traditional games added optional “Better with Kinect” features like zoom-in art gallery halls, or audio play-calling in sports games. Even though the ardent game player in me despised the change in direction Microsoft took with the Kinect, I cannot deny there were still several games I wanted to try on it after seeing the positive reactions for Harmonix’s trilogy of Dance Central games, Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer and even the limited on-rail experience that is Fable: The Journey. Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Hitting around the same time as Kinect was Microsoft patching in a new division of purchasable digital games initially called Community Games, but later rebranded Indie Games. Microsoft made its XNA development tools easily available for almost any level of experienced developer. This lead to a deluge of DIY games that looked like they were made as a semester long development school project flooding the Indie Games channel. Some developers embraced the campy nature of the amateur works that dominated the 360 Indie Games scene, with Silver Dollar Games especially unleashing a plethora of their…brand…of games like Try Not to Fart and the ironically titled, Why Did I Buy This?

The 360 Indie Games scene left a lot to be desired as seen above with the quality of games from infamous companies like Silver Dollar Games There were a few gems in the rough to be discovered in the Indie Games channel, and like XBLA games, Microsoft enforced a free trial on all games so you knew what you were getting yourself in for before throwing down some hard earned Microsoft Points, which are like regular points, but fun! There are two DLC Quest games that are fun quirky $1 platformers riffing on how gratuitous in-game DLC would become. Tribute Games gained notoriety on here with their adorable Breakout homage, Wizorb. Finally, I was a huge fan of Zeboyd Games that earned their reputation for their 360 Indie Games and I played through and devoured all four of their humorous takes on throwback pixel RPGs (Breath of Death VII, Cthulu Saves the World, Penny Arcade’s Rain Slick 3 & 4) that released as Indie Games. Zeboyd earned their development stripes on the 360 Indie Games platform, and I am happy with their continued success today! For every one of these hits that broke through however, there were at least a few dozen forgettable releases overshadowing them. Indie Games was Microsoft’s answer for their curation policy to XBLA, but as you can see it only went so far.

Zeboyd’s four 360 Indie Games are excellent retro-style RPGs well worth your time and can be found on Steam today to experience these gems! Microsoft had similar lukewarm success with their backwards compatibility efforts on the 360. There was a huge demand leading to the 360’s launch to be fully compatible with all original Xbox games. Microsoft only originally promised that the first two Halo games would be back-compat on 360, but after enough user outcry, Microsoft released several updates over the 360’s lifespan patching in support for what ended up being a little under half of the original Xbox’s library being supported on the 360, but the software-based emulation had a list of issues and bugs that accompanied each compatibility update. Aside from a fair amount of both Halo games, I played through Fable and Spider-Man 2 via 360 back-compat, and ran into intermittent bouts of slowdown with the former, and random little portions of graphic flickering with the latter. Still enjoyed my time with both, but not without these added issues. Speaking of Halo…. For the Love of Online Co-op

The 360 featured countless games that supported online co-op which made playing the latest big AAA title all that more fun. This primarily effected first and third-person shooters with the big example for this being the Halo titles on the 360 (3, 4, Reach, ODST, Halo Anniversary Remake). I played through all five of those games in online co-op and enjoyed them all tremendously. I will give props to Halo 3 and 4 having my favorite narratives, and I loved the final level of Halo 3 being an homage to the last level of the first game where you drive a warthog through a lengthy labyrinth of enemies and terrain to navigate before a time limit expires and everything explodes, MacGrueber-style! Halo 3 brought in four player online co-op, which I experiment with friends online by trying out the “Skull” modifiers which only upped the difficulty and lead to us finishing a good chunk of the game on the highest difficulty. Halo 4 I continue to this day to reference an ill-fated moment I had when playing with my friend Derek, where I was controlling the Scorpion tank whilst marching it up a lengthy incline, and he was walking alongside me and I misinterpreted the level’s geometry where I did not see a turn and nonchalantly drove the Scorpion tank off the edge of a level and plummeted it down to its awaiting death to the erupting laughter from Derek on the headset.

While I had a lot of fun with the Halo titles online, there were plenty of other worthy options, with the first Crackdown standing out among them. Getting lost in that open world with a friend and wreaking havoc with powered-up heroes whose jumping abilities had seemingly no limits was a blast, so was coming up with random challenges for each other like making a competition to see who could race up to the top of the mammoth Agent’s tower first. Saints Row 2 is another open world game that had online co-op, and made discovering some of the game’s secrets I had no idea about like its hidden mall worth going out of the way to show to friends. Dead Island’s online co-op stood out to me with its in-depth crafting system and emphasis on melee combat ala Condemned. The four Gears of War titles on the 360 all feature first-class online co-op. Gears of War 3 I have classic memories of bringing over to a friend’s the night it launched and we set up our TVs next to each other and played through the entire journey over two days. The survival-based Horde modes from the Gears titles created a new sensation for online co-op, and I played many hours of it online in the first three Gears. I even became invested into the “deep” lore of the Gears franchise to the point that I read a couple of the novels. Gears of War: Judgment switched developer to People Can Fly who tried to freshen up the controls and gameplay a bit. They also focused the narrative on Baird and Cole’s origins which did not go over well with the fanbase, and while it was the least popular of the four on the 360 I will still give Microsoft props for trying something different with it.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance’s final boss battle with Galactus was made to experienced and conquered with someone in co-op, and while the Army of Two games weren’t perfect, I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having some fun times with all the games in online co-op If it was not for online co-op I would have not broken my curse to finally finish the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I started and never finished that campaign on five, yes five, separate occasions with different sets of friends each time and stopped because we either lost interest and/or ran into logistic issues setting up times for everyone to meet together. A former co-worker Sean reached out to me to play with him online and I reluctantly agreed and started it the sixth time, but sure enough we stuck with it and completed it, and it was worth all the starts and stops because it remains years later one of my all-time favorite comic book games. That Galactus boss fight is a final boss fight that I will never forget and a truly epic final encounter to close the game! The second Ultimate Alliance game also featured online co-op and I finished that game on a much timelier basis because a lot of my co-workers also picked it up and we met up regularly for a couple weeks to finish it twice because it focused on the popular Civil War Marvel event that had two separate storylines. It had a more polished presentation, but the first Ultimate Alliance I easily rank as the superior game!

Some rapid-fire quick online co-op memories to wrap this segment up on: The first Kane & Lynch game was an interesting experience in co-op because I played it on this insanely huge HD projector. The first two Borderlands games were both huge hits with my friends and peers that won us all over with its loot-driven FPS gameplay. Credit to Derek for having patience with my crazy work hours and sticking with me for the better part of a year to pick away at and eventually finish Borderlands 2! To a lesser extent, another fun FPS co-op focused title were the Army of Two trilogy of titles. The games all had noticeable control issues, but the teamwork focused gameplay worked for us, and the franchise had a certain charisma to it with their many unlockable masks and charming fist bump animations to equip. Real time strategy games have historically been troublesome to pull off on consoles, but Ensemble Studios found the magic formula to make it work with Halo Wars, and somehow made online co-op viable with it too, and it was another game I found myself teaming up with Sean in a very enjoyable campaign that also featured some of the best CG cutscenes that remain stunning to this day. Finally, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand has likely the most ridiculous storyline of all these co-op titles where you play as 50 Cent himself to track down a prized skull across the middle east that made it a zany quest to just shake my head and go with to see where it took me next, and also for my friend Matt and I to jam out to its hip-hop flavored soundtrack to throughout. Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs In the console space, before this generation, role-playing games were dominant on the first two Nintendo and Sony platforms. That surprisingly changed this generation. Microsoft made pitches to Japanese developers in the early years of the 360 to release their games exclusively, or at least timed exclusively on the system. This lead to Square-Enix releasing exclusives like Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant on the 360, and porting its MMO, Final Fantasy XI onto the 360 in 2006 and making it cross-platform-online compatible with the PS2 and PC versions which meant it was the first game to share online user bases between consoles from different manufacturers. It took a little over a decade for this to happen again, so this was kind of a big deal. I still recall Square stunning gaming fans with their E3 announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would release day and date with the PS3 version (along with XIII’s two sequels later on), so it was surprising during this time to see Square open up its publishing portfolio on other platforms.

As twisted as its plot may be, I still got a lot out of Eternal Sonata with its highly entertaining battles. Blue Dragon was another early J-RPG that drew a lot of attention that Microsoft was serious about RPGs this gen. Other Japanese developers also released RPGs in the early 360 years with Blue Dragon, Enchanted Arms, Resonance of Fate, Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey all appearing. I purchased nearly all these games, but only one I played through of these was the bizarre Eternal Sonata, which is a traditional J-RPG set in the mind of dying legendary composer Federic Chopin. Its plot is as out there as its premise, and I will never forget its equally bizarre post-credits stinger, but I loved its engaging battle system that kept me glued in all the way through. I was also taking a music history class in college at the time, so the brief Chopin historical fact interludes between acts also did a lot for me. While Japanese RPGs took off on the 360, so did…. …. “Western RPGs” from companies on this side of the global hemisphere. Bethesda and BioWare are the two most prominent developers responsible for this slate of RPGs this generation after lighting the fire on the original Xbox. I already discussed my love for Oblivion, and Bethesda capitalized on that success with another blockbuster in the form of Fallout 3. Take the medieval fantasy world of Elder Scrolls and apply a retro-50s post-apocalypse skin to it and you have the formula for another Bethesda best-seller I once again put in over 100 hours in completing the main campaign and all of its DLC expansions. After that I needed a break from Bethesda’s games and have yet to play New Vegas. I did start up the Oblivion sequel, Skyrim and briefly made some headway into that, but got sidetracked by other holiday tent pole releases at that time and it regrettably succumbed to becoming lost in my backlog. I eventually picked up the remaster on Xbox One, and one day I will restart and finish that game!

Giant Bomb’s videos of their complete play-throughs of the Mass Effect trilogy is some of their best work that should not be missed! A series that did not get lost in my backlog was BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy. The first game I initially got into as an awesome modern-day take on Star Trek, with an engrossing cast of crew mates on the Normandy. The first Mass Effect was a little rough around the edges, so I eventually fell off halfway through, but picked it up a couple years later and plowed right through it. The same thing happened with Mass Effect 2, but the advantage to finishing it in 2014 was that all the bonus story DLC add-ons were released and combined for a gratifying experience all together. ME2 delivered on hyping up being careful with pivotal story decisions that would have consequences in the infamous final “suicide mission” in the game. My initial run through of it saw three of my crew members not survive it through, and it gutted me so much I restarted that final mission and had to compromise with only two crew members passing away. Immediately after finishing ME2 I jumped right into ME3 and this time saw it all the way through within a couple months, luckily by this point the extended ending and all the story DLCs also just finished releasing and I was stunned with what Bioware held out of the core game and I can feel for players who initially played it and missed out on having a central character like Javic locked away behind DLC and missing out on essential storyline DLCs that dealt heavily with the origins of the Protheans and Reapers. The way I played it felt like a complete experience with all the DLC, but without it I sympathize for the critics who stated it felt unfinished upon first release.

There is also the fantastic “Citadel” DLC I want to give props to which is its own standalone swashbuckling adventure full of lighthearted campy jokes, and concludes with throwing a the party of all parties for all your friends! For people who have not played the initial Mass Effect trilogy, at least give a couple episodes of Giant Bomb’s Mass Alex play-through videos of all three games in their entirety a shot. I am almost wrapped up with them as of this writing, and it has been wonderful experiencing that trilogy all over again this way. Like Gears, I became so absorbed into the Mass Effect lore, that I have bought and read all of the novels, and almost all of them are good, even the Andromeda-based ones! I know the first Fable has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism over the years for not delivering on all of its promises, but that does not take away from the final product on original Xbox still being a astounding action-RPG! I treasured my time with it, and the “Lost Chapters” expansion, and late in the 360’s life in 2014 it got the remastered treatment to bring the entire trilogy (and the spin-off Kinect game, The Journey) all on 360. Fable II from what I gathered has been the highpoint of the series from everyone I have talked to. I have only played through the prologue, and failed at getting back to it while covering other games in the gaming press at the time amidst another busy holiday release season. Fable III sounds like it did not win everyone over with its major storyline hook it marketed of overthrowing a corrupt sibling at the throne, and sadly the Kinect game, The Journey was the last major single player installment of the series as of this writing. Becoming a Pinball Wizard I have played various videogame pinball titles over the years, but for whatever reason the 360/PS3 gen is when it got ahold of me and never let go. It started with Crave’s Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. Each real life table replica had their own set of goals to accomplish in order to unlock an achievement for each table, so I kept plugging away, and little-by-little I found hooked into addicting tables like Gorgar, Medieval Madness and No Good Gophers especially being my favorite. Later on Crave released an XBLA pay-per-table platform with tables from multiple companies called The Pinball Arcade. Every several months a new batch of tables were released and I found myself immediately downloading them and studying the in-game instructions for each table to thoroughly learn all of its intricacies and the addicting nature of filtered online Friends-list leaderboards had me plugged in to top the scoreboard for each table.

Well over 100 hours I invested into Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX on the 360. Two of my favorite tables are pictured above with No Good Gophers on the left, and Mars on the right. The same exact thing happened with Zen Studio’s XBLA title, Pinball FX. Their tables were not based on real tables, and as they gradually released more tables for download, they embraced their interactive nature and featured more computer animated toys that flew off of and around the table, and more dynamic special effects on the playfield that simply are not possible on real life tables. Despite them being not lifelike, and featuring more exaggerated pinball physics, I still embraced them when I was in the mood to switch up from the real tables in Pinball Arcade. Zen released a sequel a few years later in Pinball FX2 that had more dynamic community and hub-based features and integrated online friends leaderboards into actual gameplay with in-game pop-ups when your score was approaching a friend’s high-score which only intensified every attempt and kept me coming back more frequently. Some of my favorite tables from the first two PBFX games are the spooky mystery pin Paranormal, the Monty Python-influenced Epic Quest (with RPG stats and leveling that carries over in each attempt!) and the outer space themed Mars. Pinball FX3 on Xbox One/PS4 added even more community based features that keep me playing it weekly to this day, but that is a story for another time! Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre I believe Microsoft somehow found a way to publish one marquee AAA racing game each year for almost the entire 360 lifespan. They originally rotated between Bizarre Creation’s Project Gotham games, and Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport series each year. I never got into either of those series that much. Forza is the more serious sim, and I have tried out a couple installments over the years, but the intense sim mechanics are just not for me. If I would have put more time into PGR I feel I would have really got into that series, and I have some fleeting memories of getting into the second game for a brief moment on the original Xbox.

While I did not get reeled into Forza Motorsport, I fell hook, line and sinker into PGR’s replacement, Forza Horizon from the developer, Playground. It lightened up the sim-based controls and offered up enough assist options to procure that comfortable blend of sim and arcade racing. I also wound up in favor of its open world hub nature to either drive around to new races and take in the country side, or hang around the game’s central music festival. The first Horizon had such a fitting licensed soundtrack of rock and electronica-based songs that I sought out the entire soundtrack and it is its own separate running playlist for me. Since I did not upgrade into the Xbox One/PS4 gen until 2016, that meant I picked up Forza Horizon 2 on the 360 instead, and thankfully it was not all that downgraded from its Xbox One version. Both games I wound up completing all the races, challenges and finding all the hidden barnyard cars. Yes, I even played through all of the Fast and Furious licensed expansion for Forza Horizon 2 where Ludacris himself as Tej provided voiceovers to set up each race. Before Forza Horizon, another game attempted the same thing a couple years earlier with Test Drive Unlimited. It featured a sorta-GPS replication of the entirety of Oahu as its open world hub and I absolutely ate it up and was white-knuckling the final race which was a one-on-one endurance race against the top ranked AI around the entire outer highway of the island. The sequel was fun too and added another island, but I think one Alex Navarro’s reaction to the opening cutscene in his Quick Look video will be my main takeaway of it. I have mentioned in previous console flashbacks how I love demo-derby racing games, and on 360 Flatout: Ultimate Carnage was king! It is a fantastic follow-up to the PS2/Xbox games, and my brother and I played it online regularly for years, I can go on about it forever, but instead I will embed below a special three-part video where my brother and I raved about why it was one of our favorites….

Many years ago my brother and I made this three-part YouTube series on our fandom for Flatout: Ultimate Carnage The summer of 2010 saw two new arcade racing games debut that both should have been successful new IPs with sequels to this day, but since the two released within a month of each other they presumably took up each other’s player base and both Activision and THQ did not pick them up for sequels. Activision invested in Bizarre for an all new racing IP in Blur, which is essentially conflating the power-ups of Mario Kart with underground street racing, and it was indeed as awesome as that pitch sounds. I played hours of it in the main career mode and online as well. On the other end THQ invested in Black Rock Studios with their innovative racer, Split/Second, a reality show-based driving game where studio directors would triggers obstacles and destructible environments to activate and provided an all-new gripping racing experience. It too was also a riot to endure and 100% finish, but it sadly never received a sequel either.

I loved the Burnout series the previous gen, and EA delivered with an upgraded port of Burnout Revenge that remains my favorite entry in the series to this day. I got into its open world follow-up, Burnout Paradise and developer Criterion were aces with their long-term support of free updates that kept me coming back to it. EA’s other flagship racing series, Need for Speed had a few entries I put serious time into. The 360 launch title, Most Wanted had an intriguing concept of working your way up the “Blacklist” of the most wanted street racers to compete against. When Criterion did an all new reboot of Most Wanted several years later, it combined that concept with the blazing fast gameplay from the Burnout series to my approval. Finally, I will give head-nods of recommendation to both of Sega’s Sonic kart-racers on the 360. They are the top Mario Kart-clones out there, and ooze with Sega fan service. The second game, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed successfully innovated with evolving stages that switched up from racing in karts, then into mini-bi-planes and then onto water-based hovercraft. I completed the careers for both games and put in a fair amount of online play with both entries too. The Fad that was the Plastic Instruments My gut told me the original PS2 Guitar Hero was going to be big within minutes of trying out the original demo in the fabled Kentia Hall at E3 2005. Adored the first game, but the second game was when it went mainstream, and was thrilled with the second game’s HD 360 release in 2007. 2005-2009 was the apex of the genre for my friends and me. There were countless nights of my friends and family passing the guitar around trying to best each other’s scores, and when 360 introduced online leaderboards for each song it upped the competition level even higher. Local city clubs and bars did Guitar Hero tournament nights and my favorite memory from these was on a Guitar Hero III tourney night when it was my turn to go up on stage to pick a random song out of a hat I was the lucky soul to draw one of the hardest songs in the game in the form of Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” I suffered on stage, and barely managed to finish, yet it remains a memory I shall cherish! In fall of 2007, Harmonix splintered away from Red Octane and teamed up with MTV Games to unleash the revolutionary Rock Band that brought in drums and karaoke to the fold for four player co-op play!

I will forever love the countless Rock Band nights I had in the first two Rock Band games that hit in 2007 & 2008, especially the nights I played with my old podcast co-hosts Chris and Scott. I downloaded well over a hundred extra DLC songs over a few years for it, and we would routinely meet up one or two nights a month for Rock Band nights for two years. Almost always, our last song to finish off a session was the final song in the first Rock Band’s career mode that was filled with many wrist-suffering solos, yes I am talking about Outlaws’ “Green Grass and High Tides”. Our Rock Band addiction culminated with the “Bladder of Steel” achievement which we procured when playing every song straight without a fail over the course of several hours! I was almost always the drummer on Rock Band nights. At first no one else wanted to do them, but eventually I got into them and kind of became somewhat decent at it on medium difficulty. One night at an Alice Cooper concert I became entranced at watching the drummer wail away all night that I convinced myself after the show to lay down a $200 pre-order for the premium ION Drum Set for Rock Band….though after a few months something about that bulky set did not gel with me and I did not prefer the way the drumsticks clanked off the pads and I never developed a rhythm for them and eventually gave them away to free up space.

The forgotten gem Rock Band title no one talks about, LEGO Rock Band! Behold one of its awesome boss stages with the Ghostbusters theme song! The plastic instrument genre quickly became oversaturated with numerous entries a year from Activision and EA. At first it was kind of interesting to dive into some of the band focused entries of the series like how Harmonix did a wonderful tribute to The Beatles with reliving their career and its groovy “Dreamscape” stages in The Beatles: Rock Band. The Metallica nut in me feasted on forcing carpal tunnel upon myself with the painfully intricate, yet entrancing solos from almost every track in Guitar Hero: Metallica. By the time Green Day: Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Van Halen rolled around though and other offshoots that I completely skipped like Band Hero and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, it was clear the writing was on the wall for the genre. I did manage to sneak in some last doses of fun with a couple other off-the-beaten-path entries though before this genre faded away from its zenith.

The head-bopping mash-ups of DJ Hero with its uniquely intuitive turntable controller and feeding my karaoke addiction with Lips were breaths of fresh air for the genre late in the 360’s life.

Microsoft’s karaoke series on 360, Lips, supplied a fair amount of fun with its unique glow-in-the-dark microphones and four volumes of songs released before Microsoft eventually morphed it into a karaoke pay-per-song app late in the 360’s lifecycle. My buddy Matt introduced me to LEGO Rock Band, which Matt got for free with any Black Friday purchase one year at Kohl’s and we were both nearly burnt out on the genre by this point, but thought we would at least give this graphically unique version a shot. The adorably twee nature of the LEGO visuals with its complementing soundtrack were irresistible, and it instantly won us over. We stuck with it all the way through, and were fans of its music video-esque “boss” levels, with the Ghostbusters theme song stage being one we replayed far too frequently. Another refreshing take on the genre was through DJ Hero and its sequel, DJ Hero II. I loved that turntable controller, and it flawlessly placed me into the DJ world with its mash-up stylings soundtrack and fitting club visuals. Both games were unsung heroes of the genre when they released because they both came out a year or two removed from the apex of the genre’s success, but the DJ & LEGO games brought in some much needed fresh air in that scene. Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Now while I almost entirely avoided the Kinect, there still remained deluge of non-Kinect casual party games that were a hit with the family on holidays and friends on game nights. The two Microsoft published Scene It games that came bundled with their user-friendly big button wireless controllers were family favorites for a few years and successful adaptations of the hit movie trivia DVD-board game. A guilty pleasure of mine is legacy licensed trivia/board games/game shows on consoles, and the 360 had plenty of them with solid editions of Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Apples to Apples, Risk and Family Feud 2012. Doritos Crash Course seemed initially like a forgettable promotional game that was free on XBLA that only offered avatars racing each other on a variety of obstacle courses, but somehow its simple gameplay was addicting and far more entertaining than it had any right to be at family and friend gatherings.

You Don’t Know Jack was a fun revival of the hit PC irreverent trivia series that was dormant for nearly a decade before THQ brought it back on consoles in 2011. Friends and I played through every episode on the disc and its DLC packs, and I revisited it for several years because of one dumb habit where the adorably jerk-of-a-host, Cookie Masterson, would have a unique greeting to open the game if you played on a holiday. The success from this You Don’t Know Jack revival got the developers at then-Jellyvision to revitalize the brand and include a bunch of other party games in the popular yearly Jackbox games that are still going strong as of this writing. I also wanted to squeeze into this chapter of the flashback Microsoft’s polarizing decision to appeal the UI of the 360 to a more family/casual audience and changed the fan favorite “blades” UI into the detested “New Xbox Experience” (NXE) in 2008. Microsoft was trying to synergize with the equally detested UI of its latest PC operating system, Vista. Tablets were starting to become trendy at this point, and Microsoft was resilient on forcing a tablet-esque UI across all its devices and the results were a total system failure. I was among the many who made their outcry heard over how ugly the many rows of diagonally aligned boxes filled with ads were a visual nightmare on the eyes. I was use to some minor ad implementation in the Blades UI before promoting other 360 games available, but the NXE mixed in all sorts of commercials, movie trailers and other assorted promotions that hit the same wrong nerves as those eye-blasting web browser ads.

Microsoft eventually updated and tweaked the NXE into a much more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly UI that remains on the 360 boot-up today. With the 360 user base understandably a modicum from what it was in its prime today, it is refreshing to see Microsoft lay off as of this writing with a complete absence of ads on the UI. I will also use this space to shout out the premium theme backgrounds that I have used for many years being the pumpkin patch and winter wonder land themes that are always a delight to see when I boot up the 360. Yes, the Xbox Live 360 servers are surprisingly still online in 2020, 15 years after the 360 launch. Most 360 online multiplayer supported games support peer-to-peer multiplayer so as long as Microsoft keeps the lights on, you will still be able to play 360 games online. Microsoft only kept the original Xbox Live servers up for seven and a half years, so to see them more than double that for 360’s servers as of today is…astonishing. Worth noting is some games like Chromehounds, Final Fantasy XI and all EA-published games utilized their own private servers which the publishers have shutdown long ago, so those games are unplayable online, but a vast majority still support the option. Wanna Wrassle? For several years on the 360, one of my yearly holiday season traditions was to buy the latest WWE Smackdown vs. RAW game and complete the career/season story mode and unlock all of the hidden wrestlers and features over the course of a few months. I did this from WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2007 through 2011. For one of the yearly installments I was so close to unlocking all the achievements to get 1000 gamerscore, but the last one I needed required a grind to complete the main single player career mode five times. I decided at the time this was a perfect opportunity to catch up on past seasons of 24 and brought a second, smaller TV next to my living room TV and absentmindedly button mashed my way through those extra career mode playthroughs, and it took almost the entirety of the second season of 24 to accomplish that feat and earn that final achievement. No regrets!

WWE's yearly Smackdown vs. RAW games featured zombies in their storylines, while All-Stars shifted the gameplay to more arcadey fun for all! The story modes in those yearly WWE games were worth playing through because the writers in some cases got creative and did things that were not possible on TV like having the Undertaker cast mind control spells for example. They added and experimented with a plethora of new modes and options, with the WWE Universe mode being a prime example of going all out creating dream cards and custom storylines. The creation options became incredibly in-depth each year too, in the later installments the developers added a Create-a-Storyline feature that had a surprising level of customization full of custom text entries for dialogue and branching cutscenes. One infamous online community, Video Game Championship Wrestling, became famous for its machinima they created with this system that contained intricate storylines with created wrestlers in its league consisting of video game character icons, developers, comic book & anime characters, fabled movie legends and yes even sprinkling in a few wrestlers. I dabbled in creating a couple simple storylines, but it was too much for me to invest into, but thankfully users could upload and download storylines from the community which added seemingly infinite replay value.

You have not lived until you witnessed an episode of the acclaimed wrestling videogame machinima that is Video Game Championship Wrestling. Will it be Gabe Newell or Dr. Wily who will emerge here as VGCW champion? WWE released a couple spinoff games that were not as feature-dense, and contained more accessible, arcade-like controls. They were on the right path with Legends of Wrestlemania, which highlighted the 80s success of the then-WWF, but absolutely nailed it with WWE All-Stars which featured a hybrid of past legends and current stars, and all of them were intentionally designed to look like roided-out action figures capable of larger-than-life moves like hurling opponents 30 feet into the air in addition to juggling, fighting game-like air combos. This all combined for fun multiplayer sessions with friends and family members who usually are not fans of wrestling games, but genuinely got into the gameplay to my surprise. I rampaged through everything All-Stars had to offer within a couple months after the latest Smackdown vs. RAW game, and was kind of burnt out on wrestling games after this for a while and skipped all future WWE games for several years starting when they changed the branding with WWE ‘12.

TNA iMpact! was from the same people who made All-Stars and had super-fun Ultimate X match as seen above! FirePro Wrestling on the other hand features only controllable Avatars and none of the trademark legacy 2D gameplay the brand is usually known for. There were a few other non-WWE games I tried out before I took a 360 wrestling game sabbatical. Rumble Roses XX was the first 360 wrestling game and the second all-women wrestler game in America after its PS2 predecessor. Never put as much time into it as I meant to, so I cannot leave any lasting impressions on it other than it gave Dead or Alive a lot of competition with its variety of costumes. I did put a lot of time into TNA iMpact! however, which was the game the All-Stars developers worked on before. At the time it hit, I was into the TNA promotion, and the game was a pretty good representation of that product with a fun Ultimate X mode, and a story mode circled around a fictional costumed wrestler named Suicide who went on to become an actual wrestler in the promotion in 2008, and the character has remained there off-and-on to this day. Lucha Libre AAA Heroes del Ring introduced the high-flying luchadores from Mexico with their own exclusive game and featured some familiar past WCW/WWE/TNA stars, but had problematic controls to prevent it from having any lasting appeal. I never played the Kinect motion-based wrestling game, Hulk Hogan’s Main Event, but I have seen clips online to witness it in its near-broken state that lives up to one of my favorite reviews on Game Informer where it became one of their worst rated games ever. There are a couple of low budget Avatar Wrestling games on the Indie Games channel on 360 that are basic affairs, but there is one Avatar-based grappler that somehow got a full fledge XBLA release with the much-respected, best-in-class FirePro Wrestling branding. Those games have been a decades-long line of some of the best 2D wrestling games of all time, and somehow Microsoft was able to secure that branding for an admittedly decent and accessible Avatar wrestling game, but a game that should in no way be worthy of that elite branding. That would be like Phillips securing the Zelda and Mario licenses for their own low-rent made games on their CDi system….oh wait. Sports-ball Forever! Time to highlight some of my favorite go-to sports games on the system. Starting off with football, there I got use to buying Madden every two or three years. I only rented the 360 launch title, Madden NFL 06, which wounded up being one of the worst debut Madden titles on a console ever. This is because of EA’s overblown “Target Gameplay” video they debuted at a previous E3 where the final game, while still graphically a leap above Xbox/PS2, was far from what they teased. To make it worse, that was the same year they debuted the doomed “vision cone” gameplay feature in the earlier PS2/Xbox versions that went over so poorly that they had to disable it as a default option for the 360 version and hide it in the options. This was also the first lead Madden game to remove John Madden himself (and co-commentator Al Michaels) from commentary in favor of a nameless afterthought of a radio-style announcer. Madden NFL ‘06 is easily the all-time worst lead-platform version of Madden!

This video encapsulates why Madden 06 was an atrocity of a debut on the platform…at least it had easy achievements.

EA stepped it up with later entries, with Madden ‘10 remaining a favorite of mine for the brand this gen. I still recall that edition was when EA initially introduced their cash cow microtransaction-focused “Ultimate Team” feature as a free DLC a few months after its release. How foolish I seem now for at first dismissing it as an interesting curiosity I could not bother to invest a dime into ever, but only to see it blow up in DLC sales for EA and become integrated across all of EA’s sports titles and other publisher’s sports games within a few years. I only picked up one college EA effort this gen via NCAA Football ‘12 which was technically free with a six-month subscription to Sports Illustrated, but I got the most out of that game, and was huge into its “Road to Glory” mode. Road to Glory had my created player play out his final year of high school, and then go through a full college season. EA were absolute pros at this point with their college game, perfectly capturing the college game pageantry by jam-packing the it full of college anthems, cheerleaders, mascots and first-class commentary from the old College Gameday crew of Kirk Herbstreit and Brad Nessler. EA was also surprisingly generous with a community create-a-school option where users could create and upload teams and stadiums, and sure enough someone created my middle-of-nowhere Midwest FCS school and high school teams. It remains a heartbreaker (for good reason though) that EA pulled out of college sports games after the NCAA student athlete class action lawsuit, with NCAA Football ‘14 being their final installment. I do not feel that much love for EA though because of how they squashed 2K’s attempt at returning to football videogames with All-Pro Football 2K8. 2K signed on a couple hundred retired legends for their game, and players could pick a handful of legends to be the standout stars on their otherwise auto-generated teams. It was a fun, different approach, which EA quickly put the kibosh on by signing many of those legends away to appear in throwaway historical features in future Madden games. As I mentioned earlier though, EA did win back some favor with me by resurrecting the Blitz franchise with their excellent XBLA version of NFL Blitz.

There were a few other non-NFL games on the 360 I gave an honest try to, with Midway releasing an unlicensed, M-rated version of Blitz before they went bankrupt with Blitz: The League II. It showcases M-rated behind-the-scenes drama storylines, and more brutal and violent hits that bestow it the M-rating, and if you can handle that, then it is worth checking out. Finally, Backbreaker was an ahead-of-its-time pigskin game that debuted an all new physics engine that EA would eventually incorporate into Madden games. While the tech was not quite all the way there, the thing I associate most with that game is it playing P.O.D.’s “Here Comes the Boom” on every…single…kickoff. It was a huge detraction in my review, and I was surprised to see a few weeks later an email from my editor at the time passing along a note from the developers to revisit the game after an update addressing reviewer feedback, which did address a multitude of things, but at the top of the list was reducing the amount of times P.O.D.’s jam played to only twice a game, thank god! On the basketball side of things, I remained a huge fan of the NBA 2K series. The 360 carried over the awesome 24/7 mode I adored from PS2/Xbox era, which was an in-depth career mode for a single created baller, doing a global tour of the street hoops circuit. The 2K games struck gold in NBA 2K11 when Michael Jordan graced the cover and the game added a new historical Jordan mode where he relived his most monumental games with historically accurate rosters, and vintage 90s telecast presentation and commentary. The Jordan mode was a success, and integration of NBA legends became a big selling point on the 2K games going forward with future installments having a theme around the Jordan/Magic/Bird NBA breakout success of the 80s and the iconic ’92 Olympic Dream Team.

EA had a downward spiral with their sim hoops games, and I only tried out a couple demos of the earlier NBA Live titles this gen that did not win me over, including the attempted re-branding of the series with NBA Elite ‘11. That doomed demo was so glitch-laden that it got EA to cancel and recall the game from retailers mere days before its street date, and took them three years to launch another proper console NBA sim. I did love EA’s re-launch of NBA Jam however, along with the XBLA sequel, On Fire Edition. They hit all the right notes on re-introducing the classic arcade gameplay to a new generation. No idea why they have not done another NBA Jam since however, but at least On Fire Edition is back-compat on Xbox One and Series S|X. The PS3 consumed the bulk of my baseball playing time with their awesome MLB: The Show games of that era. However, I do have one chuckle-worthy memory of staying up late playing a lot of 2K’s arcade take on baseball, The Bigs, at a friend’s place one night. We played several games and I recall being impressed at how fast each game breezed by. I skipped all hockey sims this generation too, with the only time I digitally hit the ice this gen being EA’s killer NHL game on XBLA, 3-on-3 NHL Arcade, which delivered the hat trick of arcade fun gameplay, creative power-ups and intuitive controls.

For alternative and single player sports games, I already raved about Top Spin 2 during the 360 launch window. I could never get into EA’s thumb-stick controls for its Fight Night games, but I did enjoy 2K’s Don King’s Prize Fighter, which came from the same team that made the Rocky games on the previous gen I preferred more. Of all the MMA games, I briefly got into THQ’s UFC 2010, but the game always became a chore when gameplay transitioned into ground submissions. I enjoyed Tony Hawk’s Project 8 when it launched, but that series also had a fall from grace with several failed experimental games once EA stepped up the competition with Skate. One of the greatest mysteries in gaming history to me will always be Skate 3’s staying power in sales seeing it on sale for so many years that eventually EA repackaged the game in an Xbox One case with a sticker on it saying it is playable on both the 360 and through back-compat on Xbox One because there were no longer any other 360 retail games on store shelves. I tried a few times to get into Skate, but like the Fight Night games, the thumb-stick focused controls never gelled with me and I could never adapt. No Russian, No Cauldron

For several years straight, from the 360 launch in 2005 through 2012 I played every yearly installment from Activision’s flagship brand, Call of Duty. The first couple of years it was not that much though. Call of Duty 2 I only played several times in local couch multiplayer battles when friends brought over a copy. I always regretted never renting or buying it cheap to play through the single player campaign which I heard is excellent. Ditto that for the original CoD which eventually got a re-release on XBLA as Call of Duty Classic. However, I played through the entire campaigns for the next six games. CoD3 I rented from GameFly and breezed through in a weekend in split-screen co-op with my brother and did not think much of it at the time, but came to learn later that when playing in co-op it removes a few levels that proved to be too daunting to be handled in split screen. Then in 2007 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released and first person shooters as we knew it changed. 13 years later it still has two of the most powerful moments in a FPS campaign in the form of the nuclear blast and its immediate fallout in the failed helicopter escape, and THE sniping level of all sniping levels in the flashback mission which immerses the player so well into the sniper role at its apex moment, that few other games since have managed to achieve. It overall was an incredibly gratifying campaign, which was equaled with a revolutionary online multiplayer experience that popularized persistent online multiplayer unlocks with a seemingly endless barrage of weapon and character customization unlocks to keep players reeled in. I was never “hooked” into the multiplayer on a regular basis, but starting with CoD4 and for the next few games I would occasionally pop on and play with colleagues who did play all the time, and had a blast catching up while apologizing for not carrying my own with my less-than-ideal kill/death/ratio.

World at War was an interesting revisit back to World War II and I enjoyed Keifer Sutherland’s voiceover talents as a superior barking orders at me throughout. It also debuted its survival variant in Zombies mode that was a hit that year and frequently played with co-workers on game nights. While that mode would become a bigger focus and more expanded with each successive CoD game, for whatever reason it never became as popular or played as much then as in World at War. 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 somehow met the high bar for the quality of campaign that the first game set, and its “No Russian” level I will never forget and I was bug-eyed throughout it as I never experienced anything like it before or since while my character attempted to keep his cover. As good as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles were, Treyarch stepped it up with 2010’s Black Ops and its Vietnam War setting. It remains my favorite single player campaign from this stretch of CoD games. The meaning of the “numbers” touched on throughout the campaign had a meaningful payoff, and I loved how Treyarch sprinkled in their own unique gameplay intricacies like “diving to prone” and my love for the RC Car killstreak bonus in multiplayer. No matter how much of a weak link I was for my coworkers in online multiplayer, as long as I got just one set of three kills straight to get that fun RC Car perk, then I considered that a successful multiplayer session! Infinity Ward had a satisfying conclusion to the Modern Warfare trilogy with MW3 in 2011, but 2012’s Black Ops II was surprisingly underwhelming to me. It felt like they tried to do too much with the campaign, and sprinkled in optional bonus missions I felt obligated to do, but broke up the narrative for me. Of course, it could have been CoD burnout by this point, and I have never played another CoD game since. If I were to play the campaign of just one CoD game after this from 2013 on, what would you recommend?

For five years I anticipated the low budget FPS efforts from Cauldron that had me reliving past historical battles and as a DC Secret Service agent seen above. Interestingly, while Treyarch and Infinity Ward took turns each year this gen delivering Activision’s big holiday FPS hit, quietly another studio, Cauldron, yearly released five budget-tiered FPS titles under the Activision Value banner. These little publicized releases always caught my eye, and I had no idea if it was the case, but Cauldron’s games felt like where Activision would send freshly recruited developers to get their feet wet before getting promoted to the CoD teams. Three of Cauldron’s five games were History Channel licensed games themed around recreating and reliving both sides of war in two installments based around the Civil War, and another in the Japanese theater of World War II. The history nut in me appreciated the History Channel-produced intro video for each level, and it was a budget-friendly alternative come down FPS game to breeze through in a weekend after the latest blockbuster CoD game. Cauldron also did a DC-terrorist themed FPS in Secret Service, and Jurassic Park-inspired FPS titled, Jurassic: The Hunted. I imagine all of these play horribly outdated now, but I still will appreciate them for what they brought to the plate. Dubious Honors

Hulk Hogan’s Main Event and NBA Elite 11 top the dubious honors list for reasons I already ranted on above, but wanted to make sure to at least notate here. Moving on to other bad games, here are a handful that I was not a fan of: Rogue Warrior was a super-short and barebones functioning FPS published from Bethesda, but bizarrely got AAA buzz and marketing. It did have a catchy closing credits song though. Turning Point was an FPS from Codemasters with an interesting concept of a post-WWII shooter if the Nazis won the war, but poorly executed and reason why Codemasters has primarily stuck with racing games since (although they did attempt one more FPS with Bodycount which I did not play, but understand is just as atrocious). One game that went on to have a misrepresented history I reviewed at the time was Bullet Witch. It was a middle-tier single player action game published by Atari, and while it had some problems I made sure to point out in my six out of ten review, I received serious flak from a few friends for overrating the game. While I addressed the game’s issues and marked it down appropriately so, I did have a fair amount of fun with the boss battles and messing around with some of the more powerful spells. Over the years I have seen many bill this game with the label that it is among the worst on the 360 with the same kind of tone and vitriol as ET received on the 2600. Even Mr. Microsoft Larry Hyrb poked fun at the game in an online video long ago. Again it is not a great game by any means, but it is far better than what a lot of people make it out to be.

An XBLA game that got one of their marketed themed event releases (‘Summer of Arcade’, ‘Fall Feast,’ etc.) was TMNT: Out of the Shadows. It looked to be a cannot-miss 3D brawler TMNT game, and with that level of hype how could it go wrong? Very much so in fact, and with some of the worst camera controls in gaming I could not put it down fast enough. Another painfully disappointing TMNT game was the aforementioned XBLA remake of Turtles in Time. It played well enough like the original, but the redone visuals did not capture the spirit of the affable 80s/90s cartoon like the original did, and it stripped out the SNES bonus levels and had poorly substituted voiceovers. Stay away! There were a couple of semi-decent 360/PS3 era Turtles games. Nickelodeon TMNT was a perfectly serviceable brawler that did a better job of bringing back the good memories of the arcade classics than Re-Shelled did. Ubisoft released a single player platformer/action game to coincide with the 2007 CG film, TMNT. It too was pretty straightforward, and not earth-shattering, but at least hit some TMNT fan service marks good enough to be a worthwhile entry. Danger of the Ooze is one that slipped through the cracks that I rarely hear talked about likely because it released late in the 360/PS3 lifecycle in 2014. This should be played by any Turtles fan because this is the standout Turtles game this gen from the platforming masters at Wayforward with their take on a pretty fun MetroidVania-style game the TMNT license seemed destined for all this time. Lightning Round Quick Hits

Microsoft did not release 360’s successor, the Xbox One until 2013, so with eight years between the 360 and Xbox One, a boatload of games hit that system and I played far too many of them which is why this is going on far longer than it should have. There remains a hearty amount of AAA, mid-tier, XBLA and other noteworthy games that I want to give their due, so bear with me as I attempt to rapid fire through these… -I got wrapped in too many open world games this gen, and I want to first give props to RockStar Games for managing to finish two of their behemoths in the form of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. GTAIV is the only GTA I finished the storyline for, and Niko Belic will be one of my favorite protagonists. The cell phone activities were initially a chore to retain friendship ratings, but eventually I came around to bowling, cab rides, comedy clubs and rounds of pool. RDR was the ultimate Wild West open world game. Neversoft’s 360 launch title, Gun, was in my backlog still and I blitzed through that in the weeks leading up to RDR’s launch because I just knew it would blow it away. Gun was a decent effort from Neverseft, but quickly became obsolete when starting up RDR, which did not disappoint, and delivered a remarkably atmospheric experience for its time in 2010. I loved getting lost on adventures out in the wild, and that original score is masterful and could not be have been better crafted. That final several hours of gameplay based around the family ranch is an incredibly bold choice of gameplay that will always have a special place with me. Kudos to RockStar with their spooky-themed story expansion, Undead Nightmare, which is a hell of a side story to RDR that is well worth your time all these years later!

GTA IV put a lot of attention on its mini-games that were entertaining shoulder content, and Red Dead Redemption introduced a drop-dead gorgeous wild-west open world I would crave getting lost in and exploring for adventures. -Another one of my top 10 favorites on the 360 released on the same day as RDR, and I am talking about sci-fi third person thriller that is Alan Wake. I got completely absorbed into Alan’s quest to find his wife, and Remedy had a five star presentation to keep me on my seat. Some people criticized its style of combat, but it worked for me, and I believe it will go down as the only game where its deadliest weapon in its arsenal is a flare gun! Easily the spookiest T-rated game I have played. Do not skip out on the DLC episodes that put a nice bow on the story, and the XBLA sort-of time loop sequel, American Nightmare

-Two open world games that I shamefully have resting in my backlog to this day are GTAV and Bully. I picked up both on 360, and eventually picked up the Xbox One version of GTAV. You know what open world games I did play through though? The first two Just Cause titles. This satirical take on the James Bond-super agent was right up my alley, and Rico’s unique gadgetry like hookshots, parachutes, and wide variety of instant vehicle drops innovated in new ways to traverse its gigantic open world. The chaos and destruction those games both were capable of raised the bar with how creative one could be to lay waste to their surroundings. -I already commented above how the first Saints Row lived up to its potential from its E3 demonstration I saw a year before its release. The sequels surprisingly kept getting better and better. The first two games were essentially damn good GTA-clones, but with both games having more zany activities and side missions than in GTA. Saints Row the Third upped the outrageous quotient for its plot and side missions, and was groundbreaking for how far it pushed the boundaries with its whacked out style of storytelling.

-It did not feel right to include it with the racing games above, but another recommended open world title from this era is Driver: San Francisco. Ubisoft and Reflections nailed making an open world driving game without races being the focal point. The spirit-car-swapping feature against all odds is cleverly explained, and actually works! -Despite its popularity I could never get into the Assassin’s Creed games which debuted in this generation. A friend borrowed me the first game and at first I was into its setting and gameplay, but that first game was notoriously rough around the edges and I believe I got hung up on a glitch that prevented me from making progress roughly halfway through, and I have inadvertently been done with the series since. I picked up a few other entries over the years and have been wanting to at least try them, especially hearing how the latest ones keep getting better and better. One day! -I finished my first Resident Evil game on the 360 with Resident Evil 5. That game also featured online co-op, but I ventured fourth and played it solo and still had an impeccable time with it. It put more of an emphasis on action to the dismay of critics, but having not played too much of prior entries that did not bother me, and there were still plenty of intense thrills had throughout.

This is easily my favorite arcade stick ever, and the exquisite 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot made its tall asking price worth it! -This generation saw collector’s editions become out of control, with games packed with all kinds of statures, Master Chief helmets, night-vision cameras and other gadgets for well over $100. The only one of these I invested in was 2011’s Mortal Kombat. I originally was not too hyped for that game because I had my fill of the series at that point after the three good entries on PS2/Xbox, and felt the series had nothing else to offer. My brother however is a big MK-fan and told me how he ordered the $200 edition that came with premium arcade-replica fighter stick. I went to his place to drop something off one day when he wasn’t home, and he told me had the game and stick hooked up and to give it a try while I was there. Within minutes of starting the story mode and realizing how they were reimagining the original trilogy and how they switched up the gameplay for that generation, I became immediately entranced with it and could not think of any other way to play it without that stick and could not rush home fast enough to pluck down a $200 order. I made sure to get a lot of use out of that stick, and is was absolutely worth it!

-Sniper: Ghost Warrior is an unorthodox FPS focused entirely on sniping, and for being a low-budget game at the time I had way more fun than I should have with it. Also loved how it did a 180 from games like CoD, where instead of one sniping mission to mix up the campaign gameplay, here there is one run ‘n gun mission for a break from all that sniping throughout the campaign! I am glad this game had a ton of success and City Interactive has released a few sequels that I hope to emerge from my backlog of doom. -I already elucidated on my Borderland 2 experience earlier. The first Borderlands was a surprise out of nowhere hit that I loved my first few days with it and could not get enough plowing through the campaign online with friends. Unfortunately I went on vacation a few days after it released for a week, and when I got back, sure enough, most of my friends were many levels higher than me and already vanquished the game, so I soldiered on the final third of the game on my own. It was a challenge and a half to beat the final gi-normous tentacle-laden boss, but I managed to squeak by it after gradually picking away from it behind a boulder for nearly an hour!

-I had a unique experience with the Portal games. The first one I initially played for about 15 minutes, quickly became frustrated with the teleporting mechanics and had to step away from it. A couple years later, an old co-worker Rick was one of many by that point stating why those games were some of the best games out there. I told him my case, and he offered to come over and bestow his Portal wisdom upon me. Many thanks to Rick, who did not straight-up spoil and told me what to do to get past Portal’s many puzzle rooms, but instead kind of nudged me into gradually easing into a feel for the core mechanics of the game and it helped greatly! I would not have been able to get into it without him. He had a surprise for me when he left, and left me his copy of Portal 2 to borrow and told me not to give it back to him until I finished it. I knew he was moving in a couple months at that point, and that compelled me to put all my attention into the Portal games. I am glad I did because both games are spectacular, especially the sequel which had a noticeably bigger budget to go all out with a AAA experience and narrative that came together to be one of my favorite games of that generation. -Bulletstorm was another innovative FPS with its implementation of a whip, and combining it with melee strikes and gunplay for a refreshing take on FPSs. It kind of came and went though, and I rarely hear people talk about it anymore, except for briefly last year when it got a re-release on Xbox One/PS4, with an extra DLC to have Duke Nukem replace the original protagonist’s voiceovers for the game. I will also associate the original Bulletstorm release for having one of the worst box arts of all time. It is just a no-frills footprint. If you played Bulletstorm before, sure, it will kind of make sense since kicking is a core melee attack, but if you were a potential consumer browsing games and had no clue about Bulletstorm then I would not blame you for not giving that cover more than half a second’s worth of thought.

-The trilogy of BioShock titles were all high ranking in my top 10 game of the year lists for their appropriate years. The first game immersed me into its aquatic utopia gone haywire, and it stood out from standard FPSs of the time with its heavy emphasis on its narrative and hunting down those audio tapes to get every nook and cranny of the story. Its “twist” was something else for its time, and remains one of my favorites to this day. The sequel had a lot of polarization because it was from a different studio, but I felt they mixed it up by playing as a Big Daddy for the whole game and I could not get enough of freezing Splicers and then doing a drill rush attack that shattered them into pieces. BioShock Infinite was an astounding way to wrap the trilogy with its mesmerizing city-in-the-sky setting, and one of my favorite storylines from this gen. Its two storyline DLC episodes that released around a year later are worth checking out if you missed out, especially the second episode that changed the gameplay into more stealth-based by playing as Elizabeth. It felt like a whole new game, and developer Irrational absolutely perfected the change-up! -Spec Ops: The Line will not light the world on fire for its stick-to-fundamentals third person action gameplay, but what appears to start off as just another rah-rah military shooter, eventually morphs into a far deeper and complex plot than what I thought it was going to be. A book eventually came out thoroughly breaking down its exposition because it stormed up that much of a discussion around it.

-Shmup fans had several worthy entries to play on the 360. Raiden IV and Deathsmiles were landmark new entries for the genre in their time. On XBLA, there were re-releases of a pair of renowned shmups from Treasure: Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. A pair of original shooters also stood out among the XBLA crop with the free of charge student developed game, Aegis Wing and also the beloved Sine Mora that captured the pilot play-by-play stylings of Star Fox and successfully merging it into a shmup. There were also a fair amount of Japan-exclusive shmups for the 360, most notably from respected shooter developer, Cave. Many of them are region-free and can be played on American 360s, so please keep that in mind! -I already told some tales above about my favorite comic book games, and embedded below is a video where I and my friend Matt painstakingly dissect a ton of comic book games that hit the 360. Highlights include the shockingly good movie licensed games, X-Men Origins: Wolverine & Captain America. Not-so-good highlights include the movie licensed Watchmen, Fantastic Four and Hellraiser games. Matt also had a lot more hands on time with the acclaimed Batman: Arkham and Spider-Man games on 360, and I have always respected his expertise in the genre so please give his takes a listen below! -The Telltale adventure/choose-your-own path story-driven games originally started off on PC, but became more and more popular with their console releases. I was 100% into the first two seasons of their Walking Dead games like everyone else. Loved the first one more, but my favorite Telltale episodic game is still Back to the Future. The Wolf Among Us was a fascinating twist on a mature dystopian fairy tale world. I was not impressed by their take on Game of Thrones, but I surprisingly enjoyed all eight episodes of Minecraft. I originally got that for my nephew who was huge into Minecraft at the time to play with, but he was not all that into this genre and I found myself getting into it instead. Telltale was pumping out so many of these episodic series that I could not keep up, and still one day want to go back and play through both Batman seasons they released, and their Borderlands series too which I hear is their best work.

Back to the Future remains my favorite Telltale episodic game, but the event-like nature of the first season of Walking Dead was an undeniable zeitgeist while it transpired. -The LEGO co-op games we know today based off nearly every license imaginable became ubiquitous this gen. Only one I put serious time into and was able to finish was LEGO Marvel Superheroes. This one is special to me because it was the first game that I got my nephew Carter really into right when he was old enough to start grasping modern controller-based games. Had to help him out in quite a few parts, but we got threw it, and now several years later his gaming skills have greatly improved, and I will gladly give him a humble brag on his conquest of finishing the tough-as-nails Cuphead.

-I subscribed to the Official Xbox Magazine for several years, until around 2009-ish, and I was surprised that they stuck with including demo discs for another year or two after that since downloading demos quickly made the discs obsolete. OXM did attempt a few exclusive disc goodies though, and one I always came back to was their own take on an episodic game called OXM Universe that lasted for about a couple years. The disc itself awarded up to 1000 “OXM” points based on checking out all the demos and videos on the disc. Those points could be used in the space ship station game, OXM Universe, which was entirely menu-driven to build space station tech and explore a galaxy. It did lead up to a decent conclusion if you stuck with it all the way to the demo disc that came with issue 100 and upon completing all the final tasks you are rewarded with a lengthy video filled with OXM staff past and present thanking everyone. THAT IS MIGHTY COOL OF THEM TO GO TO ALL THAT WORK FOR A DEMO DISC EXTRA!!! -I think one thing we take for granted in today’s console space is the ridiculous amount of weekly sales and specials on digital games across all platforms. It was not always that way. In the early years of the 360 digital marketplace, for a couple years all that was available was one weekly game on sale and one piece of DLC on sale each week and that was it for a couple years. Luckily, Steam was catching fire with their acclaimed Fall and Winter sales with their monster savings, and that eventually rubbed off on 360 and PS3 and by the end of those system’s lifecycles both started offering a surplus of weekly deals and flash sales. -Digital game preservation is something that is brought up more and more lately, and one thing that periodically ruminates in my mind is how the 360 handles patches/updates. For the longest time, most games had limits of 4mb patches until the later years in the system’s life where they started to change into the larger file sizes we associate with them today. However, the 360 has a nasty habit of auto-purging a game’s update on the 360 after several different games get played on the 360. So if you were to revisit an older comfort food game many years down the line long after the 360 online servers got shut down, any updates for that game were likely auto-deleted and cannot be re-downloaded. This could be huge for a lot of games whose patches likely helped patch out game breaking bugs and other issues that can no longer be downloaded whenever the 360 servers go offline. Just food for thought.

-Final random item I want to bring up is something you saw in the header image to this special. Yes, that is a leaning gallery of 360 faceplates! Remember those? They were kind of a thing for the first couple years of the 360 when Microsoft was flexing the customization options of the 360 so anyone can snap on or off a variety of 360 faceplates to make their system stand out in their own way. I never bought a single faceplate, and only procured them if they were pre-order bonuses, or part of some promotional giveaway. The only highlight of this was how I got my Madden NFL 08 faceplate, and that was when I participated in my Gamestop’s yearly Madden tournament where no more than four people showed up for the few years I participated. The year I won, was when I got the Madden NFL 08 faceplate, which sure as hell beats my Madden NFL 07 plastic beverage cup from the previous tourney! It will forever remain in my drawer with my faceplates for Full Auto, Eternal Sonata and Deathsmiles. It is not like there is some uber-popular YouTuber who has a unique fandom for that particular version of Madden who could benefit from it in any certain way. To the drawer the faceplate remains! ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) OMG, this took me a whole month to gradually pick away at. I did not come close at all to releasing this in time for the 360’s 15th anniversary of its launch. I feel that I could have made this into a mini-eBook and charged six cents for this!!! As you can tell from my many memories I have shared thus far, the 360 is a platform I hold in high regard. I waited three years to upgrade to the Xbox One and PS4 in 2016, so from late 2005 until late 2016, the 360 was one of my primary go to consoles. Which is why I had so many memories, good and bad, to get out of my system. If you want to catch up on one of about a dozen other flashback specials I have crafted like this (which are thankfully significantly shorter) over the years check out the links below. In the meantime, I will close this off with two embedded videos of episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted circled around the 360. They are the final installments of our history of comic book games and RPG games series. Both episodes focus on the games that hit for those genres up until the point the episode was recorded for 360, PS3 and Wii. Many thanks once again if you have stuck with me for these near-18,000 words of garbled memories of mine, I sincerely appreciate it and I will see you all next time if I can somehow muster enough energy after this beast of an entry for yet another anniversary flashback special!

Listen to us break down almost all the RPGs that his this gen released through 2008

And here we dissect all the comic book games released on these platforms through April of 2011 My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PS2 20th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

If you made it this far and have yet to experience the THING that is Rogue Warrior’s end credits theme song, then I dare you to click it above and not have Mickey Rourke’s lyrical lashings remain forever stuck in your head!

Enjoy this montage of the many creative demises of the worst sidekick in the history of videogames! You’re Still Here!? Well Then, Let Me Tell You Another Story About the Shephard….Not That Shepard

It is not my tale to tell of “another story about the Shephard.” Hopefully, EA and BioWare will right that ship as they teased at the recent Game Awards a few weeks ago. I am talking about the other Shepard on Xbox 360, that being Lost: Via Domus’s Jack Shephard. Jack and most (not all) of the cast from the first season of Lost are in that game, but are not playable. Instead, a new offscreen Oceanic survivor is introduced as the playable character, Elliot. The game was an average licensed adventure-lite game affair (find out all about by click or pressing here for my original review), but at the time when it released Lost was in its fourth of six TV seasons, and I was eating up every bit of fan service that game offered. It did have a couple minor things never seen in the TV show like the Dharma magnet, and I loved its ending which got my mind reeling with it possibly tying into new fan theories from the latest episodes of the show at the time. One in particular being my favorite episode of the series, “The Constant.” Not a great game, but loved how it treated the license. That said, this hit a few years before Telltale hit big with its Walking Dead games, and I can only imagine if they were the ones to give their episodic adventure game treatment to Lost instead. Now that is another story about the Shepard I would be all-in for day one!

[castielslostwings]

All I Want For Christmas (Are Earplugs)

Ficlet: 3k of fluffy, explicit (at the end) Christmas-y DeanCas. 

The challenge: "Write something about Cas being stuck in the gas n sip where "All I Want For Christmas is You" plays on an endless loop for 3 months until he's nearly homicidal 😂 ...and then dean shows up and they bang in the storeroom while it's playing and the song is still awful and plays every 45 minutes but at least Cas has a positive memory to associate with it now!"

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

Or check out this excerpt (cut because Tumblr will eat my smut):

Corporate doesn’t even hold off until Thanksgiving is over to move onto Christmas, not anymore. In the age of instant gratification and having everything a person could possibly want only a finger swipe away, waiting until after Thanksgiving to break out the Christmas theming would render it all relatively pointless. Thus, the day after Halloween, that’s when it starts these days. Castiel doesn’t get it, not really, especially considering the Gas’n’Sip is, well, a gas station. No one is looking to their shelves for holiday sales and the opportunity to grab this season’s hottest items before they sell out. Not unless one considers snack cakes and travel-sized tubes of toothpaste to be the perfect holiday gifts. Not that Castiel’s judging.

It’s just that those realities make the auditory horror Castiel’s subjected to for nearly three months straight all the more baffling. Why he has to suffer so the Gas’n’Sip can claw uselessly at retail relevance is beyond his understanding. It’s not as if they’re succeeding. That little “Last Minute Gifts!” display doesn’t get any sort of play at all until the twenty-third, and even then people have to grimace their way through choosing between cheap shower product sets and crappy mugs with teddy bears holding chocolates stuffed inside them. By November first, Castiel’s already practicing the most tactful ways to interrupt those poor procrastinating saps and suggest simply buying lottery scratch-off tickets.

The thing is, the decorations aren’t so bad. A little tinsel here, a few red glittery signs there, couple of candy-filled endcaps with Santa theming, whatever. Even the little Christmas tree that sits next to the register and Castiel can’t stop knocking into with his elbow every time he goes to make change is more festive than frustrating. None of those things are particularly bothersome at all. In fact, Castiel barely even notices them (aside from diving to catch the tree and keep it from crashing to the ground every ten minutes). And the twinkling, color-changing string lights that Castiel spent the better part of a day stapling around the top of the store, along the windows, and over the register are actually fairly enjoyable to look at. So much so that he strung a set around the shelves of the storeroom for when he’s stuck back there organizing or doing inventory. Very cheery.

But the songs. The songs are the worst. Well, no, that’s not exactly it either. The holiday songs on the corporate-provided CD that loops endlessly on a forty-five minute spiral in the background definitely still play in Castiel’s head long after he’s dumped the coffee, turned out the lights, and locked the gas station doors. They infiltrate his quiet moments in the evening after he’s returned home, dance across his mind obnoxiously when he should be enjoying his free time away. It’s only the beginning of December and already Castiel’s starting to lose his mind. Last night, full of a spectacular dinner and tucked warm and snug in bed with Dean squirming underneath him, Castiel was screwed out of an actual orgasm by the painfully catchy crooning of Mariah Carey relentlessly belting out those high notes in his head.

Because really, at the end of the day, it’s not all the holiday songs, it’s that holiday song. The bane of retail workers everywhere, Castiel’s sure of it, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is single-handedly making his holiday season as un-merry as it could possibly get. A grating earworm that’s starting to feel more “nails on a chalkboard” than singing at all, Castiel’s forced to enjoy it on a repeat cycle every forty-two-point-five minutes of every single workday. And now, it’s messing with his off-time, his intimate evenings with Dean, those relax and reset moments that Castiel counts on to get him through the next day and the one after that. Retail is hard enough on a regular old Tuesday, never mind during the holiday season when everyone’s so desperate to squeeze in as much merriment as possible that they’re willing to steamroll right over people like Castiel to do it.

Most of the time, Castiel doesn’t mind being a faceless cog in the machine, hell, he enjoys it some days. There’s a quiet dignity in his job, in providing food and fuel for weary travelers just trying to get from Point A to Point B. Keeping the coffee pot full, the hot dogs warm, the cigarette cartons stacked. Perhaps other people might look down on him for being satisfied with that type of work, that type of life, but Castiel has no interest in what other people think of him. Well, anyone besides Dean, of course. And Dean loves him, is proud of him, and that’s more than enough to make his days, every single one of them, merry and bright.

So it would be Castiel’s preference that he subsists through the rest of the Christmas season without murdering the one man who makes his existence tolerable, and that fucking song is beginning to threaten that theoretically simple wish.

Today, for instance, it’s four in the afternoon and Castiel is working a double. Which means that since the Gas’n’Sip opened its doors at six AM, Mariah Carey’s syrupy-sweet caroling has set his teeth on edge going on fourteen times. Fourteen. Chinese water torture would be kinder. Two hours and two more rounds of the nightmare in G Major later, Castiel texts Nora, his manager, and begs her to let him change the music. “ Just for the today, just for the rest of my shift”, he pleads, even going so far as to say he’ll tune the radio to their local Christmas music station.

Nora sends back, “ LOL, Castiel you’re so funny”, and Castiel dies a little bit inside. Business is slow and the lackluster trickle of customers comes to a stop completely around ten PM, leaving an entire hour for Castiel to count down the minutes to the next time that awful song is going to play without any kind of distraction. When the bells tied to the doors finally jingle signaling a customer around ten forty-five, relief doesn’t even come close to what Castiel feels. That doubles when the face that appears across his countertop is Dean’s.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says warmly, and he’s not exaggerating when he thinks he may never have been happier to see the man. Although, it’s never unpleasant to see Dean.

“I'll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols,” Dean replies cheekily, leaning across the counter for a kiss which Castiel gladly provides. Not the menthols, though.

“Funny,” he murmurs and then sighs heavily. “Dean, I’m going to lose my mind if I have to put up with this—” Castiel jams his finger in the direction of the ceiling speaker above his head, “ Horror show for another three weeks.”

Dean looks up from where he’s fingering the different flavors of Bubble Yum and slides a pack across the smooth surface, reaching for his wallet to pay. Castiel waves him off, grabs a couple of singles from his own pocket and runs the transaction absently. “It can’t be that bad,” Dean says and Castiel’s fingers halt mid-button-push.

“My ears feel like they’re bleeding, Dean,” he protests with a glare. “Every forty-two-point-five minutes exactly it comes on and I’m in hell.” Clocking Dean’s badly-suppressed smirk, Castiel works his jaw and folds his arms across his chest. “Perhaps I’ll call Bobby and offer him a free month of advertising in the Gas’n’Sip window. All he’ll have to do is play a particular CD on repeat in the auto-repair bay from tomorrow until Christmas.” Satisfied with the way Dean’s face pales and the smirk disappears, Castiel feels absolutely no need to remind him that approving free advertising isn’t remotely in his job description. Honestly, if Dean can’t figure that out from the knowledge that he isn’t so much as allowed to change the store’s chosen music, that’s on him.

“Don’t mess with my classic rock, Cas,” Dean warns him. “Some shit is sacred, you know.” Annoyed again, Castiel raises his hands and gestures around him emphatically. “Alright, alright,” Dean relents. “I see your point, it sucks.” Sucking his lip distractedly in between his teeth, Dean glances around the store. “So, where are your security cameras at?”

Rolling his eyes, Castiel points to several different corners and just above his head behind the register. “There, there, there, and there. Don’t you think if I could have moved them, I would have? Changing their direction sends a notification straight to Nora’s phone.”

“That’s not what I—what about the storeroom? There any cameras there?”

Castiel narrows his eyes and regards Dean curiously. “No… There was one, but it broke weeks ago and Corporate hasn’t yet responded to Nora’s service request.” With a mild hum and another glance around that includes a sweep of the deserted parking lot outside, Dean wanders over to the doors and locks them. “Dean?” Castiel doesn’t protest, just watches as Dean flips the sign that says, “Back in 5 minutes!” Castiel rarely uses it himself, but every so often nature calls and the store has to be locked in the meantime. It’s interesting that Dean remembers that.

“C’mon,” is all Dean says on his pass back through the store, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm and tug him out from his little alcove and across the floor to the storeroom.

“Dean, what—”

“How long until that song plays again?” Dean asks as he pulls Castiel inside and shuts the door behind them.

Checking his watch, Castiel does some quick mental math as well as cocks his head to listen for whatever song is playing now. “It’s next,” he groans, but Dean just grins.

“Awesome timing,” he replies, grabbing Castiel’s waist and manhandling him around until his back is up against some stable-looking shelving. “We’re gonna play a game, alright?” Dean’s bright green eyes are sparkling and shining and Castiel definitely knows that face. He also knows he should stop him, should tell Dean no to whatever mischievous thing he’s plotting, but it is only minutes to closing time and hell, Castiel’s day has been pure, undiluted shit.

“What sort of game?” Castiel asks, unable to keep the note of amusement out of his voice as he watches Dean’s eyes dart down to his own lips. Without answering, Dean leans in, kisses Castiel’s bottom lip and then his top, pulls back just far enough to look down and slot their groins together in a way that won’t have anyone’s belts causing unwanted, painful havoc. Then he’s back, tongue poking at the seam of Castiel’s mouth, and despite everything, Castiel recognizes that this is Dean asking for permission. If he really doesn’t want to do this, in his store or at all, he need only close his mouth.

As much as he appreciates the asking, though, Castiel knew what he was getting into when he stepped inside the storeroom. Dean has a bit of an exhibitionist side, and this isn’t their first rodeo in a semi-public space. Though the likelihood of being walked in on is extremely low, there’s still a bit of a thrill Castiel gets over doing something naughty, and maybe he’s more into it than he lets on. The whole concept has him hardening up nicely and Dean’s grinding isn’t hurting either, but just as they’re setting a pretty nice pace, the first notes of The Song come on.

Growling into Dean’s mouth, Castiel reluctantly pushes him back. “I can’t,” he says, frustrated. “I don’t want to associate having sex with you with this demonic lullaby.”

Read the rest on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

[genderpunktheo]

this might be too personal so i completely understand if you don’t want to answer this fully or not answer at all, but i’ve recently been watching videos on ppl’s budgets etc but a lot of them are female american influencers and while it’s interesting and useful to see how they do, i don’t understand how $3000 is an averaged monthly budget. only if you’re comfortable sharing i was wondering what your monthly budget or monthly spending is like as a british student and someone out of that sphere?

Sure, I don’t mind sharing! 

So, as a student my tuition fees are covered by a government loan, I won’t bother including that cause it goes direct from the government to my uni and I never get to even see it. 

I also receive a maintenance loan from the government three times a year - each one is supposed to cover about three months (the last three months are over the summer, we don’t get one for that since we’re not at uni). 

My last payment for this was £1312 which sounds like it would be a lot but that basically covers my rent for the term - in fact, the last term it didn’t even do that, I paid my landlord £1400 which was October, November, December rent so I had to sort out the remainder from my own money. That includes water, electricity etc. (unless we overuse it but we never have so far). Rent is so low because I live in a student house with three other people. 

These maintenance loans are means-tested based on how much your family earns - I get the lowest possible amount because the assumption is that my family earns enough to send me money to make up for it. However, because of various reasons (too private to share), my family aren’t able to do that so I just make do with what I’ve got (at least it pays my rent!! I’m very grateful for that).

In order to pay rent over the summer, I always aim to save £400 for July over the course of the year and then I pay £400 for August and £400 for September by having a summer job. 

Last year I worked for half of July which paid me £556 at the end of August. I then worked full-time hours for the whole of August and got paid £1330 at the end of September for that. 

Once summer rent was paid that then left me with £686, a large chunk of which went on my new camera for YouTube and the remainder I used to help pay for mine and my boyfriend’s anniversary trip to London. The camera was technically for work I suppose but still, I felt incredibly privileged to be in a position where I was able to do that - for the two years before, I would never have been able to make a purchase like that so it was pretty awesome!

So that rather long (sorry) explanation tells you how I sort out rent. As for everything else: 

Most students I know pay for rent out of their loans and then pay for anything else with one of three things: 

They have a really high loan amount and can live entirely off of that 

Their families send them money 

Or (the most common) they have to get a part-time job while at uni

So I’m I guess sort of in the part-time job crowd? But I’m unusual in that rather than working retail or something, I do create content and fund myself as best I can through that. 

I make about £30 a month from Patreon which I am incredibly incredibly grateful for. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on how many new and deleted pledges happen that month. 

I also get money from sales of X MARKS THE SPOT which again, varies a great deal. Usually, it’s £70 to £120 a month. 

I do some freelance work here and there. The type I’ve been doing up until now was on sites like UpWork where you write something for a client on the site - usually CVs and things like that, or content for very small websites. I’m starting to get to the point now where I feel more confident pitching to more reputable sites and making a proper go of it but I haven’t got far with that yet. Freelance is the most variable thing I do. In good months I might get £200, in the worst months, I get nothing. 

If you’re wondering whether I get money from YouTube - the answer is no, lmao. I did recently get monetised but so far that has yielded between £3 and £9 a month. You need a total of £80 to get a payout, so I still very much make videos just because I care about it! 

So all of those things together amount to between £100 and £350 a month, after rent payments. Not very much at all - I could definitely have more if I got a more traditional part-time job but I choose to make do with less money because otherwise I wouldn’t have time to make this content and I do feel that what I do is important. 

Because the amount is so varied, I make a big effort to save money during good months so that I don’t run into trouble during the bad months. Sometimes this still falls through and that’s when you’ll see me ask for some help on here - like when some lovely people sorted out for me to get a new binder (thank you!)

What I’m very good at is budgeting food. In my first year of uni I could manage £10-£15 a week during the months when I made the least (I had even less then). Now I live with my boyfriend so we haven’t had to worry so much until he lost his job last month. We spend between £25-£50 a week on food for the two of us depending on how well we’re doing and if we’ve run out of longer-lasting things. 

I have a couple of extra bills per month £10 for Spotify, £4 for a NYT subscription and one I just started - £12 for a stock media site. 

Anything else either goes into savings, pays for new clothes, snacks, occasionally going out with friends or other miscellaneous things. 

I hope this is helpful/interesting! Sorry for rambling so much haha.

[amyscascadingtabs]

the missing pieces of my heart, they finally collide

The socks are the smallest thing he has ever seen.

Jake isn’t sure how exactly he ended up having a low-key freakout in the middle of the day at an H&M, but he figures there is a first for everything - public meltdowns over impending fatherhood included.

(In which Jake is scared of fatherhood and baby socks are really, really tiny.)

read on ao3

april

The socks are the smallest thing he has ever seen.

Jake isn’t sure how exactly he ended up having a low-key freakout in the middle of the day at an H&M, but he figures there is a first for everything - public meltdowns over impending fatherhood included.

He has been doing well with his fears since they found out about Amy being pregnant. He didn’t panic when she showed him the beginning of her pregnancy binder. He stayed calm at their first visit to the obstetrician. He did shed a tear when they got to hear a loud and strong heartbeat and see a tiny, white, moving blur that’s supposedly their baby on a screen for the first time, but in his defense, Amy cried more.

They're having a kid now, and he's ready; as ready as he feels he can be at this point. Come early December this year, he'll be saying farewell to full nights of sleep, double shifts at work and watching all the movies for adults and teens he can think of.

It’s a guarded excitement. For now, it’s this humongous secret they carry around, trying to explain away their absence at Shaw’s nights and why it looks like Amy’s always about five seconds from either throwing up or falling asleep, without revealing the truth just yet. At the same time, it’s the knowledge their lives are about to be forever changed, and it’s equal shares thrilling and petrifying.

They’ve known for three weeks, which is not a lot of time - Jake has eaten older lunches from the precinct’s fridge at least twice - but already he’s spent oceans of time thinking about it. It just so happens that when he’s not doing everything to take care of his exhausted, nauseous, and emotional wife, his thoughts circle back to the monochrome sonogram picture and the indescribable, undiluted love building inside him whenever he looks at it in his phone gallery.

He’s excited, but he’s never been more scared in his life. He’s worried about miscarriages and diseases and complications and how there’s such a thing as sudden infant death where a baby can straight-up die without any explanation. He’s scared of doing too much and not doing enough and he’s helplessly scared of becoming his own father, and so far the only person he can talk about it with is Amy. The problem is he doesn’t want to bother her with his asinine fears; he’s sure that reminding her of all the terrible things he’s learned can happen will do more harm than good, plus she’s exhausted all the time now and would likely fall asleep in the middle of the conversation. He finds it endearing how she’ll fight to keep her eyes open before falling asleep next to him on the couch, but she’s become pretty much worthless in any conversation longer than three minutes. Consequently, Jake’s keeping his fears to himself for now, taking deep breaths and hovering with his thumb over the number to the shrink he had a series of appointments with a year ago.

He takes it one day at a time. It’s what he tells Amy to do when she complains about feeling too sick and miserable to appreciate anything, so he figures he might as well follow his own advice. He handles things to the best of his ability, trudges his way through a few pages in his copy of The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide For Dads-To-Be when Amy falls asleep, and every Wednesday there is a new fruit or vegetable comparison available on the pregnancy app he’s downloaded. This week, their baby is the size of a raspberry, so naturally he bought two jars of them when he stopped by the fruit seller earlier in the day.

(“Are you going to do this for every week?” His wife had asked with a curious gleam to her eyes as he made her company while she ate a late, bland breakfast.

“Only for the fruits I actually like," he’d told her, and she'd laughed before accepting a few of the berries he held out to her.)

The original agenda for their Saturday was to run errands together, but Amy's had a long week already without enough time to rest. A pregnancy podcast he listened to yesterday told him that rest is crucial if you're pregnant, so Jake promptly instructed his wife to spend her day on the couch while he completed their to-do-list on his own. Her grateful smile when he handed her their best fluffy blanket and made her a cup of green lemon tea before leaving told him he made the right choice.

So far, he’s mailed a gift for Amy's great-aunt, left a carpet at the dry cleaner and picked up more of his wife’s favorite pink grapefruit shower gel. He’s also informed Amy of all this via Snapchat, using the most ridiculous filters he could find to put a smile on her lips and received equally hilarious pictures back. The last errand before food shopping is H&M; one of his best navy hoodies caught on fire at work last week, and Jake can’t risk being out of a hoodie - the world could collapse for less. He finds one that seems decent and is about to go pay for it when he catches sight of the neon sign from the corner of his eye. BABY, 0-12 MONTHS.

They’ve agreed not to start buying clothes for a few more weeks. Even window-shopping for them without Amy feels like cheating, yet it's as if a gravitational force is pulling him towards the newborn clothing section. Just to have a look, he defends it to himself as he enters it.

All the clothes are tiny.

All the clothes are overwhelmingly tiny, too much for him to take in even though he’s not sure what he expected. He walks around in a daze, eventually coming to a stop at a shelf with baby socks. Right in front of him hangs a grey-and-white two-pack with writing on them - the white pair says I ♥️ MUM, and the grey pair I ♥️ DAD.

That’s when Jake loses it.

Up until this point, he hasn’t cried. There was the single tear at their first ultrasound, the one he’s not counting in comparison to Amy’s flood of them, but aside from that? No crying. He’s held it together like the responsible dad and family man he’s going to have to become in about seven months, but he runs his finger over the soft cotton blend stuck to a piece of white cardboard, and a stubborn tear trails down his cheek. Then another, and another, bringing with them panicked breathing and a sensation of walls closing in on him.

He’s going to be a dad. He’s going to have partial responsibility for a miniature human at least up until the day they turn eighteen years old. He knows what a good dad is from watching Terry and Charles and even Holt, but he lacks all perception when it comes to the question of whether he knows how to be one.

There will be a whole new person in his world, demanding attention, love, and care. He’s going to make mistakes and have to hope what he’ll do right will be enough to outweigh them. He’s excited but he’s scared and he’s scared but he’s excited - the two keep conflicting, and he’s never certain which is stronger. He’s not sure it matters when he’s standing in a clothing store, unable to make himself stop panic-breathing and crying as he clutches the two-pack of unfathomably minuscule socks.

“Sir? Sir, I’m sorry, but are you okay?” A warm hand touches his shoulder through the leather jacket, and he spins around to find a tan-skinned, round-cheeked young woman with dark curls and an employee tag in a red lanyard around her neck. She’s giving him a worried look, and he blushes with instant embarrassment.

“Yeah, yeah.” He snivels, wiping a few tears on the sleeve of his jacket. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay," she assures him, though it sounds tentative. A wave of guilt crashes over him as he realizes how terrible a customer she must find him; no retail employee can want to spend their underpaid hours comforting crying strangers. “Has something happened?”

“They’re so small," Jake mumbles, and she raises an eyebrow, so he clarifies. “The socks.”

“They’re for babies.”

“I know.”

“So… they’re supposed to be small.”

“I know.”

“Then what’s the issue here?”

“I’m going to be a dad," he blurts out to her, realizing it's the first time he's said the words out loud. They feel foreign, like he's speaking from the perspective of another stellar undercover personality he just made up, but easier than he expected them to. “This November. My wife and I are having a baby.”

The employee smiles at him. “Aww! Congratulations. That’s amazing.”

“It is," he admits. “I’m really happy about it. But you know, it’s this huge responsibility. I suck at being responsible and I had a crappy dad.” Jake grimaces. “Like, seriously, the crappiest. Mayor of Craptown in the country of Crappy Dads.”

“You're scared you'll suck at it, too?” He nods, and she shakes her head, shrugging. “You probably won't. Lots of mediocre guys have kids that grow up perfectly fine.”

“I… thanks?”

“If you ask me," she continues, “the fact that you’re scared just means you want to do a good job. If you want to do a good job, I’m pretty sure that means you love your kid. Put those two together and you have a solid basis.”

Her comment makes Jake's mind flick back to the moment with Amy in the hospital lobby after his negotiation with Pam. He’d realized then how maybe fear could, in the end, be the key to guaranteeing he would do a good job. Trusting said realization is another thing entirely - but he wants to, and he tries to.

He clears his throat. “I do love my kid. I mean, I barely know them yet and I love them already. It doesn't even make sense.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

“Do you have kids, or…?”

She gives him an honest chortle before shaking her head again. “I have a cat, though.”

“Ah.”

“Are you going to buy those socks, by the way? Not to be a jerk, but I feel like you crying on them means you gotta buy them.”

“... yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy them.”

He leaves the store feeling equal parts humiliated and relieved, painfully aware he owes Amy an explanation for buying the first item of clothing for their baby without her, but somehow, he leaves it feeling better.

(He tells Amy about his breakdown when he gets home. The next day, he goes back to leave a handwritten thank-you-note for the friendly employee.)

october

Her clothes are the smallest thing he has ever seen.

With eight weeks left to the due date, Jake is getting used to the thought of what’s to come. The arrival of their daughter - they’re having a daughter, his intuition is better than Amy’s - is fast approaching, and if it wasn’t clear enough to him from the close to finished nursery in their apartment and the stroller on its way to them, Charles now has a daily countdown on his phone.

(“64 days today," had been his greeting yesterday, and Jake couldn’t even bring himself to be annoyed.)

He struggles to determine whether he feels ready, but he does feel prepared, which makes the worries easier to live with. Amy made them a Type-A-style preparation checklist the day she entered her twelfth week of pregnancy, and though Jake found it excessive at first, he knows they wouldn't have survived without it. Not only have they researched and purchased everything an infant could possibly need in terms of material things and watched four informative documentaries together, but he’s also read two and a half books about babies and parenthood and gone to a class in parenting. It turned out to be one of the weirdest experiences of his life, but at least it made him a self-proclaimed master in the art of holding a fake baby doll correctly.

His excitement is genuine now - no longer clouded beneath the veil of apprehension and nervousness it once was. It's impossible not to feel excited when every night, he'll curl up next to Amy on the couch and simply talk to their baby, drawing lazy patterns with his fingers on her bump until he's able to feel a foot or an arm, their kid kicking and pressing and doing somersaults at the sound of his voice. When he's unsure what to talk about, he’ll read Harry Potter or play Taylor Swift to his unborn daughter. Style, so far, appears to be her favorite.

The nursery has only a few last touches left to it before it’s fully ready. This week, they’re spending their Saturday dealing with one of them and sorting out their kid’s collection of clothes. It's turned out to be a project for a full day - first washing everything with hypoallergenic laundry detergent, then letting each item hang to dry, then folding, sorting and placing everything in the dresser. Jake’s been staring at newborn clothes for hours on end, and he still can't fathom how small they are.

He's seen them before, of course. He was there to buy most of them and has marveled over everything from the tiny hats to the Harry Potter-onesies to the red-and-black-checkered baby flannel Amy found, several times already. It doesn't seem to help; for each colorful item with animals, stripes or bright colors he folds and places in its correct pile, he's reminded his kid will be wearing these clothes. Once the initial sparks of excitement fade, the waves of fear he thought he was free of engulf him anew.

It's the fear he's felt each time he's been held at gunpoint, except he's no longer fearing for his own life but for his child’s. He fears something terrible will happen to them which he won't be able to stop and he fears he will be the cause of it. It's the fear that reappears at odd occasions, submerging him in nightmare scenarios of long-time undercover operations only he can execute. He fears death threats forcing him into witness protection. It's the fear where he imagines a five-year-old with Amy's nose and dark hair standing in front of him with crossed arms and downcast eyes asking where he's been for the last weeks, and then Amy's there as well asking the same thing. He fears having no better answer to give than I got too wrapped up wanting to solve a case again, I forgot to come home.

Though he’ll do everything in his power to be a good parent, there’s an inevitable risk he’ll fail. It shakes him and it haunts him and seems to paralyze him right then and there.

“Babe?” Amy’s voice, calm but suspecting, helps him snap out of it. He looks up from the mint-green onesie with smiling clouds he’s holding to find her watching him with worried advertence.  “You zoned out.”

“Sorry, Ames. You were saying?”

“Oh, just about the car seat.” She nods in the direction of a carton box near the door. “I was thinking we should install it tomorrow.”

“Car seat. Great. That’s cool," he mumbles in an attempt to fake normalcy and steer the conversation away from his looming meltdown. “Cool, cool, cool.”

“Jake.”

“I’m fine.”

Amy rolls her eyes at that, shuffling a few inches closer to him on the long-pile rug with what little gracefulness she can manage. “Clearly not. Come on, you can talk to me.”

“You don’t have to listen," he assures her, but she shakes her head.

“I already am. Wanna tell me what’s up?”

The words stagger on the tip of his tongue, faltering before he figures out how to express them.

“It's the same things. Same fears as before.”

“Do you need to talk about them?”

He does, to some extent, but she's heard his panicked thoughts before and helped him through them what feels like a million times. His eight months pregnant wife deserves better than listening to his preposterous fears when they're supposed to be folding clothes.

“I don't want to bother you," he excuses himself.

Amy glares at him in reaction. It’s the glare reserved for when one of her uniformed officers makes a detrimental mistake, or he tells her he thinks they might be ordering too much Polish food, wordlessly telling him he's made a mistake.

“I think I can handle it," she says. “Do you want to talk about them?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” She nods, putting a pair of newborn-size white pajamas with red hearts in the sleepwear pile and holding his left hand in hers. Their fingers intertwine, wedding rings next to one another. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

There’s guilt as he rambles to her about equally unlikely scenarios and the fears he was supposed to have let go of by now. He’d meant it when he said he felt ready a little over a year ago, and he loves and wants the child that gets the hiccups in the middle of her parents’ conversation so much, which he assures Amy of in about every other sentence. The fear doesn't take away from the love, but it makes it feel more inaccessible at times, harder to reach behind the dense fog of anxiety. Jake detests that feeling. He wants to love this child without the overpowering fear, wants to feel the excitement he’s gotten used to always, and most of all, he doesn’t want to have to doubt himself each and every second of each day.

Amy’s silent while she listens. She doesn’t utter a word until she’s sure he’s finished, catching his breath from the anxiety and fast-paced talking. Instead, she hugs him from the side, letting him rest his head on her shoulder while he slowly returns to a calmer peace of mind.

“I just don’t want you to think I’m not excited," he whispers once he can speak again.

“I see your face every time she kicks when you talk to her," she replies matter-of-factly, guiding his right hand to rest high up on her belly where the hiccups have calmed down only to be replaced with stubborn kicking. The corners of his mouth twitch into a grin, and he laughs at the timing. “No one could ever see that and think you’re not excited.”

“I know.” He sighs. “But I’m not doing anything right now, it’s all you. The moment she’s here, it’ll be different. What if I don’t know what to do?”

“You know what to do, you’re practically Santiago-level-prepared at this point.”

“What if I blank?”

“You won’t blank.”

“What if?”

“Jake.”

“I know, I know.” A metallic taste in his mouth makes him realize he’s bleeding, having bitten too hard on his lip. “You have total faith in me and all that.”

“You’re saying it like you think I don't mean it," she points out, eyes narrowed. “I do have total faith in you, because I know you and would never have agreed to have this baby with you if I didn't trust you could handle it.”

“I’m scared, though. I thought I wouldn’t be scared at this point, but it’s still there.”

“So am I. So is everyone who's ever been a parent.” There’s a small smile on Amy’s lips as she reaches for a pair of socks from the pile of them. “I think it’s part of it.”

“It’s the worst part," he argues, and she lets out a short laugh.

“Maybe it is. I guess we’ll just have to see if it’s worth it.” She hands him the socks, and he can’t help but beam as he recognizes them.

They’re light grey and impossibly tiny,  with I ♥️ DAD printed on them in capital letters. It’s the very first item of clothing he bought for his child, having been made to purchase them ensuing his breakdown in an H&M store five long months ago. He’d nearly forgotten about them, but he holds them in his hands now, wondering how on earth an item smaller than his palm could ever fit a living person.

“That’s true, you know," Amy tells him in a quiet voice. He looks up to find her eyes glistening, but she wipes the threatening tears away before they fall this time. “She’s going to love you so much. She already does.”

“How can you know?”

“For one, she goes absolutely nuts when you're talking.” Amy shakes her head, grinning fondly. “Even if you’re not physically there. Like last week, when you left that message about being on your way home. I listened to it on speaker and she started kicking me in the ribs. She's getting strong now, so it hurts.”

He laughs, blushing. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's super cute, and it totally gets my dumb, hormone-fuelled emotions every time.”

She leans slightly forward and he takes the hint, letting go of the disarmingly cute socks to lock lips with his wife. It's short and perhaps not the most passionate of kisses, quickly interrupted the moment Amy gets too out of breath, but it lasts long enough for him to enjoy the feel of her lips against his, the softness of her skin as he cups her face.

“I love you," he declares when they break apart. The socks are next to his knees on the violet carpet and he picks them up again, smiling to himself as he places them on top of Amy's bump. “Both of you.”

“Well, cheeseball, we both love you back. You're a lucky guy.”

“I am. I really, really am.”

(The fear refuses to disappear altogether, but it stays under control for the rest of the wait. By the time Amy’s contractions start five weeks later, Jake's all excitement and little anything else.)

november

His daughter is the smallest thing he has ever seen.

Person, he corrects himself. She's a person, a whole little individual with ten fingers and ten toes and a full head of dark hair, and she’s managed to utterly and completely steal his heart in the forty-three hours she’s spent out in the world.

Leah Rose Charlotte Santiago-Peralta is marginally smaller than the average newborn, thanks to her just over three weeks early arrival, but she’s perfectly healthy and strong. After two nights at the hospital, the new family is cleared to go home.

Jake has his first minor freakout post Leah’s birth when the doctor tells them. He’ll have to drive, which means there’s an atomic but existing risk they’ll crash. Once they go home, there will be no more friendly nurses to help, no more surprisingly excellent coffee machines in the communal kitchen, and no more red buttons next to the bed they can press if they panic. They’ll be on their own in their mission of keeping a helpless infant alive, and Jake’s not sure he’s ready.

He looks over at Amy to where she’s propped up in the hospital bed feeding their daughter and opens his mouth to communicate this, but he changes his mind once he sees them. With Amy’s gratified smile overpowering the bags under her eyes and with Leah’s content suckling noises, there’s no doubt whatsoever.

He’s ready. He’s always been ready for them.

Leah cries when they fasten her in the car seat. There’s a fleeting moment where he worries the drive will be a twenty-minute crying party, but she passes out the second the car starts moving and sleeps through her first car ride like it’s no big deal. She continues sleeping through her first ride up the building’s elevator, and snoozes through being carried over the doorstep into their apartment.

“Welcome home, Lee," he tells her as they enter, hospital bags in tow. “You too, Ames.”

“Thanks," Amy mumbles.“It feels nice.”

He nods, leaving their bags on the living room floor for later unpacking as he helps her unfasten Leah in the seat. “You feeling okay, babe?”

“I guess," she shrugs. “I’d kill for a proper shower, though.”

“So go take one.”

She hesitates, observing him closely as if she’s searching for something. “Are you sure? I can stay with you if you don’t want to be alone with her for too long, I know you think it’s scary - “

“Ames.” He places a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You can take a shower. You can take a long shower if you want to, because god knows you deserve it. Need it, even.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“Go take that shower," he repeats, kissing her forehead. “Lee and I will be okay.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Okay, then.” She kisses first Leah’s, then his cheek, and squeezes his hand one last time before heading towards their bathroom. “Have a good father-daughter bonding time. Kick it off with a diaper change, will you?”

“This isn't my favorite part," Jake informs his daughter as she starts waking up on the changing table, grunting when he has to take off the cozy, white overall they brought her home in. “I’m not sure it’s anyone’s. I’ll do it for you, though.”

He promised himself after seeing Amy go through twenty-six hours of torturous pain that he'd do all the changes he could for the first weeks. So far he's sticking to it; it’s not the most enjoyable of experiences, but it's simple and straightforward enough for him to feel like he's mastering it with some proficiency.

“So," he narrates while he navigates his mission. “This is going pretty well. We're doing good, Lee.”

She eyes him with skepticism, letting out a few whimpers before they’re done, but he keeps his calm and draws a breath of relief when she doesn’t start crying.

“See? We did it.” He holds her little hands, waving them like she’s the one doing it. “We’re just going to get you a new pair of pajamas and we’ll be all set.”

It’s the first time he’s dressing her without Amy’s input. Seeing how he technically has the freedom to put their daughter in a Die Hard-onesie and varicolored leggings, Jake considers it a mature use of his power when he opts for white pajamas with a pink rose print and a regular pair of grey socks.

He figures they’re a regular pair, at least. He realizes otherwise when he unrolls them to find the familiar I ♥️ DAD-print on them. They bring a smile to his lips as he thinks back to when he bought them, back when no one knew their secret yet, and he was scared out of his mind he wouldn’t be able to do the exact thing he’s doing now.

He puts the socks on Leah’s feet, shaking his head at how the itty-bitty clothing items are still almost too large for her. He has to roll the socks up so they’ll stay on, but they work, and the result is possibly the most endearing thing he’s seen. He snaps a few shots with his phone - it’s lucky he upgraded its storage, because he’s already taken enough photos to fill a museum of baby pictures - and then kisses Leah’s forehead, lifting her so she’s held against his chest as he carries her out to the living room and sinks down on the couch.

Jake must have been on this couch nearly a thousand times. From pre-relationship Thanksgiving dinners to early dates to countless movie nights on this particular piece of furniture, a substantial part of all the hours Jake's ever spent at home with Amy has been focused to the off-white seats. He's had makeout sessions, sleepless nights and lengthy discussions on it, but it's the first time he hangs out with his daughter there.

He must say she seems pretty chill about everything new so far. She lays against his legs without complaint, and he watches her as she blinks and yawns, waving and kicking her limbs with intermittent, jerky movements.

“Cool to have this much space, huh? Must've been pretty cramped in your first living quarters," he comments on her stretches. “I can't believe we have you here already. I mean, I figured you'd be early because of those Santiago genes, but your mom convinced me not to get my hopes up.”

“I kind of knew, though," he adds, holding her tiny feet through the socks. “I had a feeling. This is when you say yeah, dad, you were totally right, you're the smartest.”

Leah makes little bubbling noises with her lips in response. Jake decides to interpret them as an agreement.

The shower stops running in the background. He figures this means Amy should be back soon, but for now he has some remaining alone time to enjoy with his daughter. He's in the exact situation he was scared for his life to even think about six months ago, the only one in charge if Leah starts wailing uncontrollably or stops breathing or some other nightmare scenario, but for some reason, he's not panicking.

He's calm. Somehow, he thinks she's the secret.

“I'm still a bit nervous, you know," he tells her while she keeps up her squirming. Every now and then she squints at him like she’s trying to make out the details of his face, looking adorably skeptical. “I know what it’s like to have a crappy parent, and I’m scared of becoming one. I probably will be for a long time, but… I’m starting to think it’s going to be okay.”

He has to take a break before he keeps talking, taking a deep breath to compose himself.

“I’m going to try my best, always. Every single day. I’ll probably fail a whole bunch, but I’m always going to try. For you.”

Leah accidentally punches herself in the face with one of her fists as he says the last words, making herself gasp in confusion and Jake laugh.

“I promise," he adds with a careful grip of her tiny hands, nudging at one fist with his pinkie until her fingers close around it. “I’m not going to leave you, ever.”

It’s a dicey promise to make for someone with his profession. Too many times in his career, he’s had to pack his things and leave everything behind for reasons far beyond his control, and he’s known for getting so sucked into a case he’ll forget to eat and sleep and go home for days on end. Neither of these factors are compatible with having and raising children, and while he can’t really control whether any mafia bosses will force him to go into hiding soon, Jake knows he’s picked up his last double shift for a long, long while. He has almost all of the next month off to learn how to be a family with his wife and daughter, and even after he returns to work, the shifts will be fewer and somewhat shorter.

Four years ago it would’ve been agony. Now, he couldn’t be more excited.

He’s going to watch his daughter grow up and become the coolest little person in the Universe, and he gets to do it all with the love of his life. It’s a nonpareil joy, and he wants to describe it all in words to Leah, but he’s sleep-deprived and overtired and ever-so-slightly worried it’d be the factor to finally bring him to tears, so he starts humming Hedwig’s Theme to the newborn instead.

“Oh, man.” He notices Amy’s presence first when he hears her sniffle and sees her shake her head as she sits down next to them. Her hair is blow-dried and she’s changed into grey pajama pants and a tank-top, completing the outfit with a blue hoodie identical to his own. He suspects both the pants and hoodie are originally his, but when it comes to stopping her from stealing his clothes, he lost the battle a long time ago.“I was so proud of myself for not having cried yet today, and then you go ruin it.”

“I mean," he grins, giving her an amused look. “Is making you cry really that much of an achievement right now?”

“Don’t try me," she warns him and dabs at her eyes with the sleeves of her hoodie. “You wouldn’t last an hour with these hormones. Or any other part of it.”

“Fair judgment.”

“Yeah.” Leah’s begun to whimper again, puckering her lips at the sound of Amy’s voice. “You want to give her over? I think she's hungry.”

“Do you magically sense that or something?” He transfers his daughter over to his wife, gently as if she’d been made of crystal glass.

“My boobs feel like stone, does that count?”

“Ah.”

“Trust me, they're not the worst thing.” Jake grimaces, and Amy laughs at his reaction while she adjusts herself, a couple of pillows and Leah to a comfortable position. “Giving birth is a nightmare.”

“Sorry you had to," he says, scooching closer so he reaches to put his arm around her shoulders. “You were incredible, if it's any consolation.”

“Thank you.” She whispers the words without looking at him. Her gaze is locked on Leah, pure admiration lighting up her face while she watches the newborn eat. “I see you chose her socks.”

“She looks cute, right? I think they suit her.”

“She's wearing the mom-ones tomorrow," Amy states. “And she’s always cute, but yes. They suit her.”

As intense of an effort as it is to divert his attention from the newborn, Jake’s growling stomach eventually reminds him they haven’t eaten since lunch. Pizza seems as good a celebration as any after three days of hospital food, he decides, and manages to finish their order and end the call right when Leah finishes eating.

“I can take her," he offers, and Amy gently transfers the girl back, helping him hold her so that her chin rests on his shoulder.

“You look like such a dad.” Amy laughs. “It’s a good look on you.”

“I am a dad," he corrects her, and she smiles wide.

“You are. How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know," he confesses. “Happy and nervous. She’s the greatest thing in the world, clearly, and I have no idea if I’ll be good enough at taking care of her, but…” He takes a deep breath. “I love her, and I hope so.”

“I know you will be. I think Lee does, too.”

As if to either confirm or deny her mother’s suggestion, Leah chooses that very moment to let out a loud burp and spit up all down the back of his hoodie.

“Burp cloth, Ames, you forgot the burp cloth," he mutters as his wife wheezes with laughter.

He doesn’t bother changing his hoodie. It would take getting up and disturbing the milk-drunk baby who falls asleep on his chest minutes later, curled up like a koala bear with her mouth open, and he can’t make himself risk waking her up.

She’s a warm, comfortable weight against his ribs, in perfect height for him to kiss the top of her head if he looks down. He’s never seen anyone look quite so peaceful.

Amy leans her head on his spit-up free shoulder, snuggling into his side and holding one of their daughter’s fists in her hand, and Jake never knew his heart could grow to the size it’s doing.

He figures it’s for the best. If he’s going to spend the rest of his life loving the two people currently falling asleep on him with everything he has, his heart will have to perform some serious expansion.

(It does.)

[amygeeunit]

The Quarantine Chronicles: These Last Five Years & What I Thought I Wanted

There’s nothing like being alone in your own thoughts at 1:00am in the midst of a global pandemic... Instead of aimlessly scrolling through my Instagram timeline or checking my bank account with all the money I have saved from not going out, I’ve had time to think about what the 28 year old, almost 29 year old Amy needs versus wants...

I think in high school or at some point in our lives we have all fallen victim to “By the time I’m age this, I want to have x, y and z.” At 16, I thought at 25 I would have my life 85% figured out. Pretty funny concept now that you think about it, right? I actually laugh at how naive or how troublesome it is to have these unrealistic goals and tag an age onto them... I pictured myself living in a nice apartment, potentially dating someone, or if not just focusing on my career. Fast forward to 2020, besides this year being a complete clusterf*ck, I’ve had extra time to sit down and think of these last five years in a nutshell.

All I remember from 2015 was going to Vegas, still working in retail, having foot surgery and getting into CSUF. The rest is foggy because it’s been five years. Huh? I thought 2015 was last year...

2016 seemed to be one of my better years. I started at CSUF, went to Iceland, interned at Rastaclat, ended up getting a job at Rastaclat, entered into my first serious relationship, moved back out to Orange County and felt like at 24 - 25 I was killing the game (or so I thought.)

2017 wasn’t too bad. I graduated from CSUF in the spring, went to Oahu, continued on in my relationship and spent a majority of my time focusing on my career.

2018 is when life started to get real interesting. My pup, Ben G, passed away while I was out in Illinois visiting my cousin (long story to save for another post,) I started a new job at Pretty Great LLC, traveled to escape 99% of the time, started taking birth control that made me bloated, emotional and feel weird and moved back to Moreno Valley. During this time, my relationship started to crumble due to lack of communication, the wave of grief I was experiencing and everything in else in between that couples go through. I started going to therapy in July and in August, I had my first panic attack. In September, I decided I needed to get as far away from my life as possible. I booked a flight to Japan to visit Sarah since she was stationed out in Yokosuka. Yokosuka has a naval base and is about an hour from Tokyo. I talked to my boss at work a few weeks prior and asked for a week and a half off. Luckily, he was one of the most understanding and best people I have ever worked for in my career so far. Most bosses would have told you to “Get over it” or “Figure it out.” Rob Myers was a saving grace for me that year for letting me have my time off to not think about life. 

While I was in Japan, I remember the time change messing me up quite a bit. I think it took around three days for me to finally be okay without passing out in the middle of the day. In short, this trip changed me. It changed how I traveled, it changed how I process emotions, it changed my outlook on life, it changed many things for me. I came back from this trip and my relationship was virtually over. I didn’t know how to feel, I didn’t know what to do, it just sort of fizzled like a candle using its last part of the wick. October came and I spent my birthday in Big Bear with my parents. I remember crying in the cabin when we got back from Octoberfest. I don’t think it really hit me that I was single, with no friends around and that 27 was already a shit show on day 1. I visited my best guy friend and his sisters in Arizona at the end of October to make up for the previous weekend. I had no idea that November could get any worse for me, but it did. It was two days before Thanksgiving, November 20th, 2018. 

I was driving from Moreno Valley to Santa Ana one morning on my way to work. I took my normal route, left at my normal time, a pretty standard commute. About 2 miles from work, I was at a stop light. At this stop light I waited for about 30 seconds while the other cars went. The light turned green. As I was pressing my gas to accelerate, out of nowhere, a semi truck plows its way through the intersection and t-bones my driver’s side. I remember screaming. I remember it being like a scene from a Final Destination movie where the victim doesn’t know that death or uncertainty is upon them. In that moment, I remember thinking “This is it.” My reflexes shifted real quick and that was it. I remember pulling off to the side of the road leading up to the 5 freeway. I felt like my soul left my body for seconds then came back. I was shaking. I called my dad first and let him know what had happened. I called my mom and then the insurance company. I exchanged words and information with the driver. I remember being upset, but I couldn’t yell or get any words out. I just went by the protocol of what to do when you get involved with an accident. Sure, I have been rear ended before, but never t-boned and let alone by a damn semi truck. This accident passed, I was awarded some half ass money and in the midst of it all, I remember being so mentally drained that I cried out for help on Instagram Stories... I remember going through survivors guilt. I remember saying to myself “Why am I still here? There are people that die in accidents or by drunk/distracted drivers all the time... Why do I still have to live this life of pain and suffering?” In my mind and in 2018, I never knew how to take pain and suffering very well. I didn’t know it would shape me for what these next couple years would throw at me. 

December came and went. It was like a sigh of relief for me to know that the vicious cycle of the 2018 rollercoaster was coming to an end. At this point, I kind of gave zero f*cks as to what happened in life. A few days before Christmas, I visited my Grandma in Illinois and my grandparents’ grave site. I think my trip to Illinois was some type of closure to my 2018 year. I hadn’t been back to Illinois since my Grandma’s funeral in 2011. It was a cold and frigid trip. It was the first trip I had ever driven by myself. The only cool thing was running into Ja Rule at the Palm Springs Airport (before the Fyre Festival documentary came out, otherwise I would have yelled at him.) He was on my flight to Chicago. Jeffrey Atkins, you sneaky motherfucker, you! How I wish I would have known about you tricking people with that one guy... I ordered a “Survived 2018″ crewneck from this small online business store, went to Disneyland with my mom on Christmas and threw caution to the wind.

2019 was interesting, but not as heavy as 2018. I called 2019 the year where I  “rushed to get back to normalcy.” I realized the commute to PG was getting tiring pretty fast, I accepted being single and got back into dance. Dance saved my life, point blank. Whether it was subbing, teaching, training or being on a team, it brought back a sense of joy and also established new friendships along the way. I started a job at a marketing agency in March 2019 that was a short commute and about 6 months in, I realized this was something I wasn’t a fan of. It took me a while to realize that that was okay to feel uneasy about the jobs I once knew.

If I had to rate 2019 on a point scale, I would say it was a 6/10. I felt like the last few months I was suppose to be back to normal and healed from a lot of things I kept to myself. Dating people was weird because 1. I felt behind. What I mean by that was I thought by age 27 - 28, I would have met my “person,” by now. As I seen other friends get proposed to, plan their weddings and start their families, I started to feel like the odd woman out. Was there something wrong with me? Am I that complicated or hard to love? Are my values not aligning with people I like? Am I going to be that person that gets married at 40 or even at all? Will I always be the friend and not the potential girlfriend or wife? Who knows? 2. The reciprocity factor of it all and setting boundaries. 3. I don’t think I ever got over everything that had happened in my first relationship because we never cheated on each other, our trust when out without each other was never questioned and there was a best friend component in it. I was filled with regret, frustration and memories I forced myself to black out even after going to therapy and journaling it. Fact: I dread my birthday each year. I don’t like my birthday in general, but October I have mixed emotions about. The anniversary of my Grandma’s death is on 10/13, my Grandpa’s birthday is 10/14 and my birthday is 10/20. I spent the last couple months of 2019 drinking more than usual, especially after my friend, Beka, passed away suddenly in November. December came and went. I had my first trip to Puerto Vallarta and enjoyed some much needed beach time. I had this “idea” that I would move to the east coast with Sarah because I wanted to start over. That idea went out the window. I ended 2019 with buying a new car after having paid off my Kia Forte back in 2016.

It’s now 2020 and boy... It has been a shit show for the world I feel like. I can’t even begin to describe what a rollercoaster of emotions everyone is feeling right now, but I do have one word for me personally: gratitude. I started off the year so uneasy with finding out my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer again for a second time. I remember going into February with no expectations, yet I had expectations (weird right?) Without going into too much detail I felt like that quote by DJ Khaled saying “Congratulations, you played ya self!” I was constantly frantic about work, friendships, relationships, my future, dance, my parents, basically everything. I was a walking, talking ball of stress. March came around and I downloaded Bumble (yup, I went there) and matched with a really nice guy who actually knew two of my nurse friends. Then, COVID-19 was in full effect in the states and suddenly the idea of dating or wanting any kind of human interaction made me cringe... I had to politely excuse myself and move on. I checked in on friends and they checked in on me. 

I’ve spent more time with my parents, more time on myself and then it finally clicked: I am where I need to be in this exact moment. I don’t want to date anyone in quarantine, I don’t want to understand or have expectations for another human like I’ve been searching for these last 6 months. What the fuck, Amy? You are everything you need right now and it is not in another person. I’ve danced in quarantine, I’ve cried in quarantine, I’ve laughed in quarantine, I’ve journaled in quarantine, I’ve found myself again in quarantine. As easy as it sounds for most people, the concept is quite large. Since I was 18 years old, I have ALWAYS wanted to live by myself and try it out. It’s ten years later and in the midst of this uncertain time period, I know that 2020 is the year that I finally accomplish this. So, in short, 2021 I’ll be back on the “dating” field or whatever, but 2020 is my year to literally work. on. myself. This includes: my relationship with myself, my relationship with my friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, etc., my health regiment, my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health, I think you get the point, right? In a time where some of us feel alone, I feel secure. My days vary and maybe I’ll post something tomorrow where I say “That post was trash, quarantine was terrible,” and while it is on most days, I’m so grateful to connect more deeply with people on a spiritual and conversational level. I was tired of hiding behind my day-to-day busy routine when I finally came to terms with myself.

We are all in this together. We are all processing what we need and want. I use this blog as a way to express and share what so many people keep to themselves. Maybe you can relate, maybe you think I’m too out there. Either way, to each their own. 

Until next time.

[firespirited]

setting myself tasks doesn’t seem to work to well for me, better to have a txt file of projects to do as and when and store doll heads with their parts/hair for whenever the occasion does come up.

Yesterday I listed the Kassandra twins & Lelia on ebay ww, Catty and Elissabat on ebay france and *returned to me & no reply from buyer for two months* Asian Ken. I’d set myself an entirely different set of jobs lol.

Today I was going to add extra plugs to Janay ink Blue (done) and finish PJ in pink except my eyes won’t focus anymore so that’s out and also really frustrating.

I also need to stop shopping as I keep finding wishlist dolls which is great but also not because as soon as I sell something and make space I find another oooh shiny thing.

Incoming for end of november & december (links provided where available)

another Janay head,

body for Bumblebee

Catwalk kitty grey with blue and white hair (to go on a mix and match ghoulia/lagoona body with who knows what arms),

a slime surprise mixed blues hair with tan skin head (undecided on bodies yet - will need to see her proportions & tone in person) those magical girl eyes were my breaking point but it’s a big gamble as there’s no feedback yet.

dark Kenya body for Janay D (the one with the pale peach lips who’s going to get a black and green bob someday)

Clawvenus that needs some fixing up

Gooliope

replacement hemostats, replacement winter insoles,...

!! Replacement phone !! because my sister is (very) stubbornly trying to juggle her gone out of business chinese phone that gets wifi but takes complex maneuvers to recharge and won’t accept her sim card and her 2014 LG L Bello that *can* recieve texts but has outdated software that doesn’t have an update - I rooted it and searched for ages. I get the love for that Bello, I used it when my meizu broke and went off for repair never to be returned because the company pulled out of france. It feels lovely in your hands, is just the right size and has great software but there aren’t enough users for anyone to code an upgrade kit.

I didn’t get any choice about my current phone, I got a “voucher” after chasing Meizu: their customer service website vanished so I found them on their international facebook and made a public fuss on mum’s account, then harranged customer service of the place that sold me the phone to talk to Meizu and validate “the voucher” (a fake code that they had to make real once the retailer got involved, yup!)... but it could only be redeemed in person within three months which meant waiting until upstairs neighbour went on a shopping trip three hours away. I had a wishlist of any of 5 phone models printed out for her but she arrived just as the shop was closing early for restocking and they handed her a random Samsung J3 straight out of the back of the restock lorry and that was as good as customer service as as a disabled person who can’t take a three hour taxi can hope for. Life is wild like that.

I like my phone, it works, but I don’t *love* my phone either: it’s not great at photos, hard to use one handed, speaker is covered by your hand and the inbuilt apps are annoying and I’ve got most of their junk disabled for my preferred programs. Ideally i’d root it and see if I can’t tinker a little but I’m too dependant on the thing to risk it. So I got a second hand $65 inc p&p LG G5 phone that’s for me if I like it and for my sis if I end up preferring my current one. Either way she gets no choice about having an actually usable phone while she takes the time to choose one she can bond with (she gets very very picky about her electronics and keeps most of them, from our first still working nokia to her no longer working discman). It was impulsive but well researched and if there’s one thing worth getting impulsive about, it’s your loved ones.

This is probably riddled with typos even though i’ve been over it a few times, it’s all grey fuzz half the time LOL. I’m off for a bath since I can’t do anything detailed.

[libraford]

Alright. Self-reflection time. 

So I’ve never really liked Christmas? Church makes me sweaty and I like giving gifts more than getting them so I feel super awkward about my family giving me big stuff while I’m giving them home-made jam. Like I dig it as a one-day holiday where we sit around and chill, but not a month-long event. 

And after being in retail, hospitality, and customer service for about ten years now, the amount of stress that goes into this holiday is the thing that makes me hate it. The gear-up for the holiday season starts in August and hits us like a ton of bricks in late November, followed by an increasing sense of urgency and then a sudden drop-off at the end of December when it’s just... over. 

Now that I’m working for a place that has this pattern to a lesser degree (season begins Dec 1 and somewhat ends the Friday before Christmas) I don’t have a lot of that same urgency. I can go enjoy things  without worrying about compounded stress from being a customer’s personal punching bag day in and day out. And that’s stress-relieving. 

But... 

... I can’t really enjoy it. 

I’ve opted out of the holiday rush by keeping it simple. But Christmas stress is inescapable whether you celebrate it or not. I still have to plan my days off around traffic, around people, around avoiding congested areas. I still have anxiety attacks a lot this time of year because my body’s just gotten into this pattern of doing it. Plus, found out that certain Christmas songs trigger fight or flight for me... which really, really sucks. 

Like I’d love to go downtown and look at the lights, but am I going to be fighting thousands of other people out there doing the same thing but with much more urgency? Is something going to be happening where I’m going to be stuck in traffic for unplanned hours? How many emotionally manipulative TV and radio ads am I going to have to suffer through if I decide to just stay home? 

It is really kind of fucked up how much the country revolves around ONE (and I do mean ONE) holiday for more than one month. 

I’d suggest that maybe next year we all decide to collectively chill the fuck out for the month of December, but then there would be articles about how Milennials are killing Christmas (and by extension the economy and also promoting death.) 

[eleanor-writes-stuff]

a language that i never knew existed before - Day 12

For @dawninthemtn, who asked for a modern AU in which “Ben Solo keeps trying to cancel his Book-A-Month subscription service, but just can't seem to say no to the friendly customer service agent”.

This was so much fun to write, especially since it allowed me to sneak some epistolary storytelling into this collection. Thanks for the prompt, and I hope you enjoy the ficlet!

Reylo fam! ‘Tis the season for giving, so come get your very own holiday ficlet right here!

25 Days of Reylo Also available on AO3

JUNE

To: custservice@resistancebooks.com From: ben_solo@gmail.com Subject: Cancellation/refund

My friend used my credit card to sign me up for a one-year YA subscription as a prank. I didn’t realize until the first box arrived today. I’d like to cancel the subscription and just pay for the box I’ve already received, if that’s okay.

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: Re: Cancellation/refund

Hi, Ben! I’m so sorry to hear about your experience with our service.

Our refund policy allows you to change your mind anytime and get a full refund for boxes not yet received. But might I suggest changing boxes instead? At $29.99 per month for a box of three books with a combined retail value of up to $59.99, we’re the most affordable book service in the country! If YA isn’t your thing, we offer eleven other standard boxes, along with an option for customization.

If you’d like to give us a second chance, please take this quick quiz to determine the best box for you. The results will automatically be emailed to me upon completion, and I’d be happy to guide you through the selection process.

Best regards, Rey Niima, Customer service representative, Resistance Books.

JULY

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: First box!

Hi, Ben!

Your first sci-fi/fantasy box just shipped out today, and should reach you within three working days. I hope you enjoy the selection, and thank you again for choosing to stick with us!

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Best regards, Rey Niima, Customer service representative, Resistance Books.

To: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com From: ben_solo@gmail.com Subject: Re: First box!

Hi, Rey.

Three working days, just like you said. Everything looks okay, thanks for your help.

Regards, Ben.

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: Re: Re: First box!

Hi, Ben!

I’m glad to hear the box arrived on time! If you don’t mind, please keep me informed on how you like the selection. I’ve got a few other suggestions for you based on your quiz results, and I’d be happy to switch your subscription if you’re not absolutely pleased with the sci-fi/fantasy box.

Best regards, Rey Niima, Customer service representative, Resistance Books.

To: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com From: ben_solo@gmail.com Subject: Re: Re: Re: First box!

Hey, Rey.

I think that might be for the best. Sci-fi just isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe I’ve changed; it’s been a while since I last read anything in that genre.

Of course, if that’s too much trouble you can always just go ahead and process my refund. I’d hate to take up more of your time.

Regards, Ben.

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: First box!

Hi, Ben!

It’s no trouble at all! I first joined Resistance back when it was an actual store, and I’ve always loved matching readers up with the right book. As long as you’re okay with it, I’d like to keep going until we find you the right match.

My next suggestion for you based on your quiz results is one of our non-fiction boxes, the history/anthropology combo. Please let me know by the 23rd of this month if you’re interested in that so that I can arrange for the switch and shipping.

Best regards, Rey Niima, Customer service representative, Resistance Books.

AUGUST

To: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com From: ben_solo@gmail.com Subject: New box

Hi, Rey. The box just arrived today, and the selection is perfect.

So perfect that I already pre-ordered all three of them earlier this year.

I think it’s pretty obvious that this service and I just aren’t meant to be, as great as it is. I really do appreciate all of your help, especially you taking the time to discuss books with me off the clock, but it’s probably time to call it.

Unless you’ve got a third suggestion?

Sincerely, Ben.

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: r_niima.custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: Re: New box

What can I say? I’m good at my job – too good, in this case.

I’ve got at least three more suggestions for you, if you’d like to keep going. And your box should have come with a return ticket, if you’d like to send it back; I don’t see the point in you keeping the duplicates, unless you have a friend with the same unique taste in books? I’d be happy to process the return and credit it to your account. Same goes for your first two boxes; I’m sorry I forgot to mention it earlier.

I’ve actually really missed talking about books with someone, so really, thank you for humoring me. If you ever feel like debating the SWEU again, feel free to reach me at 555-3494. I like that things can get heated when we talk about those books, but it’s probably for the best if I don’t argue with a customer on my work email.

Best regards, Rey Niima, Customer service representative, Resistance Books.

SEPTEMBER

Rey: So technically we’re not supposed to tell anyone about this yet But Wait You still collect comics, right?

Ben: You make me sound like a teenage boy. I collect graphic novels, yes. Why?

Rey: You say potayto, I say potahto ANYWAY I know you’re not 100% happy with the customized box

Ben: They’re your picks for me, of course I’m happy with them.

Rey: Ben

Ben: I am! I’m just not happy with the fact that I barely get any time to read. And when I do get an hour to myself, my brain is too tired for anything intellectual.

Rey: You cutthroat lawyers and your ridiculous endless work Back to my point

Ben: You have one?

Rey: Very funny, Solo Okay so next month we’re announcing a special new box Limited time only And we’re only opening it up to 200 subscribers

Ben: Sounds like a big deal. What do we get, hand-bound manuscripts?

Rey: Even better Two trades and a hardcover, no extra charge

Ben: You’re kidding me.

Rey: Nope Completely serious You in?

Ben: Hey, Rey? No offence but that’s the stupidest question you’ve ever asked me.

Rey: Whatever, nerd I’ll sign you up

Ben: You’re my favorite person right now, thank you.

Rey: Careful, Solo Keep saying nice shit and I might actually start to like you

Ben: And we wouldn’t want that, of course.

Rey: Of course

OCTOBER

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: custservice@resistancebooks.com Subject: Congratulations!

Hi there, Ben!

Your assigned customer service representative recently entered you for a chance to win one of our 200 limited-time-only comic box subscriptions.

We’re very pleased to let you know that you made the cut! As of next month, you’ll start receiving two trade paperbacks and a hardcover volume each month for the remaining duration of your subscription. We also noticed that you have seven months left with us, and as a sign of our appreciation we’d like to offer you the chance to add on another five months at the standard rate of $29.99 per month in order to receive a full year’s worth of comic boxes. If you’re interested, please contact your assigned customer service representative by the 31st of this month.

Congratulations again, and we hope you enjoy your boxes!

Best regards, Paige Tico, Head of customer service, Resistance Books.

.

Rey: Did you get the email???

Ben: Just read it. Can’t wait for the first box. Thanks, Rey. By the way, sign me up for the extension thing.

Rey: Can you believe how far we’ve come? It feels like just yesterday that you were trying to cancel your subscription at every turn

Ben: For what it’s worth, I’m glad I didn’t. So fucking glad. I wouldn’t have gotten to know you otherwise.

Rey: Stop, you’ll make me cry Ben? I’m happy we’re friends too

NOVEMBER

Rey: Is it there yet?

Ben: Rey. It’s been two hours. I haven’t even left the office yet.

Rey: Okay, NOW is it there yet?

Ben: Still at work. You’re the one who shipped it, can’t you track the package or something?

Rey: I could But I think I prefer it this way

Ben: Of course you do. You’re lucky I have no other friends.

Rey: As if you’d stop talking to me even if you had a hundred other friends I’m your favorite

Ben: Says who? Maybe Poe’s my favorite. I’ve known him since childhood, after all.

Rey: Poe is a prankster and you fucking hate him

Ben: I wouldn’t say hate.

Rey: Ben He stole your credit card and signed you up for a year’s worth of YA books

Ben: And if he hadn’t done that, you and I would never have met.

Rey: We haven’t Met, I mean Shit I don’t even know what you look like BRB, I’m gonna go stalk you on social

Ben: Honestly, I just assumed you already did.

Rey: Wow, I’m offended HOLY HELL, BEN

Ben: So you’ve found me. If this is about the ears no, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on there either. No one in my family does.

Rey: What ears? Your ears are FINE, silly I was talking about your hair Christ, do you shampoo with unicorn blood or something???

Ben: That would be very soulless lawyer of me, wouldn’t it?

Rey: Shut up, you’re not soulless Funless, maybe, but I’d like to think I’m helping with that

Ben: You are. In the interest of fairness, I’m going to stalk you too.

Rey: Not much to see, but go right ahead Ben? Wow did I scare you off already? And here I thought that was a decent picture

Ben: Shit, sorry. Got pulled into a meeting. It’s a great picture.

Rey: You don’t have to say that

Ben: Well, it is and I mean it. And… I hope this isn’t creepy but I love your smile.

Rey: Not creepy at all By the way I like your eyes

DECEMBER

To: ben_solo@gmail.com From: a_holdo@resistancebooks.com Subject: Come celebrate the holidays with us!

Hi, Ben!

Did you know that before Resistance Books went online and became the #1 book delivery service in the country, we were a tiny little indie store known as Gatalenta?

This holiday season, we’re returning to our roots – and we’d love for you to join us! Resistance Books will be participating in the annual Coruscant Christmas Market with our very own pop-up store from the 15th of December onwards!

This is a great time for you to come on by and check out the full range of our diverse offerings. And if something catches your eye, you’ll be able to bring it home with you for the same incredibly reasonable rate you know and love – pick any three books from our store for just $29.99!

We hope to see you there!

Warmest wishes, Amilyn Holdo, Founder and president, Resistance Books.

.

Rey: Hey, did you get the email about the pop-up store?

Ben: Yeah, I was just about to text you. I just realized your boss is a friend of my mom’s. Anyway, this is probably extremely unlikely but Will you be there?

Rey: Seriously?? That’s so weird And yes, actually I’ll be helping out 21st-25th, 11AM-8PM

Ben: You’re working on Christmas?

Rey: You know me Not like I’ve got anything else to do

Ben: Okay, feel free to say no but… What if I go on Christmas? We’d get to discuss books in person And maybe after your shift we could hang out? I haven’t been to the CCM in years, but Maz’s Cantina used to make the best hot chocolates.

Rey: Books, hot chocolate, and finally getting to meet my mysterious Internet stranger? Ben Solo, you’ve got yourself a date

Ben: Great! I mean Cool. I can’t wait. See you then.

Rey: See you!

Ben: Hey, so I just woke up and you’re not here Which is fine, it’s your choice to make And last night can be whatever you want it to be But… Rey, I know what I want it to be I know we moved fast, but yesterday meant a lot to me You mean a lot to me I just… I just want to make sure you know that before you make a decision And the decision’s yours to make, completely I’ll go along with whatever you want As long as we’re at least still friends Because I don’t think I could bear to lose you entirely, Rey Fuck, I don’t think I could bear to lose you at all Shit, sorry, that’s too much I’ll stop now Just… text me back, please?

Rey: Babe I’m in the kitchen Hurry up, breakfast is getting cold And Ben? You mean a lot to me too ❤

This is a little over two thousand words and stopped being about tsundoko about halfway through (if it even was in the first place), but it was such a fun idea to play with and I hope the format doesn’t get in the way of the story. I thought emails and texts would help me keep things short, but obviously that didn’t pan out.

Anyway, thanks for reading as always and I hope you liked it. Please don’t hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

[dizzyingleo]

Evaluate Insurance, Credit score Card Or Mortgage In Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - Insurance coverage has developed from being product-centric to customer-centric, according to Nice Japanese Life Assurance (M) Bhd director and chief executive officer Datuk Koh Yaw Hui. Nice Eastern affords Islam-compliant insurance services to cater 60.4% of Malaysia's inhabitants of 28.3mln. Deluxe plans are essentially the most comprehensive, and include a Concierge, collision and harm insurance coverage, in addition to very excessive medical and baggage protection. Your dying profit options might differ in response to the annuity contract or life insurance coverage policy.

As an AIA Vitality members, you can get pleasure from free additional protection or an upfront discount off your first yr premium once you buy selected AIA insurance coverage policies. The Small, Medium Enterprise Banking division offers providers to small and medium enterprises in Malaysia. Nevertheless, previous to cancellation, you should notify Nice Jap Life Assurance (Malaysia) Berhad by way of a written discover.

I think you might be confusing your self with the aim of life insurance coverage and medical insurance. Interteach affords access to 23 medical centres and 26 medical factors at remote areas, dispatching providers around the clock, over 300 extra clinics, fifty three ambulances, 156 ambulance crews, 2 specialized X-ray mobile cars, more than 70 extra dental clinics, experience in group of medical evacuation and repatriation services.

Aided by the various policy accessible, AIG is able to providing a top quality plan to customers from varied industries, which incorporates firms in the hospitality & leisure, import & export, vitality, retail, communications, along with media & expertise sector. I am over 65 years of age and have Medicare medical insurance, which does not cover something exterior the U.S. That is one principal cause I bought the trip insurance coverage.

You should buy multiple health insurance insurance policies from different providers. Our schegen travel insurance coverage covers these international locations. Premium is the fee that you simply as the insured has to pay for an insurance plan. In line with Bank Negara Malaysia's (BNM) mid-12 months efficiency report, the insurance and takaful sector grew by +630 base points and the post-stress Capital Adequacy Ratio (AUTOMOTIVE) stood above the 130% mark.

To add more strength to their current health insurance policies, the company has added features like lifelong renewability and portability. Funds totalling RM16.8 million in life insurance claims have been settled to the next-of-kin of passengers and crew members of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Singapore-based mostly insurer Nice Japanese Holdings (GEH) has stated that it has not but given closing approval to a proposed MYR2 billion (SG$660 million) contribution to satisfy foreign ownership requirements in Malaysia.

Allianz Malaysia Berhad is a Malaysia-based investment holding firm. Our core insurance coverage businesses, excluding Validus and Legacy, skilled net losses attributable to 3rd quarter occasions of $748 million in Japan, emanating from 5 occasions and $439 million in North America, emanating from eight events, with the vast majority of the remaining losses arising from prior quarter catastrophes.

The insurance policies had been sold on Allianz's web site since December 2015 and, though the agency's solicitors raised concerns in regards to the advertising claims at the moment, had been only removed earlier this yr. In instances of medical emergencies, you'd need your medical safety to have the ability to provide you with added peace of mind, enabling you to have entry to correct medical care.

She was appointed to go AIA, a leading life insurer in Malaysia with total property value RM51 billion (as at 30 November 2017) and one among AIA Group's prime five markets, in June 2015. For instance, with a toddler life insurance plan, you may plan for your kids's upbringing, their education and even their marriages, proper from the day they're born.

With large-ranging plans that cowl your home and its valuables, Maybank house insurance coverage claims to ensure you and your loved ones receive the required help in your hour of need. The AIA Vitality membership 12 months can start on any day of the calendar yr. At this time, Prudential annuities are just one of many many services supplied by the corporate.

With a low penetration rate of insurance, for instance 54% for life insurance, and a healthy financial growth coupled with a relatively younger population, the prospect for the insurance coverage trade seems to be promising. Tencent established Hetai Life Insurance Co Ltd in July, 2015, which started business officially final year after receiving regulatory approval.

I also suspect the person questioning this seems like insurance coverage agent from company where the corporate does not carry standalone medical products, and their medical card rider is comparatively costly compared to others. The phrases and conditions or guidelines of the AIA Vitality Program (including for any exercise or benefit). Earn AIA Vitality Points for endeavor a variety of health assessments.

As a part of the transaction, Maybank's investors are expected to receive shares within the insurance coverage company in proportion to their existing holding in the financial institution, the sources mentioned - adding that no new cash is expected to be raised within the itemizing. ALIM affords a comprehensive vary of life and medical health insurance and funding-linked products and for the monetary 12 months 2010, ALIM recorded a gross written premium (GWP”) of RM 1.03 billion and is without doubt one of the fastest rising life insurers in Malaysia.

If you happen to apply for or register to grow to be a member of the AIA Vitality Program or activate your AIA Vitality Membership, you may be bound by these phrases. Allianz World Assistance does not charge for this service. A-Plus Med is a complete medical plan that has an growing annual restrict so that you may be certain of all the time having sufficient medical safety for yourself and your family members.

However, one of the appealing features of travel insurance coverage is the fact that touring companions and members of the family (spouses, home companions, youngsters, grandparents, grandchildren, daughters- or sons-in-law, nieces and nephews, and so forth.) depend in the case of lined causes for canceling your cruise. Some insurers are hopeful that BNM (Financial institution Negara Malaysia) might prolong the deadline but they realise that they nonetheless need to have a tentative deal in place ahead of the deadline,” said one particular person aware of the talks.

Jayaraj, that is the way standalone medical card works regardless of any insurance corporations. Any Prudential life insurance policyholder (assured) can register as a PRUaccess plus person. We might at our sole and absolute discretion waive the annual membership price, the requirement to be insured underneath an eligible AIA Bhd. Allianz Malaysia's enterprise insurance contains hearth, engineering, and legal responsibility insurance.

CF Lieu can also be listed under Featured CFP Professionals in his professional affiliation web site - FPAM (Financial Planning Affiliation of Malaysia). Traders in Singapore who're all in favour of insurance firms - our local stock market has insurers akin to Great Japanese Holding Restricted (SGX: G07) and United Abroad Insurance Restricted (SGX: U13) - could need to be taught more about Allianz Malaysia too.

[thatonepalenerd]

I wanna quit...

I work in retail. A couple years back, I had the opportunity to up my 22 hour contract to a temporary 38 hour contract meaning I would get paid more (as overtime is paid back in the form of hours owed to hours owing) at the end of the contract (some time in November) my paid hours went back to 22 hours while my rostered hours were the same 38 hours. No big deal as I owed hours to the company and hoped that when I paid them back my roster would look a little normal, I also knew that being so close to Christmas this would be the case as everyone was meant to work extra hours to help out.

Early that December, my dad had been sick, really sick. He would often go to hospital near the end of the year for his heart. I'd been visiting him when I could after work at the local hospital until one morning I woke up to my brother knocking on my door. He never comes over and I only really see him at work, he tells me dad is getting transferred to a hospital 2 hours away and that he's been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Now earlier that year, I had dealt with my first death of a loved one and hearing this news of my father shattered me. For all I knew he was dying in hospital and I spent the next couple days in bed thinking and trying to figure things out.

My weekend was over and it was time for me to go back to work. I didn't get to start my shift that day because when a team member asked me upstairs how my dad was doing in hospital, I broke down in tears... I was sent home shortly after that. I can't describe how painful it was to explain to team members that my father has cancer (he also works for this company) and how I had to stay positive about everything even though you have so much weight on your shoulders it's unbearable.

I soldiered on and luckily was able to contact my dad about how he was doing and I was going to try and see him as soon as possible, even if I had to catch public transport so I asked my boss if I could go see my dad (I was the only one running my sub-department at the time) my boss turned me down giving me one day to see him for the entire month (my brother was given as many days as he needed to see him). At this point, I'm devastated to say the least, I'm running a department by myself doing the work of two other people and getting paid a little over half for the hours I was working, having already paid back the hours I had owed. Surely by the New year I could get my contract upped to 30 hours and wouldn't need to work so hard. I would be able to spend more time with dad and would be able to save money too...

New years came and left, they're were big changes at work and my boss had stepped down and I was given a replacement, someone who didn't quite like me or at least didn't have an amazing opinion of me, who told me I had improved heaps for doing the same things I'd always done. I decided to ask several times to have my contract upped and I was given the same excuse, we can't do it at this point, not enough money, the same old excuse for everything. Surely it couldn't be that hard to get paid for one more days work then I had been for the past 2 months but nothing came of it. I was still working more hours then I should of, I was still under so much stress, the other two team members were back in our department but I didn't get along with one of them. They would make comments to me about me, calling me a liar, timing my breaks to the very t despite the fact that you'd be often stopped by customers before getting off the floor. I tried to ignore it until they confronted me one day calling me a liar again demanding respect because they were older (In my opinion respect no matter what age is earned not given) and the little cherry on top, they admitted that they had been told to spy on me by our boss to make sure I was doing my job. My boss got the one person in my department who belittles and despises me to report back to them on what I was doing feeding them misinformation.

I should have quit then but I didn't. In fact at this point, it's roughly May and I have worked 135 unpaid hours. Hours they owe me, I get my contracted up to 38 hours, more then I wanted but I thought I could work it. I’m given days off here and there until I'm paid off the rest before tax time, heavily taxed, of course. A couple months go by and I drop my hours down to 30 so I can see my dad more, that's fine. Until im told I'm covering two people from registers for a month while they're on holidays. I think of it as a break off the floor, no worrying about stock, I can be an npc for awhile until I come in one day and I'm told I'm not going back on the floor. No one discussed anything with me, no formal conversation, no nothing, just you're here now and I'm still on registers. I'm considering quitting and I'm now a part of the union so if I get fucked over again, I'm safe from being fired outright but I should have left a long time ago and as we have some new management I'm hoping things will change soon, if not I'll be finding a second job and leaving.

[sabrinaleethings]

Long Story Short - I Suck. [And Here’s Why]

[As a quick, quick synopsis : I did something I told myself I would NEVER ever do and as a result my progress and in essence my entire life kind-of flew away from me. If you don’t really care or are unbothered by the very long-winded and obnoxious post that shall follow, feel free to stop reading here! Just wanted to say hello, hi. I am back, and back with a vengeance.] 

Okay, so here we go with explanations and an awful (and slightly therapeutic) run down of Sabrina’s life these past few months.

[a/n: Cringe warning. Lots of cliches and run-on sentences that make zero sense and may make you scratch your head and say “whaaa?” ... you have been warned.] 

For those of you who don’t know, or need a refresher for because ha, yeah I haven’t been active online in MONTHS: 

My name is Sabrina Lee. I’m a freshly turned 22 year old who’s currently working on her first novel. 

I started blogging (this one specifically) I’d like to say back in... September/November? And let me tell you, the fire that was underneath my a$$ during this time was a flaming-hot inferno stemmed from the deepest pits of hell. 

The amount of energy and time I dedicated to writing, drawing, thinking, and breathing this story at first can border on realm of an unhealthy obsession mixed with a dash of pure excitement. I lived off of pure adrenaline for this bright and new shining world that began opening up for me.

Real talk time: (as if the rest of this won’t be raw and real too), I admittedly have a naturally addictive personality. I also am someone who doesn’t cope well with changes, or sudden shifts in my usual habits or every day life. So? So...

When I first began writing, I was so energized at the thought of being able to create and share. I’d post updates constantly as I wrote more and more (and more and more...)  and I’d receive nothing but support and positive feedback in return. (No joke, thank you to anyone who’s sent me words of encouragement or small snippets of love.) I became addicted to the feeling of writing, and then sharing everything and anything I could on this project.

During the first few weeks and even into months I was busting out thousands of words a day. My greatest day hitting about 3500 words. I’d even done a couple of paintings for concept ideas inbetween. 

It was the greatest thing ever. To feel like this novel was something so possible, so tangible. I pushed myself more and more and more, I wanted to be finished by the end of December with my first rough copy. (Spoiler: I failed.) 

I was stuck on such a high of this new and exciting chapter in my life, I was doing something I so badly wanted to do. Something I’d always dreamed of doing.

Sooner or later though, gravity here on earth conquers and I began feeling myself grow heavier and heavier. The high and weightlessness I felt when I first started writing began to fade as I found the words harder and harder to produce.

I got frustrated, and I gave up after a couple of months. I had failed. 

Granted, let’s put this in retrospect to the environment I was in.

Up until the end of January, I was working full-time at a retail job. (Albeit a bookstore of all things...) And with the holiday (Christmas/New Years) season quickly approaching, I found myself working between forty and fifty hours a week (thank-you last minute holiday shoppers!). 

SO. With working full time and already feeling slightly discouraged about this project, I began forcing myself to write. (Here’s where the addictive traits kick in). I wasn’t having fun anymore, I wasn’t sleeping (thanks retail) but I was still sitting myself down at my computer at 11, 12:00, 1:00am to write words that didn’t carry any meaning. I was totally burned out. The flame and drive in me snuffed. 

I was addicted to creating and escaping reality so much, I let my mental health and physical health diminish..

It got to the point where I was too tired to work, to tired to write, and so I put this project down to be worked on at a later date.

Silly Sabrina didn’t realize she wouldn’t be working on it again until five months later.

Fast forward to February. By this time, financial instability was something that had taken the spotlight in my life, so I picked up a second job. And I hadn’t thought twice about continuing the story - I had no time to think about anything other than wake up, work, work at the second store, go home to sleep, and do it again. 

Two and a half solid months disappeared without me even realizing it. 

I got so caught up in the present moment, I never gave a glance at the future. My future.

Mid-February and early March I had the itch in my bones to write again. To create.

During this time, I slowly stole whatever free moments I had to escape into the world of Detroit: Become Human.  It was the first fandom in a very long time I had been able to escape into, and as such I found myself writing fanfiction for it. Thousands and thousands of words began accumulating for short stories I had been writing for this game. 

I kept telling myself that everything I had written for this fandom, all of the short fiction pieces I wrote, was practice for when I finally found the energy and time to write my book again. 

I believe, that with moderation and time management skills that I clearly lack, this was a great idea.

I think it still could have been a great idea- if executed properly.

I had begun writing close to two thousand words a day for a fanfiction I was creating, and my dumbass, like the first time, found myself burning out.

I love writing. Loved writing so much, that I would do it whenever I could. Even if it meant staying up all night to finish a chapter for Detroit, or using time at work to finish writing down an idea I had.

I’d get these random bursts of energy and inspiration to write, and I’d use 1000% of whatever energy I could to create. Not good, not good.

Fast forward a bit more to now.

It’s the first week in May, and I haven’t written a new sentence in my book since the end of December. 

I would say I failed. But in all honesty, I haven’t quite failed. Not just yet. I refuse to believe it.

This is a second chance.

Last month between both jobs, I was working between 10 and 12 hours a day, seven days a week. There was a solid thirty-one, 31 days I went straight without a full day off. 

Times have changed. (Thank the Gods).

Toward the end of February I met someone special, and that someone just so happens now to be one of my biggest fans, and someone who’s taught me that it’s totally okay to take time for you to love, and take care of your own self.

I’ve finally relaxed into the idea that this, what I’m doing now, and what I will be doing in the future, is all okay.

One of the biggest fears I had, was that all of the work I had put into my book, was a waste of time. That in the end, the time invested wouldn’t have been justifiable.

Now? Now I’m comfortable with allowing myself to look to the future. 

I’ve finally given myself the breathing room and self-love I’d needed to fully envision the future I want and crave. 

And that’s to be an author of Trysten, Callum, and Samson’s narrative.

I finally have time again to dedicate to working a little bit at a time toward finishing this project.

I finally now know my limits, and how to keep myself from burning out so quickly.

I’m just... so excited to feel like I’m back to the old me I used to be. Just wiser and now not as stressed. 

The flame has returned for this story. I know in my heart that writing is something I will do. Being and author and creator is who I am. 

I can’t imagine a future where I didn’t get this freaking story written.

So long story short,

I had failed. I had failed myself, but that’s okay. Learning and growing is what we do as human beings. It just takes some people a little big longer.

Hello again friends, 

It has been a while.

I am back.

I love you all.

-Sabrina Lee