Things I Would Like to See in 2025

There’s not a Christmas episode of Teen Titans, you know. Which is weird, considering that there’s a Fourth of July episode (and arguably a Halloween one?). 

Anyhow, it’s still Christmas (there are twelve days of it), it’s also Hanukkah, and the New Year is coming up fast. Let’s talk about some things we want to see in the New Year! I did this for 2024; let’s see how 2025 fares.

Things I’d Like to See in 2025

Less Ads

Dear Lord in Heaven have ads gotten out of control! Watching YouTube can be such a pain, as you’ll get a full minute, or more, for videos which aren’t even a minute long! I’ve managed to get an ad-blocker on my browser, which helps in browsing the net considerably. I’ve also noticed that if you open a YouTube video in another tab, and let it sit for a while, you’re less likely to get ads. 

Still! This is ridiculous! I go to a gas station, and as I’m filling my tank, there are video ads playing! With volume! Most of my Facebook feed on my phone is ads! Fan wikis are unreadable without a blocker, because it’s so slow due to ads! Video essays need interruptions while the speaker tries to sell me something! Promotions for free food on certain days turn out to be ads for pointless apps!

I understand that the economy is tight, and making money on the Internet is difficult. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to plaster every possible surface and every inch of the Web in intrusive, annoying ads. One of these days it’s going to cause damage. I hope by the end of 2025, we figure out something else.

Catholic Charity

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, I put up some links on Tumblr for charities helping relief efforts, including the North Carolina Catholic diocese. One person commented on the link that, “While I’m Catholic, I don’t trust Catholic charities, because they could give my donations to illegal immigrants.” Somehow, I managed to not start an argument, but merely pointed out that I had other charities linked in the appropriate tag.

A guy straight-up said, “I’m Catholic, but I don’t trust our charities to not give to people who need it, because they’re not people I support.” Nyeh??? Our Lord did not give a suggestion on how to treat people who need help. Regardless of whether or not you think we should be letting more or less people into the country, when we can help people not die, we should be helping people not die. That is the Commandment. 

[I also strongly suspect this guy was mixing up news/headlines on how FEMA had, before Helene, given funds to charities, such as Catholic charities, that helped illegal immigrants, and somehow thought that if you donated to such a charity explicitly calling for help on this tragedy, it would somehow be diverted to immigrant relief. Which is stupid, but there ya go.]

There are Christian charities doing plenty of good work out there. I only hope that we Christians (and we Catholic in particular) do better at acknowledging and supporting them.

Release Date for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse

Beyond the Spider-Verse was supposed to come out the year after Across the Spider-Verse. Then it came out that there was a lot of crunch behind the scenes, and animators were almost crushed by their workloads. That sucked! So the next movie was delayed for better working conditions, and then a writers’ strike happened, and yeah, it’s fine. Look, if a delay means the people working on the film get better working conditions and better pay, I am all for that. Entertainment does not take priority over people’s lives.

That being said, I would like to know when to expect this movie? Last update we got was that it probably won’t be until 2026, at the earliest. Bummer, dude.

Also, news on the Wonder Woman game would be swell.

More Art

I’d like to draw and paint more, I guess. I’m not actually much good at it, but I want to try to do it more. Not to ever be in a professional level, just have a better grasp of it. I like drawing dragons, and recently got a book on drawing dragons from the library. I might check it out again later, along with some other drawing books.

James Gurney’s supposed to have one. I hear it’s pretty good.

More Barbecue

One of these days, we’re going to have the Barbecue Conversation–about how different people in different parts of the country (and the world!) mean very different things when they say the word ‘barbecue’. However, I am talking about real barbecue, North Carolina barbecue, pulled or chopped pork, with tomato or vinegar-based sauce. None of that mustard-based heresy. There’s nothing wrong with brisket or ribs, but that’s not barbecue.

I would like to eat more barbecue in 2025. It isn’t that I didn’t have much in this year, I just want to make sure I am clear that I am happy to eat more in this upcoming year.

Albums on Facebook

I am begging you people: organize your photos into albums. It is difficult to find specific photos sometimes; it is near impossible if you don’t organize them by category of some sort on your page. The alternative is to just scroll through rows of photos, hoping to find the right one, assuming you remember the chronology of your friends’ lives in exact details.

You know what would make this easier? Albums! They’re not hard.

I strongly suspect the reason they’re out of fashion is Instagram, and I have made my feelings on that site clear enough. 

Categorize your photos, d’arvit.

Less Stupid Discourse

When I want to find a critique for a piece of media, I very much do not want to find a YouTube video about how ‘woke ideology’ is destroying what we love. It’s really dumb. I’m quite distressed to find the massive backlash to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows online, due almost entirely to the fact that one of its two stars is a black man (though notably, pre-orders in Japan were still huge).

This kind of stunned me. If the argument really was that people were upset about the main character wasn’t native Japanese, but was instead Yasuke… well, there are two main characters, one of whom fits the bill. The other is that no one got that upset about the game Nioh, which also featured a historical, non-Japanese samurai as the player character, but because that one was white apparently no one got angry. If it’s the idea that Ubisoft is pushing a progressive agenda… well, you would think they’d have thrown a fit in 2015 when the disclaimer in front of every game in the series included, for the first time, the phrase that the team and stories they tell are inclusive of different orientations and gender identities. Of course, neither of those happened, meaning that what people are actually angry about is seeing a black man as (one of!!) the player characters.

I want people to have conversations that don’t derail over the stupidest things. If you critique something, I hope that in the future it’s for actual flaws, not because you’re racist, or because you’re using whatever piece of media as the new battleground in the Culture Wars.

Another Dresden Files

Last I saw, the newest novel in Jim Butcher’s series is almost 90% done. I would like to see it all the way done! The last book in the series was in 2020, and he also released a book in another series in the meantime. Hopefully, the book can be completed, and published in the next year. It’s a complex series, with a winding Plot, though it’s clearly going somewhere important and I want to know where.

Also, I’m currently re-reading Codex Alera, and it’s reminding me how much I like Jim Butcher books.

More Dragons

Duh.

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