Why Do People Expect It?

I think before we talk about how you can keep up, we need to talk about why there is a pressure to keep up. And, honestly, if this pressure is even a good thing. I’ll answer the second question first. No, it is not a good thing. But let’s talk about why there is pressure.

People Want You To Like What They Like

This one generally is pretty harmless, though, it can be twisted. People often want you to know what is coming up and be involved in it because they are. They want to be able to talk about it with you, and, at it’s purest form, they want you to have the same joy that they are feeling.

It can be twisted into an expectation, though. Often people will use this as an expectation that you will like what they like. All of these things are very subjective. I might not like The Witcher not because it’s bad but because I don’t like fantasy. Now, we know that to be a lie, I do like fantasy, but as an example.

To Show You’re Cool

This one is never a good reason, liking something doesn’t make you cool. And expecting someone to like someone, or pressuring them to watch something and like something, also doesn’t make you cool. This comes from social media and the expectation that you can post about stuff and that will show a cool credibility. But there are plenty of people who will put on pressure and expectations that you need to keep up, or I need to keep up.

Why Should You Be Keeping Up?

There’s very few good reasons to be keeping up on everything. In fact, I don’t think there is a good reason to keep up on everything. Instead, I think that you can and should keep up on what you really love. But don’t give yourself the expectation that you need to.

Alex Radcliffe from BoardGameCo talked about this a bit with board games and board game reviews in particular. And it makes me think of a review that No Pun Included did on Tainted Grail. They powered through the whole game in a span or a week or two and did not like the game. And you can equate this to a Netflix show where everything drops at once. When you create an expectation for yourself that you need to watch something or play all of something immediately to be first, to be able to talk about it best, it loses it’s fun.

So you should be keeping up with stuff you love at a pace that is reasonable for it. For me, this can look like board games I don’t need to back on Kickstarter. For example, I talked about Mythwind today. This game is on Kickstarter currently and it looks really interesting. It is supposed to be like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing where there is no win condition. I want to play it. But I do not need to back it right now, I can buy it later if I really want to.

How Do You Keep Up?

The answer, to me, is you don’t. Not because it’s bad to keep up, but because you literally can’t. For board games, thousands come out a year, anime episodes, thousands a year, movies, most years thousands a year, comics, thousands a year. I could go on to drive home this point, but the point is that even if you have a very focused hobby, there’s probably more than enough to keep you busy for more than a year.

So I think the question is less how do you keep up, but how to be at peace with not keeping up?

Keeping Up Doesn’t Make You Cool

The first piece is that you aren’t cool by keeping up. Sacrificing sleep to watch a show doesn’t make you cool. Spending lots of money on action figures doesn’t make you cool. And it’s a bit harsh for me to put it that way. But let’s turn it into a positive, you don’t need to feel the pressure of this. It can be a load off of your shoulders as you remember that being the first to something doesn’t make it your life more enjoyable. Instead go at a pace that brings you joy.

Not Keeping Up Means You Can Delve Into Stuff Deeper

For a lot of people keeping up means diving into something 100% for a week and then moving onto the next thing. Netflix seemingly drops a new show ever week, add in Amazon Prime, Disney+, Funimation, CrunchyRoll, Apple TV and more how many things can you keep up on. The speed you’d need to dive into the new favorite thing is going from weeks to a week to eventually days before you need to move onto the next cool thing.

I actually really like that the Marvel shows come out one at a time. Because I get to sit with and think about the show more. I can go into the breakdowns that New Rockstars, ScreenCrush, and Mr Sunday Movies are doing. I can chat about it every week with a coworker who loves Marvel as well. If Disney+ dropped them all at once it’d be a one and done experience.

Relieves The Pressure of Having to Love the Right Things

When you stop trying to keep up, you don’t need to love everything. Or at least seem like you love everything. You now no longer need to think about something that doesn’t interest you. When I stopped watching Game of Thrones it was nice. I always knew I wasn’t that interested in it but it was a group activity, and that group was fun to be around. When that group stopped meeting, I watched some more on my own because I felt like I should.

It was only when I stopped watching it did I realize how much I didn’t care about Game of Thrones. And I was happier for not watching it because it’s a depressing and frustrating show. Now you might love the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones (or even eight) and that’s great, but for me, it was nice not to feel like I should be watching it.

And you can do that with anything. Whether it’s the newest hottest board game, the video game that drops on next week, whatever it might be. And it leads into the last thing.

It’ll Be As Good One Month or One Year Later

If it is something that is great, you can find it later. So going back to Mythwind, if that is a game I want, I can find it later. It might cost a bit more on the secondary market, but that’s okay, it’s not taking up space now. And as much as physical space, it’s not taking up head space. If a game isn’t on my shelf, I won’t see it and think about playing it. Same goes for Netflix or a book. Don’t add a show to your queue, if it’s worth your time you’ll find it again. If a book is really good, they’ll show up at book stores for a long time.

Will you miss out on the initial hype, on that moment in time when to be cool you Tweeted about it? Sure. But will you have the bandwidth to get in on that anyways? The more you have to try and keep track of and keep up with at once the less you can dive into it and enjoy it.

So Don’t Even Try?

There are some things that are worth keeping up with. So it’s not that you don’t try, it’s that you find what is worth keeping up with for you. What do you care about knowing about? What do you want to dive into deeply and get immersed in? That’s up to you, not what is popular at the moment, not the newest hottest thing that is coming out. It’s not that you don’t try, it is that you get to choose what you really care about, which is way more fun. And if something is great, you can always come back to it later.

What is the thing that you dive the most into?

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I am not shy about being nerdy, I will talk anyone’s ear off about board games. That said, and as the previous paragraph implies, I want my living space to be functional for nerdy things, but for other things as well. So I don’t want every inch of the place to look like a massive board game fan lives here, unless I have enough games for all of it.

Bold or Subtle

As I talk about this, I am sitting in a very nerdy room. I have board games everywhere around me, I have action figures for comics, movies, and anime, there are D&D books and comics on shelves as well as classic video games. This room is a very bold and nerdy room. I even have expansion box covers on the floor that I am going to be putting up on the walls. This is a very bold and nerdy room.

On the flip side, in our living room. It looks pretty standard. Yes, there is a Switch and a PS4 hooked up to the TV. And yes, one of the pieces of art does have a T.A.R.D.I.S. as part of it. But it’s the subtle little pops of nerdiness that you might not notice if you aren’t looking for them. Like, in the kitchen on the sill next to the sink, there is a baby Yoda little figure. It isn’t something that you’d notice walking into the room, but it is there.

Why talk about this, because not every room needs to be so obviously nerdy. I don’t need a Kallax of board games in my living room. I don’t need movie posters hung up there. But in some of the other rooms, I can really lean into the nerdiness. When thinking about decorating nerdy, I don’t think people should hide the fact that they are nerdy. I proudly show off my game room to people. But with that, I also don’t think every room needs to be only nerdy.

Decorate for Function

What do I mean by this? Well, in my gaming room, I can make it super nerdy, because it is meant to be very nerdy. The room has a single focus, to play board games. The room with the games at our old house, that was for storing games and a guest bedroom. So I shouldn’t have gone crazy in that room and made it all nerdy with all the decorations because, it had to function as a bedroom as well. Here, I can have a gaming table and it’s all good.

But on the flip side, consider the function of your living room or kitchen. Those are supposed to function as well, a kitchen and a living room. If I were to put game shelves in our living room and a gaming table, I have now changed the function of that room. And I don’t just have people over to play board games. I want to hang out, maybe watch a movie, play with the toddler, have conversations, host holidays, things like that. If I were to make the living room extremely nerdy, it would no longer meet that functional requirement, and the house as a whole wouldn’t.

That is why the living room and kitchen might have those nerdy pops, but they aren’t completely nerdy. They aren’t going to be a space where it loses the functionality of the room in order to be nerdy. Now, this varies with your living situation, when I lived as a bachelor in an apartment, I could have the main areas be nerdier. Why, because I didn’t have the excess space for a game room, for a library. Everything had to be in the main area.

But What Do You Decorate With?

Well, let’s talk about our three nerdy rooms to be. I say to be because the theater room will get finished over time and the library will be getting it’s wall creating it in June and the start of July.

The Gaming Room

With the gaming room, I have just gone all over the place with nerdy. Right now since I have comics in here, I went with comics as well as just some other posters and things that I had. But I am going to be changing it up. The comics will likely stay, but there are a few things that I want to do.

Firstly, I have expansion box covers, and this actually drove some of the thinking. With that expansion box covers, I want to put them up on the wall to create some cool art. In particular I have 5 box covers for Marvel United that I can put up which will bridge that gap between the games and the comics. It also means that I don’t feel bad about throwing away the rest of the boxes and condensing stuff down, because now I got some art.

I also want to add in some hanging shelves or maybe even a plate rail. A plate rail is basically a thin shelf with a little lip that generally goes up pretty high in a room. If I were to get that, I could start to story and display the action figures up there but as well minis that I have painted to show them off. For example, all the Marvel United minis that need to be painted. All of that together would give it a cohesive feeling for gaming.

The Theater Room

I won’t talk about this one as much because I already have talked about it. You can find that in the article on Building a Home Theater. But to do a quick recap, we are going to have movie posters on the wall or TV show posters, we have a popcorn machine and we have some soft lighting to give it more of that movie theater feel. We want it to be a cozy space, as well, though, for sitting and enjoying a movie, so we have a futon, a 6″ long bean bag chair, and a chair down there.

As the room gets finished off, I might add in some sound dampening and I am guessing we’ll paint it a darker color so that the screen doesn’t reflect off the walls as much. Basically, we want it to feel a bit like a theater and mainly like a really relaxing place to watch a show or a movie.

The Library

Finally, we have the library. The library we are going to be focused on a few things. We had some fairy pictures that we had in a bathroom at our old place. Now we don’t have room for that, so they will go in the library. Along with that we are going to be adding in other book related nerdy things. We have a Hobbit throw pillow, a Sherlock Holmes cutout, and Kristen is going to go create a book nook.

The book nook is going to fall in line with books as well fairies as it is going to be a like a little fairy themed one. I think that will be fun to really be that subtle nerdy things in an already very nerdy room. I like it when a space has enough going on in it that you are looking and finding new things over time. This also works well with subtle things.

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But we all know about all of those things, sometimes it’s just tricky to remember.

Instead, I want to look back on 2020 thus far, and call out things that I have been thankful for in the nerdy realm.

I’m thankful for finishing Gloomhaven. It took a while, but we got through all of Gloomhaven, and as much as I love that game, and as much as it’s not terrible on Table Top Simulator, I was glad to play the last few sessions in person, outside, and wrap up that game. I’ll miss playing it, but next year I will have Frosthaven eating up space on my shelf as well to play.

I’m thankful for the virtual game nights that I’ve had. I’ve done a few with different groups of people Yes, it isn’t the same as in person, but I’ve made a lot of games work via video. Ganz Schon Clever, Criss Cross, Scattergories, Cross Clues, Just One, Hues and Cues, and I’m probably missing one or two. And beyond that we’ve played Jack Box Games as well which works nicely via Zoom. We had a few months with moving where we didn’t game, but overall it has been good to do that.

Starting Tainted Grail. Tainted Grail is not a game that should work that well via Zoom. However, we made it work, getting a few rules wrong in Chapter 1, and with a slight change on my end, I think it’ll be even better for us. I’ve been wanting to play this game in a group as it was good solo, but I love sharing an interesting story with people.

I’m thankful that I got to do a few games with the virtual GenCon. Probably my biggest disappoint was not being able to go to GenCon in terms of nerdy things this year. As an extrovert that was just so incredibly fun last year. I didn’t do a full slate of things like I would have had I been going in person, but I got three games in, which was a lot of fun. I got to play Night Cage, which I was backed on Kickstarter at the time, Fruit Picking, and The Librarians, which I almost backed because of playing it on Kickstarter. It was different, but I did have fun getting to play those games and be a part of the community that way.

I’m also thankful for the Mandalorian. We haven’t gotten much in the way of nerdy things on television or in the theaters this year. We will have nothing from Marvel and DC, honestly, I just kind of ignore at this point. But we did get Season 2 of the Mandalorian which is still just as good as the first season. It’s nice having that Friday evening fun back again.

All Systems Go is another thing that I’m thankful for. It’s a little local game shop that I get my Marvel Champions stuff from and where I trade in games. It’s been nice to be able to swing in there, look at their trades and chat for a few minutes once a month or so when I pick up the next hero or villain pack for Marvel Champions. And they delivered when businesses were shut down in Minnesota this spring into early summer. So even though I might not be playing quite as many games, I still have a steady supply of them.

I am thankful for GloryHoundd YouTube channel and community. I don’t watch many live YouTube videos, but every Friday at work, I join to watch their Kickstarter stream and it’s been a blast interacting with GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg there and on their Discord and with the other people who are showing up to watch as well. It’s been a really nice way to have community even without being able to get around people.

Finally, I’m thankful that I was able to get a D&D game going via Zoom. I hadn’t been running a D&D game for a bit, and there was a chance I was going to play in one, but with Covid, that game didn’t happen. So instead I took up running a game and I’ve been a lot of fun, I have a lot of Friday Night D&D written about it the Tower of the Gods game, if you want to catch up with where I’m at. But D&D works well via video, sometimes we talk over each other, but I’ll try and get back to someone if that happens, and it’s a good time that I’m very thankful for and thankful to have friends to play with.

So with 2020 coming to a close in a month or so, what are some of the things that you’ve been thankful for?

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Why would you watch wrestling, it’s fake?

That’s probably the most common question about why people would watch wrestling. Yes, it is fake, but it’s the absurd silly story telling and action that make it fun. I enjoy it because of it’s absurdity and because with the action they can actually weave a story that kind of makes sense. It is intense, pulse pumping, action with sections of cringe inducing chunks of dialog and sometimes really awesome dialog.

Why is it Nerdy (or is it even)?

It’s so much like kind of watching someone play a game of Fiasco. It’s insane storytelling, it’s something that you can speculate about. And most nerdy things are stuff that people get very invested into, try and figure out what is going on and what is going to happen. It’s like watching a low level play or movie that unfolds with a whole lot more action, and both of those things can be nerdy things that people can invest themselves in. For those reasons, it’s definitely something that is nerdy or geeky or however you want to put it.

So how do you get started watching it?

That’s a great question. For me, it was seeing some pro wrestling in high school that was on the TV and then watching some in college. But it wasn’t until recently (about August) that I really got back into it again. But how would I recommend starting to watch it? Watch it with someone who is already watching it. There are always story lines that are going on, so there isn’t a great spot to just jump in and get all new stories. Maybe you don’t have someone you can watch it with as everyone else thinks it is dumb (don’t let those people dissuade you if you want to watch it), then you just kind of have to jump into it. I would probably start with watching Smackdown on Tuesdays. It’s a shorter show than RAW the Monday show, and that means it moves faster, has less filler, and has less stories to learn about. The announcers and the production does a good job of touching on the stories that have been told and are being told so that it gets a mini-recap each week.

Who are some of the wrestlers that you need to know or cheer for?

There is no correct answer for that. But here are some of the big names: Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Chris Jericho, Charlotte, Bayley, Sasha Banks, New Day, Enzo and Big Cass are all on RAW. For Smackdown there is AJ Styles, John Cena, Dean Ambrose, The Miz (and he is awwwwwwwesome), Becky Lynch, Alexa Bliss, The Wyatt Family, Randy Orton. There are legends like The Undertaker, Goldberg, and Brock Lesnar as well. But everyone really picks who they like to watch and who they really enjoy. There is no right or wrong answer and even the people who most people don’t like Roman Reigns there are still people who like him. So spend some time and find who you like and who you don’t.

How do you talk about it?

There’s a reason for this, there is a little vocabulary that you might want to know:

Face/Heel: A face is someone who the crowd is supposed to like, they are the good guy who doesn’t cheat when the wrestle. A heel is someone you aren’t supposed to like. They are a jerk to people, they cheat to win, if they have a title belt, they keep it by questionable means.

Work/Shoot: So, this deals with the promos that the wrestlers do. A work is a semi-scripted to fully scripted series of lines that they deliver. A shoot is not scripted, that’s when two or more wrestlers are giving a promo without a script. The shoots tend to be more interesting, but what the WWE really wants to do is have a work feel like a shoot.

Kayfabe: This is a term that isn’t used all that much anymore, but back when the internet was barely a thing, they really wanted people to believe that it was real, so they would spend all the time and effort trying to get people to think that fake injuries were real, that the wrestlers really did hate each other all the time. It’s not really a thing anymore, people like John Cena does a lot of charity work, he’s in movies, and on television talking about wrestling and promoting it even when he isn’t supposed to be around. Now the story line elements just stay with that.

Then there are all sorts of moves that you’ll learn about eventually.

So why write it now, because it’s the Royal Rumble. It’s the second biggest pay per view event of the year, so it was the right time to talk about it. The Royal Rumble is one of the most fun events of the year if not the most. So if you are wondering about pro wrestling, it’s a great time to start.

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