May 2025 Journal Entry

You know, it wasn't really my intention when I made the first one of these to make one every month; I just felt like I wanted to posted something and a simple report of what I've been up to seemed appropriate. And then I kind of kept doing it. 

And I see myself doing it for this year, just feels like a good thing to do for this year, idk. Doesn't mean I can't or won't post at other times about other things (as shown by the fact that I already have).

Anyway:

Andor Season 2. 

It's actually so good. I think I still currently put Severance above it in terms of ranking my favorite live-action TV shows, but I think Andor is #2 now (outranking Psych, which is now #3). But perhaps Andor will gain the edge over Severance since it's finished, while Severance is waiting for a 3rd season (having a good ending/being finished in the first place is really important to me). Andor is now my favorite piece of Star Wars content with Episode III now being 2nd.

Got to travel to Rexburg/Boise over the course of a long weekend.

In Rexburg, I got to watch the Andor finale with Tanner, my old roommate who got me watching Star Wars. It was great. Got to play some Lorcana with Tyler, my other old roommate. 

Had a really fun time at the Rexburg local Smash tournament, taking a set off of Gage (22Cents) in grands (and then losing the next set to him thus coming in second); such a fun tournament and a great way to cap off mine and Gage's competitive history.

In Boise, I got to hang out with Andrew and Jamie and it was wonderful and I love them so much:) And Jamie is pregnant and that's so exciting:):) 

Also got to participate in a 107 person Smash tournament (which also meant getting to hang out with Rexburg Smash people more, which was great). Got 17th! Which is probably my best placement at a big event like that. My controller was breaking down at the end, which was frustrating, though.

My Goats Chou and Gage

Pickleball

Been playing a lot of Pickleball, and it's been a blast! Really happy Ben got me attending regularly now. We attend pretty much every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and there's great turn out from the local community every time.

Monster Train 2

Played an absurd amount of Monster Train 2. Satiated my desire for Slay the Spire 2 while it lasted. Took 74.2 hours to get all the achievements. There's still other stuff to explore in the game, so I'll definitely still play it, but I've slowed down on my playtime a lotta lot since getting all the achievements.

Progress on Projects

Now that my Smash career up at college is over, the column on the right side opened up and has been repurposed to something that I think is pretty neat! I also just started up yesterday keeping track of each individual days progress on a google sheet that I think is neat.

Have been making good progress on Auzzy Quite Liked Her Name. Really happy about my consistent efforts. Writing a substantial story like this has probably been on my list of desires for forever, and so it feels really good to continue to make progress on it.

Also continue to march forward on transcribing my mission journals. A thing I've had planned from before my mission ended. It'll take a while yet, but I plan to keep slowly making progress on it.

Hair

Didn't get around to cutting my hair for the longest period of time in my entire life and thus my hair grew to its longest length it's ever been. Shout out to Jamie for cutting it while I was in Boise. Now that I'm graduated, I've grown at my bread and will presumably keep it around because it's way easier not to shave than it is to shave.

Pictures for the fun of it.

Before

Before but crazy for fun

After

My Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 Smash Ultimate Seasons Recap

Reminder even if you're family, you're under no obligation to read this whole thing, haha. I just appreciate you being here:) There's a whole lot of stuff in here that I'm pretty sure I only care about, so feel free to just glance at the bolded parts; that helps me feel more connected to you and hopefully you to me.

Recapping two seasons into one post. My last two seasons. 

It's been quite the ride; I have loved my time in the Smash community in Rexburg.

Not sure where to really start, so I'm just going to write about whatever I think of first.

I think my favorite part of these past two seasons has been my rivalry with Gage (Gamertag: 22Cents). It's been kind of insane and just so much fun. So here's the whole story, I guess:

(okay, rivalry is a strong word considering the fact that there's no animosity amongst us whatsoever and we love and support each other instead, but for purposes of competition, Gage has been my greatest rival)

Gage came into the scene two semesters ago. Initially, he didn't do so great, with his first tournament even going 0-2. If I remember correctly, I played friendlies with him that first tournament, and although I beat him pretty solidly, I could tell that he had a lot of potential. I remember thinking something to the effect of, "I hope this guy doesn't stop coming to tournaments just because he went 0-2 at his first one." Blessedly, he didn't.

For the next 7 tournaments, he had a string of solid performances with some 7ths and 5ths, but nothing crazy.

The Arcadian tournament was coming up, an invitational tournament where you are only allowed to participate if you haven't been on PR in Rexburg before. In our scene, we have players who are on PR coach the non-PR players who are in the tournament.

As referenced, I thought Gage had a lot of potential as a player, and he just seemed like a great guy, so I asked him at a tournament if I could be his coach. He said he thought that would be awesome and a lot of fun. We fought that same night in bracket, and I asked him before the set if he was ready to beat his coach, haha. He did indeed beat me that night. In fact, he beat me the next several times we fought, even though I was supposed to be his coach, haha. 

He won that tournament and the next 3, beating me several more times in the process. During this time, he starting coming over for friendlies frequently so we could help prep him for the Arcadian. 

Although I didn't do anything crazy during our coaching/training sessions and I'm confident he would have won the Arcadian without my help, he attributes a chunk of his uprising as a top player to me, which is very sweet of him.

After he won 4 tournaments in a row beating me 6 times in a row, I struck back and won the next 7. We've been back and forth ever since then, and it's been wonderful:) 

And because of our overall dominance in the scene and because of our very consistent attendance to tournaments, we fought a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT; in fact, by the end of the two semesters, we fought more than any other two players have ever fought in the Rexburg scene all-time. In just two semesters. To put this in perspective, Ben and I have both competed in this scene at the same time for roughly 5 semesters. And we've fought 30 times in total. Gage and I in just two semesters fought 47 times. Actually insane.

Our first semester our set count was 11-8. Our second semester it was 10-18. I visited for another tournament just a week ago and we fought twice, splitting 1-1. Our lifetime H2H is 22-27. I won roughly 45% of the time, he won roughly 55% of the time. I beat him out on PR his first semester there, he beat me out his second semester there.

We fought so much that it became a meme in our community. Ethan (Gamertag: Java) during a twitch stream commented something close to, "Hey, look! It's 22Cents and Theo fighting on stream. Someone, quick, take a screenshot, I'm sure we'll never see this again!" This quickly became a copy-pasta and was said practically every time Gage and I fought.

Gage and I played Randubs together twice and named ourselves "We'll never see this again".

One day, unfortunately, "We'll never see this again" became true, and our last sets were played :*(

Another one of my favorite parts of the past two semesters is training up and pulling out my Lucas in bracket.

Before this past semester, literally every game in every set I have every played in a serious bracket, I have played Pokémon Trainer. The only times I have not done so were in side brackets or other brackets that didn't count for the rankings.

This last semester, I decided to change that. In a random friendly session with Drake and Gage, I messed around with Lucas, and it did better than it reasonably should have and, more importantly, I was just having a lot of fun playing them. After that, I started training it up.

Brought it out in a few tournaments for fun and did quite well with them:) (Tournament results involving Lucas are noted in the results list below) Helping beat the carried allegations (which ofc I didn't because it's a meme at this point, so I did indeed get voted Most Carried again, woot woot, haha. They even made a carried2 emote (the carried emote being PT, the carried2 emote being Lucas)).

Arcadian and Summit

Already talked about Arcadian in the story with Gage. It was a lot of fun. Was a conduit for Gage and I playing friendlies a lot and becoming good friends, which was awesome. Got a 'Disapproval' Emote from it. Got to celebrate with Gage in his victory. Good stuff.

Summit would normally be a big thing I would write about, but this one was just a rough tournament for me, haha. Because the way everything worked out, the top 2 seeds, NinJamez and Gage fought round 1 and then the loser dropped down to fight me (the 3rd seed). I was not destined to win against Gage that day, and I unceremoniously got out at 9th. But it's all good, it was a well-run tournament and outside of my personal bracket, was a really fun time.

Came so so close to beating NinJamez on a couple-few occasions, but still haven't. Lost to Drake for the first time ever. Still undefeated against Java though 😁

Last two PR Graphics. Last time working on the PR. Last semesters at college in general. Life be moving forward.

My rankings throughout my semesters have been:

Unranked (13ish), 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, DNP, 4th, DNP, 2nd, 3rd.

Fall 2024 Tournament Results

• 2nd (out of 22), 1st Seed, User Buffer III
• 2nd (out of 31), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #55
• 2nd (out of 22), 2nd Seed, Free Friday #49
• 1st (out of 27), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #56
• 1st (out of 27), 3rd Seed, BYU-I #57
• 1st (out of 24), 1st Seed, Pinnacle Peak #58
• 3rd (out of 24), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #58
• 4th (out of 33), 1st Seed, Free Friday #53
• 2nd (out of 15), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #59
• 2nd (out of 18), 1st Seed, Spooky Smash
• 4th (out of 27), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #60
• 1st (out of 17), 3rd Seed, BYU-I Bash #61
• 1st (out of 16), 1st Seed, Free Friday #56
• 1st (out of 21), 1st Seed, Free Friday #57
• 1st (out of 19), 1st Seed, Retro Wager So Thankful
• 5th (out of 20), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #62
• 1st (out of 18), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #63
• 3rd (out of 24), 1st Seed, Free Friday #60

Winter 2025 Tournament Results

• 4th (out of 30), 3rd Seed, FF #61
• 3rd (out of 24), 2nd Seed, FF #62
• 1st (out of 27), 1st Seed, FF #63
• 3rd (out of 32), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #66
• 2nd (out of 22), 1st Seed, FF #64
• 1st (out of 22), 1st Seed, FF #65
• 2nd (out of 33), 2nd Seed, BYU-I #68
• 1st (out of 11), 1st Seed, FF #66
• 1st (out of 29), 1st Seed, President's Day Pop-up
• 3rd (out of 31), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #69
• 3rd (out of 20), 2nd Seed, FF #67
• 17th (out of 68), 24th Seed, LAN King Weekly 2/25
• 2nd (out of 24), 1st Seed, FF #68
• 2nd (out of 23), 1st Seed, BYU-I Bash #71 (97% Lucas)
• 1st (out of 30), 1st Seed, FF #69 (Mostly Lucas)
• 9th (out of 35), 1st Seed, FF #70
• 5th (out of 29), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #73
• 4th (out of 37), 2nd Seed, FF #71
• 2nd (out of 20), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #73 (Half Lucas)
• 9th (out of 16), 3rd Seed, Summit 3
• 4th (out of 22), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #74 (All Lucas)
• 3rd (out of 24), 3rd Seed, FF #72

My Presumably Last Rexburg Tournament for a least a while that took place last week

• 2nd (out of 16), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #78

April 2025 Journal Entry (ft. lots of pictures)

Golly, quite the month, eh? Going to go vaguely in chronological order.

Best thing from the Nintendo Direct was the fact that Silksong is coming out in 2025, hype hype hype.

Played the Bazaar a lot and then not at all. New character dropped. Played them a lot and then played a lot on my roommate's computer to unlock the new character for him. Played it once since then. Still love the game, just kinda done with it for now at least.

Uh, graduated, I suppose that's probably an important thing to reference. Computer Science major, Mathematics minor. Feels really weird.

Got to go to my Follow-up Trainer's Wedding Celebration. Love Elder Wilkins, super happy for him.

Same Small Pikachu from when we were Comps

Awesome Cake

Visited Ryan, Angeles, Melody, and Hannah in Texas. 'Twas awesome, super glad I got to go. While I was there, we played tons of typing games (specifically Glyphica and Chef's Shift), watched various anime (Frieren with Ryan/Angeles, Solo Leveling and ReLife by myself), went on lots of walks, got to see my good friend Emma, had some wonderful Easter celebrations, updated my resume, played a lot of Nine Sols, and probably some other stuff.

Walk

Goated Easter

Future #1 PR Player in Rexburg Right Here

Love Emma

Temple is pretty dope

Back at home in Nevada for the time being:)

March 2025 Journal Entry

Got 2nd at a $2k Lorcana tournament!! Am very very happy with my performance. A good group of individuals travelled from Utah to attend, with 6 of them making top 8, point being there was very good competition, and I knew that going into the tournament. My goal was top 8, and I knew even getting that was going to be tough. I far exceeded my expectations:):) And I was so close to getting first too!! (seriously, I think if he didn't topdeck two removal on the same turn, I think I just win) But I'm more than happy with 2nd! This was the deck I played. Here's the event link. I won $125 and 2 boxes of the most recent set.

Severance (with VidAngel) is my favorite live-action TV show, I've decided. Finished Season 2 with Tanner and Tyler. It's actually insanely good. Holy. I am so excited for season 3. It's peak. Okay, fine, I personally didn't care for the Ms. Cobel episode, but the rest is peak.

My Computer Science course has caused me more anguish than any other course I've ever taken. But, you know, one and a half more weeks to lock in and then I'm done. I'll be okay. What's so frustrating about it is 99% of the suffering has come from the course structure/teacher, not the content itself. Honestly don't mind the content. But, golly, I hate this course. 

The rest of my courses have been all well and good over the past month.

Results have gone down in Smash Tournaments, sadly, but I'm still having a lot of fun and have been spending a lot of time with my closest friends that I've made from the smash scene. Shout-outs to Gage and Drake. Going to miss them a lot once I graduate. But, yeah, weirdly losing to a lot of people I haven't lost to before. 

Including at the East Idaho Smash Summit Invitational, a special tournament that had ~$290 in prize pool. I lost to Chou for the first time with my Pokémon Trainer, sending me to losers day 2. Where, due to NinJamez dropping a set the day prior, I had to fight the loser of NinJamez and Gage (the first and second seed (with me being the third seed)). I lost to Gage getting out at 9th. Very disappointing, but I've come to terms with it.

Only played The Bazaar a little. Got to Legend rank, and then kind of just stopped. Without something to work toward, I lost a lot of my interest (I suppose I could work toward 1st in the world or something like that, but I'm good). Similar to how my Balatro and Slay the Spire game hours cut off as soon as I 100%'d them. Still enjoy the game and have pulled it a couple-few times for a quick run, but not even close to the extent I was playing it. Am excited for the new Hero to release tomorrow though! Will definitely be trying him out.

Got new managers for our apartment complex. They're alright. Jim (our old manager) was just the best and thus the transition is not fun, and we miss him.

Listened to Tress of the Emerald Sea for the second time (I guess technically, this is my first time listening to it; I read it last time). It was great, although I didn't like it as much my second time through, not sure exactly why. Just started listening to Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (same situation about the first/second time thing).

Last month I reported I wanted to make this month better than last, and I did and it was:) 

Switch 2 direct tomorrow!

February 2025 Journal Entry

Still been playing The Bazaar a ton. Probably too much. Free Open Beta starts Wednesday, if you're interested in playing it, I would love to hand off my referral link to you so I get free stuff and such.

Listened to Steelheart, Firefight, and Calamity. Read Mitosis. Currently listening through Lux for the first time.

Class and homework has been stressful and just not a good time. Seriously seriously am not liking my Computer Science course's structure, but am learning some things. Grasping concepts in my math class, but have no idea how to actually solve any problems, which means the homeworks and midterm are not going so well -- luckily the grading structure is super forgiving (probably too forgiving).

Continuing to compete in Smash Bros tournaments, of course. 22Cents has had my number recently, but I still have half a semester left to win some sets in exchange. Went to LanKing and did not perform to my liking, but had a ton of fun. 22Cents, Ninjamez (and Mackar, who's only able to go to a tournament a month or so) are still the only ones to win sets off me in PR events (I may or may not have lost to Ben for the first time in 2 years during LanKing redemption, but that wasn't for PR).

Still going to some Lorcana locals, even though Set Champs are done.

My roommates and I have been watching Severance with VidAngel to censor out the language/sexual content, and it's been so freaking good.

Got called as an Elders' Quorum Instructor. Teaching my first lesson next week (and potentially my last, depending, due to General Conference).

Been playing lots of Hollow Knight alongside my roommates. Love this game.

Been feeling slothful this past month which has caused my mood/happiness levels to go down. Reflecting on this month while writing this blog post is quite nice. Planning on having a better month this month.

January 2025 Journal Entry

    Been competing weekly in Super Smash Brothers tournaments. I should probably update the right column and make a recap of last season, but alas, not right now. My placements this semester thus far have been: 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 4. 22Cents (that's his gamertag) and I are in a very close race for #2 on PR. We've fought a ton in tournament now and have become good buds through it. Shout out to Drake as well who's super awesome.

    Been competing in weekly Lorcana tournaments. My placements thus far in the local game store tournaments have been 1, 1, 1, 2. On top of that, Set Champs were the past three Saturdays. I took 3, 3, 2 in those, which is super consistent and awesome. In total I won 3 Scar Promos and 1 Playmat. Seriously such cool people and such a good community at Set Champs. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to know all of them over the past two sets of Set Champs. I'm sad that I won't be in this area the next time they roll around.

    Been playing a lot of The Bazaar, an asynchronous PvP auto-battler rougelike that's currently in closed beta. You go through various events each 'day', upgrading your board and putting together awesome combos. At the end of each 'day' you fight against someone else's build. Repeat that process until you lose x number of times or win 10 times. Been having a blast with it.

    

    Haven't read, like, at all the past month, but just barely started listening to Steelheart, and am really enjoying it. Have a feeling I'm going to tear through it pretty quickly.

    Been watching more Star Wars content (I need to update my left column, this is the first time since I started it up that I've been slacking on updating it this much). Watched Andor with my roommates Tyler and Tanner. It was very very good. Excited for the 2nd season coming out soon. Watched the first several episodes of The Mandalorian and haven't been enjoying it all that much to be honest. It's decent at least, definitely wouldn't say it's bad. Just not enjoying it a ton for some reason.

    Can't say my classes are my favorite this semester. 

    My Computer Science class is, uh, not great. It's a bad look for your class when your team meets up during team meeting time, and you consistently spend quite a bit of time discussing how poor the class structure is/how various things that could be improved. 

    My World Religions class is very cool (although I wish it was slightly less work, but it's worth it).

    My math class is rough but fun. We're staying afloat.

    Wrote a tad more in Auzzy Quite Liked Her Name. I wrote a ton my last few days in Fallon; Eric and I both wrote a lot in those few days. I've gotten to this part which requires reworking chunks of the previous chapters, which has caused my progress to putter out quite a bit, so I have made very little progress on it in the past month. Very happy with how much progress overall I've made with it since the last time I mentioned it on my blog though:)