anomaletix

📠

That first time you watch EVO Moment 37, you feel chills down your spine, goosebumps upon the entire surface of your skin. It's moment so perfectly crafted, so beautiful yet clear in its composition that 2 decades later it's still probably still THE fighting game moment to this day. So iconic it was basically responsible for the two people involved to basically be set for life career-wise. This was the first ever FGC-related video I remember watching, and although it wasn't outright responsible for my future love of them, it laid the groundstone for the gap to be filled years down the line. I think it's important to note that this wasn't even Grand Finals; neither Daigo nor Justin won this particular tournament (EVO 2004), by the way, it was a Japanese player named KO. This wasn't even the final game of this particular set between them, even. When you peel back the layers of context, you come to realize the somewhat banal reality of the moment; the world kept on moving after this moment, the years would pass, and at some point EVO would be sold to the Saudis and be forever changed. The environment this moment was crafted in no longer exists, the energy having long since parted. But the way the crowd roars after Daigo hits all 15 parries on Chun-Li's super at a pixel of health, the sheer amount of excitement that emanated from that room which was captured on video, it was as if the world froze still for a moment; cheers so ungodly loud that if you closed your eyes and imagined, you would have thought Daigo Umehara had just saved the goddamn Earth from a meteor.

I am still thinking about that FFXIV meal I had back in May with the Ube pie and the Spicy chicken sandwich. God, that shit was so good. A true mecca of Filipino culture in America. In a just world, they'd sublimate every In-N-Out franchisee and instead replace the blood-stained white walls of their emptied establishments with Jollibees. It is the greatest crime of all that there is not a single location for this in Colorado, and I feel as if a politician who would run on the sole basis of getting Jollibee in Colorado could get a tangible amount of voter power if the masses knew of how good they could have it. With all fast food restaurants, your mileage varies on the location; if you don't see any Filipinos in the back, assume the same protocol as seeing a predominantly-white Mexican restaurant and get out of there as fast as you possibly can. But, find a location where you hear Tagalog from the kitchen, and praise whatever lord exists that it has blessed you with such a place. If I were to become Buddhist, I'd ask for my one-time material good to be something from Jollibee.

100% biased, this is my fucking country, this is my PEOPLE, PHILIPPINES FOREVER!!! Okay, well, maybe not my country; I was born in the US. But the point still stands! There was a long, long period of my life where I didn't even really see myself as Filipino; in some part because I didn't really understand my culture and it wasn't huge in my household, in some part because my dad was white and I felt more "like that". But, the day I started truly embracing my Filipino roots was when I think things started getting better for me. It's awesome to be at least related to a language as complex to Tagalog, even if I haven't had the time to learn it proper. It's awesome to have the skin tone I do, how dark it is compared to the white-ness I once considered myself as in the past. It's awesome to feel a legitimate spiritual connection to Jollibee, still thinking wistfully about the one I visited in Chicago back in May. It's given me a sense of identity that I didn't really have before, and I can really appreciate my country now for that reason. #PhilippinesWorldOrder

I am of the belief Soulja Boy and his review of Braid from 2009 describe this game with far more succinctness than any multi-paragraph analysis could ever do, and I am hard-pressed to believe that this game is deserving of more words than explicitly necessary to mention Soulja Boy's review of Braid. Instead of playing this game, consider watching that video instead. "He don't ever run out of the going back in time... potion. He just go back in time forever. And there ain't no point to the game. This shit stupid as hell, mane."

Those who hate SPAM for non-dietary reasons will not make it through the decade, bahala na. I remember not liking this stuff much until I picked up a proper way to cook it; if you want my personal method, marinate this stuff in some black garlic and then pan fry it in some sesame oil. God, that shit was so good, and then I used it for Fried Rice and it got *even better.* Learning to like SPAM is essentially a coming-of-age ritual for all Filipinos before they are allowed to become adults, save for the ones that are allergic or restricted from consuming it for one reason or another. If you as a person can make it past the looks of SPAM (probably its worst aspect, I can say that it being a weird pink block of "stuff" scared me off it until I was like 16) you can make it through the rest of your life easier. In my ideal world, eating this and/or brussels sprouts without going "ew!" would be required to drive a motor vehicle.

My Roblox account's 13th birthday was on July 10th, meaning it is now old enough to legally use platforms like Discord. Horrifying to think about. I think Roblox is a site that everyone grows out of one day, and whether that age is 16 or 36 entirely depends on the financial incentives in mind. If you are a game developer making *stacks* off of Steal A Huss Brainrot Girlfriend, hey, that's cool. Fund your retirement with that and then get into woodworking and FGC major trips for the latter half of your life. But, this platform is inherently for a very specific demographic of kids-to-teens. The moment you have money and the ability to buy games from Steam, the inherent appeal of Roblox kind of starts to wane away; a nearly endless stream of games that you can hop into at any point is less exciting when you can buy like, Dustforce DX or Marvel vs. Capcom 3 instead. The changes Roblox has made in the past couple of years have made the exit sign blink ever so brighter for the older folks that still choose to hang around. I refuse to give Roblox any semblance of an ID or selfie so I can read chat; go kick rocks and die. And without chat, it becomes a question of "why bother". Was it the communities I existed in when I was younger that have since disappeared into the aether? Was it the games that I loved which have now disappeared? Playing Roblox in modern day is more for revisiting the "feel" of it I once experienced when I was a kid, the happy memories that came from the hours lost on it before I had the awareness of how much damn money everything costs. Maybe every now and then I hop on to play a game that looks cool with a friend or three, to check out the new frontiers explored by those few with true, god-forsaken sparks of creativity who have chosen to stick around. For me personally, however, the luster has long since been lost.

Rating this from a 2026, small-fandom-following-tab perspective. I think Tumblr gets a lot of unnecessary hate for the sins of its past. I was there, as a much younger anom, to observe the horror stories and muck that spewed out of the gates of the underworld through a YouTube red-colored lens. And for what it's worth, they're not particularly wrong. Even in modern day, I often get the hints of the drama-of-the-day whenever I dare choose to head outside my small little circle of groups I choose to partake in. It's a truly different world out there, I've observed. But, with a curated experience and a staunch opposition to anything that is titled "For You", I find this site to actually be quite pleasant. It's like Twitter if it was more focused on art instead of whatever Elon Musk's oily little hands are doing with it, and I can speak for everyone when I say that looking at art is, as the kids say, "pretty fun". So long as you stick to your part of the woods (and don't you *dare* stick your toes into the conflict zone that is semi-big Fandom Discourse) you will probably be able to pass a couple of lunchtimes here without much issue.