2020 is on the way out. Let's reflect!

[Lord Raven]

I don't really post on SF much anymore, part because I'm just too old for some of the users here, part because my life has been hell the past few years, part because you can only discuss FE to death so much before you, personally, have just run out of relatively new shit to talk about. But I'm kinda wondering how everyone's 2020 went so we can all lift each other up from this awful year and talk about our goals in 2021.

My year was just a total disaster. Between COVID fucking my internship, my moveout, and my internship mulligan where our cryostat is straight up broken, my dad passing away and all the fucked up undiagnosed mental issues I'm having from taking care of him, and my PhD adviser yelling at me for not being productive despite all of this... Fuck this fucking year.

On the plus side, I'm looking like I'm 5 months away from finally finishing this PhD program (7 fucking years and a hairline later) and I can live in one place for more than 3 weeks when I get back. And weed is legal in AZ now (where I go to school).

Edited December 27, 2020 by Lord Raven

[Excellen Browning]

2020 has been a mixed bag. The pandemic in combination with me bringing safety issues to attention cost me my job and I haven't found a new one yet. I've spent most of the year alone and that has caused me some issues a few times, but nothing I didn't bounce back from. Tried an antipsychotic drug and lost two months due to restlessness and constantly being tired.

With regards to treatment, I wrapped up EMDR, am continuing with the cognitive therapy and am undergoing some tests to determine if I'm ADD, which I now strongly suspect I am. I've become less scared of having to do my finances, and get less scared in general. Getting touched is still deeply unpleasant to me, and I wonder if that's just who I am, and not due to some wonky cognition or traumatic memory.

I suppose I haven't been affected as much as others by the pandemic, outside of not being able to find a job, but I expect that to pick up again sometime next year. In the meantime I still have my social security and I have high hopes for ADD medication.

[redlight]

I had my 11 month conscription this year so I wasn't affected all too much by the pandemic due to being stuck in a army base (any sort of negative thing for me this year could really be only attributed to just constantly dealing with my roommates' bullying and their bullshit). My family managed to carry through as well. Others unfortunately aren't too blessed. Saying they got fucked over is underselling it. I only wish for 2021 to be a positive year for all our sakes.

[Shrimpica]

This year has been bleh. I want a refund.

I was hopefull after i turned in my Thesis at the end of last year, and was planning travels, career life and stuff, and everything has been put on hold.

Only thing i liked about this year were some of the games i played...

Edited December 27, 2020 by Father Shrimpas

[EricaofRenais]

All my plans this year went to hell because of COVID.  About the only good thing that happened was I changed health insurance to a better plan that covers my meds better then my old one.  I have had it better then some and I am grateful for that, but I don't know anyone that has had a good year this year and I personally will be very happy when it ends this week and will be celebrating.

[GodSejeong97]

Maybe for a bit change of pace, I'd say this year has been pretty good.

>Persona 4 ported to PC, Persona 5 Warriors announced for Steam release in 2021

>TWEWY anime announced for next year, and the game itself has a SEQUEL announced.

>Ryza 2 coming soon.

>Devil May Cry V: Special Edition released on console and Vergil came to PC version.

>FEH did tons of generous thing this year. Book IV is finally over and we're moving onwards to the mecha-dwarf world with its amazing free unit.

>Cindered Shadows came out earlier this year. It was the best part of 3H gameplay-wise and I personally like the Ashen Wolves.

>Byleth, Steve and Sephiroth in Smash. Too bad no DMC characters yet.

>Final Fantasy VII Remake came out and XVI was announced.

And oh, you made it to the end of the year. You survived a pandemic and that's something we should be grateful for.

[kradeelav]

this really feels like the 'adapt or die' year - for those who've had to go through that hell before, it'd say it's doable even though the adjustments suck, but i can see how the massive shifts in everything would be distressing as hell. finding that even as an introvert i absolutely loathe remote working - my work crew were some of my only IRL friends and now a bunch are leaving/the HQ's changing places. ah well.

kept health, was able to keep drawing and do some cool projects i've always wanted to do, and amassed a bunch of resources. thankful for that at least. 

 

 

[Roxas]

this year sucks

 

also like the worst year to be a 3rd year medical student on rotations because i haven't been able to do shit and all of our clerkships got cut by like 25% because we started late because nobody knew how reopening was going to work so basically my neurology rotation back in september was 2 and a half weeks with a few hurricane days sprinkled in and my school has the NUTS to ASK me why i FAILED the SHELF EXAM also i did mediocre on step 1 because my test date got cancelled three different times because the nbme had no idea how they wanted to open prometric back up again and they decided to run on some staggered opening schedule but started that by cancelling everyones exams and yeeting them into schedule limbo so then i ended up taking it in the middle of my pediatrics rotation and of it had to be when i was on inpatient subspeciality heme/onc/cardiology that all went over my head and of course i did poopy and i just feel like nobody understands because the 1st and 2nd years are preclinical still so they're just chilling on zoom lectures and self studying and the current 4th years were just chilling all year since they did their sub-i's already and step 2 cs got cancelled and they're also chilling on zoom doing all their electives online so it just really feels like class of 2022 got screwed over super hard in particular!!!!! !! ! ! ! ! ! !

[eclipse]

So I learned that my state functions despite its government, not because of it.  I also learned that our local newspaper seems to think it's okay to leave comments like "black people deserve to be treated badly by the police because of (insert bullshit here)", while I can think of a couple of far less offensive topics that would warrant instant deletion by their moderation staff.  Perhaps the most galling thing of 2020 is just how far certain segments of the population will go just out of spite.

But on the upside, I'm having a blast with the SRW series, I finally finished Trails of Cold Steel 4, I'm riding out the quarantine with people who don't actively get on my nerves, and I think I'm a little closer in figuring out why I'm sick all the time!

[Zapp Branniglenn]

This year hasn't beat me down, but that doesn't stop the depression I feel at seeing friends and loved ones taking a hit. I'm told it's alright for me to complain regardless, but the fact is, I still have a secure place of residence, I am still employed with the same job I've had before the pandemic, and nobody I know personally has been infected despite the numerous phone calls that a co-worker got it. I might even say I'm in a better place now than I was a year ago, because the only net negative is my steadily deteriorating physical health.

So I'm going to make an un-ordered top ten of great things about 2020.

• Finally replacing my old computer
• Devil May Cry memes in my recommended
• Finalizing the conservatorship a month before everything shut down and backed up pretty much all court proceedings.
• Streets of Rage 4
• Discovering cool youtube channels
• I am no longer the resident expert on FE1 because now everybody has played it and that's all I want.
• Finding a new creative outlet of making videos. Some of which star Doc Louis and Ted Lewis' interpretation of King Dedede, and it's only getting weirder next year.
• Not only did Trump lose, he's doing irreperable damage on the way out to not so innocent people
• Sephiroth's reveal trailer
• Disney Plus giving us unrestricted access to the Simpsons

[Eltosian Kadath]

This has been the worst year in living memory. Even before the pandemic started, I lost a cousin unexpected (who expects someone practicing for a marathon to just drop dead out of no where), an aunt (from the other side of the family, a little more expected as she was never in good health, but it happened less than a week after the last death...), a friend (again barely a week after the last death, made even more tragic by his daughter not even being a year old...), and then my mother almost died as well, requiring emergency surgery that she hasn't fully recovered from. Just a week after she is finally coming home we get the first set of lockdowns. This plague has not been good for me financially, but I have been lucky that no one I know has died of covid yet (although my brother's wife may have been exposed through her work, so we will see...god this year is miserable...). Fires also burned down my parent's home, and most of the thing from my childhood burned with it, the overwhelming majority of the images of me before I went to college are gone, and numerous family heirlooms are little more than ash. This lockdown has also made me more reclusive than I already was.

[NinjaMonkey]

Trump lost and his supporters went in to meltdown mode, providing me with a lot of entertainment in lockdown. 10 out of 10, would recommend.

Edited December 27, 2020 by NinjaMonkey

[Lord Raven]

7 hours ago, Roxas said:

this year sucks

 

also like the worst year to be a 3rd year medical student on rotations because i haven't been able to do shit and all of our clerkships got cut by like 25% because we started late because nobody knew how reopening was going to work so basically my neurology rotation back in september was 2 and a half weeks with a few hurricane days sprinkled in and my school has the NUTS to ASK me why i FAILED the SHELF EXAM also i did mediocre on step 1 because my test date got cancelled three different times because the nbme had no idea how they wanted to open prometric back up again and they decided to run on some staggered opening schedule but started that by cancelling everyones exams and yeeting them into schedule limbo so then i ended up taking it in the middle of my pediatrics rotation and of it had to be when i was on inpatient subspeciality heme/onc/cardiology that all went over my head and of course i did poopy and i just feel like nobody understands because the 1st and 2nd years are preclinical still so they're just chilling on zoom lectures and self studying and the current 4th years were just chilling all year since they did their sub-i's already and step 2 cs got cancelled and they're also chilling on zoom doing all their electives online so it just really feels like class of 2022 got screwed over super hard in particular!!!!! !! ! ! ! ! ! !

Dude fuck higher ed this year. I really truncated my feelings about my internship and my advisor, but holy fuck it's been one after another. My boss is giving me shit because we have no results... Because we either had no time, no open days, or no cryostat. Colossal waste of a fucking year. I once worked 3-2-3-2-3-2 day weeks and I'd have to drive back home to help rebuild everything at home due to all this shit.

I have to graduate next semester lol

[whase]

I feel like that dog sitting in the fire, except everything is not fine, it simply hasn't effected me much personally.

I mean sure, cosplay events, larps and D&D campaigns all fell through, and while I enjoy all of these a lot, as an introvert, having some more me-time isn't all that bad.

I also lost my grandmother this year, but since both her mental and physical health had been deteriorating for a while I'm just glad she no longer has to suffer. She died right before Covid hit, so I'm glad she didn't have to go through that.

With everything else canceled, I should have spent more time on working on my boardgames, cosplays and homework, but I really didn't do anything this year worth mentioning. So I guess those 3 are now my goals for 2021, finish the prototype for my horror boardgame, make and hopefully wear a Ferdinand cosplay at a con, and finally finish school.

[Parrhesia]

Pretty awful in terms of events, obviously, and it's thrown off my plans a lot. Had originally planned to go abroad midway through the year; lol. But I kept putting one foot forward, like I always do. I got through a year of my Masters, I'm now most of the way through. Beat one hellish placement, had a second postponed. Grades dipped. It's fine. Weirdly, it's been very good financially due to stimulus payments.

[Dinar87]

On 12/27/2020 at 8:44 AM, Lord Raven said:

I don't really post on SF much anymore, part because I'm just too old for some of the users here, part because my life has been hell the past few years, part because you can only discuss FE to death so much before you, personally, have just run out of relatively new shit to talk about. But I'm kinda wondering how everyone's 2020 went so we can all lift each other up from this awful year and talk about our goals in 2021.

My year was just a total disaster. Between COVID fucking my internship, my moveout, and my internship mulligan where our cryostat is straight up broken, my dad passing away and all the fucked up undiagnosed mental issues I'm having from taking care of him, and my PhD adviser yelling at me for not being productive despite all of this... Fuck this fucking year.

On the plus side, I'm looking like I'm 5 months away from finally finishing this PhD program (7 fucking years and a hairline later) and I can live in one place for more than 3 weeks when I get back. And weed is legal in AZ now (where I go to school).

Good job with the phd!!! I haven't even finished my a levels, let alone moved out and gone to uni

Edited December 28, 2020 by Dinar87

[SuperNova125]

Happy New year to everyone!!

Honestly, 2020 wasn't such a bad year personally. Obviously the pandemic changed my plans and many more things however, I try to think positively and the fact that all the people I hold dear were healthy makes me really happy. I also am a big introvert so quarantine also gave me the chance to calm down and look deeper within myself and come in terms with many things and change as a person for the better. I cut off all of my toxic friends and recently also met new people. I also "came out to myself" as in accepted my sexuality and also came out to some really close people. 

Edited January 1, 2021 by SuperNova125

[vanguard333]

Happy New Year!

Things I learned in 2020:

1. I learned that, despite having zero commute, taking university courses online somehow takes even more time. I suppose part of it may have been my choice of electives: an intro to medieval & early modern studies, and a history course on early modern Europe, when I am a math major who hasn't done an essay since high school. But I had already done all the "easy" electives that people recommended to me and I couldn't find anything else I'd be even remotely interested in, and I figured that my personal interest in the subject was going to be vital for powering through this term.

2. I learned that all the stories from my PC-gaming acquaintances about Nintendo fans that will defend everything Nintendo does and lash out at any criticism were very true. I didn't think that they were lying to me, but I thought that they must've been exaggerating or that it was no worse than any video game fanbase because I'm a Nintendo fan who has been critical of Nintendo in the past and I remember the days when it seemed like everyone other than me hated Wind Waker's art style. Then Mario 3D All-Stars and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity happened, and I didn't even criticize the game itself in the case of that last one; just the marketing that surrounded it.

You would not believe how much I got bombarded by comments spamming the same bad-faith arguments, calling me an unpleasable fanboy who must hate fun, and other annoying and irritating nonsense. The "you're just an unpleasable fanboy" stuff really got on my nerves because, as I said before, I was one of the people defending Wind Waker's art style in 2003 (granted, I was six, but still) amidst a wave of people going, "What's with this sailing and cartoon graphics?! Give us Ocarina of Time 2!" (I should probably point out that I have nothing against fans that wanted an OoT 2 and didn't like Wind Waker's graphics). I hadn't gotten bombarded like this since the time I said I didn't like The Last Jedi. I'm just grateful that that stuff doesn't happen on this site.

 

Things I did in 2020:

1. I got one of those anime streaming sites, so I was finally able to try some shows that friends and acquaintances were recommending to me and that before I had to say, "I'd like to try it, but Netflix doesn't have much anime". Over the summer, I watched Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden and got through all of it (though I skipped some filler arcs), My Hero Academia and Black Clover. My brother also showed me this one show called Konosuba that was pretty funny. 

2. I finally finished Valkyria Chronicles 4 and got the game's best ending. That was a really good game, though the final boss was a massive pain until I exploited something that I don't think the game intended. I got the game two years ago but kept being busy. 

3. Speaking of games, I bought a bunch that I have yet to finish: Final Fantasy 7 Remake looked really interesting and like a good entry point into the series for me, and I really do like the gameplay and plot so far, but I am concerned about these weird ghost creatures that are trying to make events play out in specific ways and that I know definitely weren't in the original even though I've never played the original. I also finally got Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, which I had been meaning to get for a couple years now but couldn't find. Not only did I find it, but it was on sale for more than 60% off, so of course I bought it. I also played a demo of Dragon Quest 11s... so I basically played a lot of JRPGs. 

[SSbardock84]

Awful year. I've never felt so emotionally horrible since 2016. On the bright side I graduated college at a good time and began graduate school in September online. I couldn't imagine going to classes in person during this. Also a real lack of new video games sucks. But I did get back into reading back in March and that has been really impactful on me, so that's a good thing. I've consumed so much crap dry so now that I have a whole new hobby to enjoy I'm running out of boredom.

[Shrow]

On 1/1/2021 at 9:04 AM, SuperNova125 said:

Happy New year to everyone!!

Honestly, 2020 wasn't such a bad year personally. Obviously the pandemic changed my plans and many more things however, I try to think positively and the fact that all the people I hold dear were healthy makes me really happy. I also am a big introvert so quarantine also gave me the chance to calm down and look deeper within myself and come in terms with many things and change as a person for the better. I cut off all of my toxic friends and recently also met new people. I also "came out to myself" as in accepted my sexuality and also came out to some really close people. 

I love this positive outlook, I need more of that in my environment. I am happy for you SuperNova125.

2020 wasn't that terrible for me. I had a similar experience in which the quarantine helped me with some much needed alone time.
I had 2 family members that got sick this year, not of Covid but rather of Cancer. My Uncle and Grand Uncle were both hit with Cancer but because Covid19 I couldn't visit to see them either. We can't risk their health any further.

My Uncle will be fine and I got to see him on Christmas eve but I haven't seen my Grand Uncle since 2019 I think. He's not recovering as well and I fear I won't see him before he passes.

On 1/1/2021 at 10:20 AM, vanguard333 said:

I learned that all the stories from my PC-gaming acquaintances about Nintendo fans that will defend everything Nintendo does and lash out at any criticism were very true.

I really hate this customer loyalty mentality. I was hoping that as time passes people might start bringing a more critical view on video game companies and money grabbing schemes. Unfortunately the opposite has happened, thanks to safe spaces and echo chambers. Insecurity is a hard thing to conquer, admitting ones lie is a tough pill to swallow. It will be a long time till we see progress.

On 12/27/2020 at 3:35 PM, NinjaMonkey said:

Trump lost and his supporters went in to meltdown mode, providing me with a lot of entertainment in lockdown. 10 out of 10, would recommend.

A highlight of the year. Happened in the 2016 election too, different colours but same meltdown. The American election is a gift that keeps on giving.