Kyo Yuy

2005 to mid 2007 was a part of my life that was heavily devoted to DDR and In the Groove. Thanks to dance games, I was able to lose 95 pounds and so far I’ve been FAIRLY good at keeping it off (with some slight increases in weight every now and then).

Back then, I was nothing short of OBSESSED with DDR. My passion for Nana Mizuki, Starcraft, Haruhi… none of that comes close to the obsession I had with DDR. I played compulsively, played 3 hours on weekends, played an hour every day, watched DDR videos… I was living and breathing DDR, and it quite literally consumed my life.

One of the things I was always on the lookout for, was potential “DDR rivals.” People who were near my skill level. Not people who would completely destroy me, or people who wouldn’t take DDR seriously and would just lose to me no matter what. And someone who wasn’t an arrogant douche, and had a lot of respect, and is extremely courteous.

By coincidence, I was able to meet that person through my Illinois group of friends. In early 2006, a graduate of Waubonsie Valley High School visited his old school and showed off his DDR skills. My friend Daniela referred to him as a “DDR God,” so naturally I grew extremely curious. I wanted to meet him. I wanted to play him. And I wanted to beat him, because my friends respected him and I felt that I could gain their respect more if I beat him.

Eventually, after talking to a number of friends about how to contact him and careful searching, I found him. And I played DDR with him. And he grew to be one of the most awesome people I had ever met.

That person is Max Biggs.

Max is special. In an era of speed mods and heavy bar raping, Max Biggs utilizes a purist 1x no bar DDR playstyle. Although he could improve his skill if he used speed mods, he always chose to avoid it. However, despite this, he NEVER criticizes anyone who uses mods or the bar. He’ll lose to people who bar rape and 3x and will accept the loss graciously. Most DDR purists tend to be really stuck up and arrogant about how they play DDR “the right way,” and it was really nice to meet someone who did not have such an arrogant mentality.

One thing I liked about having Max as my DDR rival was that he and I were at almost the same skill level. So when I played him, I always tried my hardest and he always pushed me to my limits. I loved playing DDR with Max. It was always incredibly fun. He’s also very sexy and I often wish I was a sexy Mexican man like him.

Even outside of DDR, Max has always been incredibly supportive and nice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him saying anything bad about anyone ever. He also works very hard and very independently to get what he wants and where he wants in life, and I admire that a lot. And despite how good he is at DDR, he has never once bragged about it. He is a very nice guy, and I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who can’t get along with him.

Max works very hard, and goes to school at the same time. He’s working very long hours WHILE aiming to get into medical school. And knowing how difficult getting into med school is, I have a lot of admiration for someone who is balancing a job AND getting into medical school.

Max has always been a wonderful friend. Because of our similar interests and goals, I feel we share a lot in common and we connect really well (we’re both around 155 pounds and 5′7, which only adds to the commonalities). Because he’s so busy and I’m so busy and he’s not as into anime, and also because he lives so far away, we don’t talk as much on a regular basis. But realistically, I see him as an awesome friend that I connect with VERY well, who’s just an amazing person to be around. I hope that one day our paths can cross again and I can become closer friends with him.

Cheers to you, Max Biggs. You’re made of win.

A few of you know about my Role Playing history from GundamWing.com. For those of you who don’t, way back when I was like, 13 years old, I went to the chatroom at the now defunct site, http://www.gundamwing.com/chat.asp (link is no longer valid).

I spent a good 5-6 years being an integral part of the community, even after GundamWing.com crashed and came back as AnimeMetro.com. AnimeMetro.com ultimately became the official website for the Florida anime convention MetroCon. I left AnimeMetro.com after it stagnated and most of the Role Playing scene left. Ironically, I would not have even known about anime conventions if MetroCon hadn’t come into existence, so I owe a lot to simply going to a chatroom at the age of 13.

This shoutout goes out to one of the earliest people I met at GundamWing.com. Before Amanda. Before Amber. Before Steve. Even before Dani and Patrick.

This one goes out to my second online girlfriend, and an individual who made a huge impression on me that has persisted to this day - Kayte Graves.

I met Kayte while I was still dating Alexandria (my first ever online girlfriend, THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS). Back then, she used the screen name Miika, and I was using the screen name Heero_Yuy. I wasn’t really Prince Charming back then (or even now haha) but, being that it was a GundamWing chatroom, a lot of the girls (who were Role Playing) were naturally attracted to characters named Heero. My first girlfriend RPed Relena so that was a natural consequence, so it didn’t surprise me that someone else would also want a piece of me just because of my screen name.

At first I was a little bit intimidated by what Kayte said in the chat. She kept threatening to kill herself. To this day, I don’t really know if she meant that in the Role Play sense or if she really meant to kill herself in real life. However, she told me sometime after our whole incident that she was really depressed around that time of her life, and then the attention I gave her really helped even though she was attracted to my character more than me.

The “y” in her name is actually something she added to her own name, as far as I know. Apparently, “y” stands for all the positive things in life, like happy, yuy, and other things of the sort.

She was the first girl to ever be that attracted and attached to me, so it was a really disorienting feeling for me. I’ve never had girls attracted to me before right off the get go, much less a girl who was head over heels for me. She said that she would take the conversations we had online, and the pictures I posted of myself, and put them on her locker at school. I don’t really know if that’s true or not, but that was really flattering to hear such wonderful words.

Kayte is a really nice and wonderful person though. She used to ride horses all the time (don’t know if she still does) and I think she did something along the lines of girl scouts or something like that. She gave me a huge self esteem boost that really defined my future attitudes and confidence towards talking to women online in future relationships.

At some point, she disappeared from AIM and the GundamWing.com chat, and I never spoke to her again. I saw her on AIM occasionally after that, but it wasn’t until many, many years later that I got a PM from her on Facebook. She asked me if she remembered a Miika from a chatroom along time ago, and I responded that of course I remembered.

To be honest, I had searched for her name on Facebook long before she contacted me, but I felt like I would be a creeper if I had approached her and asked her the same question. Funny how that ended up working out haha.

Kayte, being my second girlfriend EVER, had a huge impact on my self esteem and gave me valuable insight into how to approach girls and how to speak to them to make them feel important. She is currently in a wonderful relationship with someone from England (I think?) right now, and I’m really glad that she is able to be in such an awesome position.

Thanks for all the wonderful memories and the amazing experiences we had together Kayte. I wish you the best of luck with life and I hope everything works out well for you. It was a blast meeting you and getting to know you :).

My first special shoutout goes to a friend that I met at Case Western. He’s been a mutual acquaintance since Freshman year, but since Junior year we have become increasingly closer friends. We have very similar grades, and we’ve gone through similar personal issues through our college career. Unlike me though, he is more socially withdrawn, and possibly because of that, I have not noticed what an amazing person he is and how helpful he is until very recently. And because I have been greatly underestimating the help he has always given me, I would like to give my first shoutout to Joe Chen.

Joe has always been willing to lend a hand with my stuff whenever he had time. He’s been doing Kendo demonstrations and other activities since the beginning of my Junior year, he helps cook and prepare ingredients when I am in need of assistance, and at both Marathons as well as the sushi event, he stopped by the kitchen to see if I needed his help.

Joe also shares similar personal issues and personal challenges that I share. Like me, he also does not have complete and total focus when it comes to school and studies. While we both do the needed amount of work (i.e. homework and projects), we tend to slack off more when it comes to preparing for tests. Joe told me that he often ends up just barely below the cutoff for an A grade in a given class, and while I tend to sometimes barely make the cutoff for a B in the same class, we both share that issue of not being able to get as many As as our peers. However, while we’re lazy by Case student standards, I think we’re both reasonably hard workers in the big scheme of things. It’s just that we’re not overachievers and we don’t like to be obsessive study freaks.

Though what I like the most about Joe, that I’ve only discovered recently and I wish I had known earlier, is the personal issues that he has gone through. Like me, he has had his fair drama with friends, girls he likes, and peers that he just can’t seem to avoid. And it can be very awkward at times and make things depressing, just as it can on my end. However, ever since I’ve communicated with him more through my blog and through just talking to him in general, he’s come to realize just how similar our challenges are and how much drama we’ve both gone through.

I’ve been opening up to Joe more lately and I think that he has been opening up to me a lot more as well. I can really empathize with the relationship problems that he’s had in the past 2 or so years, and at the same time he’s been very supportive about my own personal issues and helping me come to terms with my internal conflicts. Seeing another person go through similar problems as my own has been very helpful to me, as it allows me to analyze the situation from a third person perspective and figure out what to do better without being affected by my emotional impulses.

It’s been an absolute honor to have known Joe all these years of undergrad at Case. I hope that our bond will continue to grow over the summer and next year if he decides to stay in Cleveland.

Dear Haley,

This will be my last letter that I write to you in a while. It’s not that I’m upset with you, or that I have emotional problems, or anything.

It’s quite the opposite, actually. I find that a lot of my letters involve me writing about more of the depressing aspects of life, and you get really worried when I am depressed about things and you often call me up or PM me to ask me if everything is okay.

And I am glad you care. I really am. But after the talk we had yesterday, I’m worried that your concern for me is also placing extra unneeded stress on you. I want you to focus on your life right now, and I want you to do what you feel you need to do to finish everything you need to finish.

I’m really glad we were able to work through our problems. There’s still a voice in the back of my mind that tells me you are just being nice, but I am trying my best to push it out and ignore it. I need to have more faith in my friends, and more importantly, myself. I need to believe that I do have intrinsic value, and that my value is what causes others to appreciate me and want to be my friend.

As for what will happen to this blog, I will try to shift the focus by beginning to write dedications to my friends on an individual basis. I feel that my feelings for you, while they have allowed me to really bond with you and become a much closer friend to you, has also caused me to distance myself from a lot of my other friends. So I want to try to get back in touch with the bonds I hold for my other friends by writing about each of them and how every single friend has had an impact on my life.

I wish you the best in life and in all your affairs. I’ll keep you in my prayers and I’ll always be willing to provide you support when you need it.

Yours,
Benson

Dear Haley,

I’m confused. I don’t know what to do.

- Benson

Dear Haley,

Today you called me asking if there was anything wrong and that you were a little bit worried about something.

I don’t want you to get all worked up about it, but since it bothers you I’ll get it out there.

At the sushi event, I was severely understaffed and I needed more people helping out with cutting vegetables, mixing the rice, adding rice vinegar, and serving ingredients. I was likewise understaffed at Marathon.

It’s totally fine that your grandparents had to pick you up Friday so you weren’t able to help, I’m not upset at that at all. But when you say you want to help and then… don’t help, I guess it makes me a bit upset.

I don’t need any apologies or anything. Don’t feel guilty or awful over it either, because it’s all in the past and words and feelings can only do so much.

Just… next time don’t say you want to help if you really don’t want to help. It’s fine if you don’t want to help, a lot of my friends don’t. It’s a lot of work and that’s totally understandable. But if you DO want to help, then don’t show up and not offer assistance when it looks like IT COULD REALLY BE USEFUL.

It’s not a big deal overall, don’t let it eat you up or anything. You don’t HAVE to help, because you’re a guest at the events first and foremost, and your personality in itself is wonderful. And if you deep down don’t really want to help, then please don’t try to sound nice by saying things like “I really want to help.” The words are really nice, but when they aren’t backed up by actions it can be… slightly upsetting, I suppose.

Any way, have a happy Easter, and good luck with the rest of your semester. I’ll be keeping you in my prayers.

- Benson

Dear Haley,

Have you ever reached a very difficult juncture in your life and become totally confused as to what to do next? A lot has been weighing on my mind lately, and to be honest I’m not really sure what I should be doing right now.

One thing that I have become aware of recently, is that I lack SELF confidence. I can only believe in myself when I feel that others believe in me. This is a very dangerous way for me to live my life, because if I do not have people there to support me, I lose all confidence and retreat to a corner and hide. Although it also means that I will have a LOT of confidence when my friends and supporters around me, the opposite is true. And letting my mood be determined by the respect of my peers can be a very dangerous thing, as I have gone through many times in the past.

I’ve had my GPA suffer and had my focus in classes become adversely affected by lack of support from friends. And while having the support of friends is a beautiful thing, I have to believe in myself above all else. Because if I can’t do that, then I will always be holding myself back.

I need to believe in myself. Because the biggest barrier to success is myself. So I have to conquer my own inner demons before I can really reach my full potential.

Lately, a few of my friends have been worried for my personal well being and emotional state. Some have said that I’m an emotional trainwreck and that I’m a complete mess, but that if I keep walking through the road I’m on now, I’ll only be setting myself up for more pain. As difficult as it is, I must change the path that I am walking on and realize that I cannot be happy in the long term. I have been very happy in the short term, but that happiness has been interspersed with anger and very strong depression. I have lost control of my own emotions and I need to regain that control.

I only wonder, if the path that my friends have proscribed for me is the right one. Will it allow me to finally accomplish the goal I’ve been seeking all this time, or will it instead destroy me and set me on a path to blazing destruction? Only time will tell.

Though, for my own sake, I hope I am doing the right thing.

- Benson

Dear Haley,

Have you ever wondered why Good Friday is called “Good” Friday? It seems a little weird, considering what the day represents in the biblical context. And considering it’s the only day of the year (I think Saturday too maybe, but not sure) that the sanctuary candle isn’t lit, it seems like the word good might not be the most appropriate word to use to describe the day.

But in any case, today was a pretty good day. The sad news is, I wasn’t able to complete the last three hours of volunteering today. Mineh IMed me this morning about life and my personal issues, and most importantly about helping me with the book! He’s going to be a motivational support, setting goals and deadlines for me so I can keep on track with writing the book and stay motivated. Since I’m so intimidated by worrying about failures, and since I’m scared that I simply don’t have the qualifications or the reputation to get a book published, I often hold myself back. But Mineh assured me that if I kept my heart at it, I can make ANYTHING happen so it’s really good. He’s going to start me off by having me write a query letter and have that sent to any literary agents that do stuff with self help books. I think that’ll help me get on the right track, and since I wanted to start working on my book as soon as my Lent commitment ended, I think it’ll be a good segue way into the next “phase” of my life.

Mineh also has a lot of personal experience with being a geek and dating. And since he’s 8 years older than me, in his age he didn’t have computers so he didn’t have the luxury of getting to know people online first before knowing them in person. He had to really man up and commit himself to learn to open up to people and start talking to girls, and not worry about being rejected. He helps a lot of his friends with motivation and techniques to build confidence. His rapidfire rapid change approach is a stark contrast to my slow confidence building approach that utilizes the Internet. And since our approaches are so radically different, and he’s coauthoring with me, the synthesis of my ideas with his will make for a very well rounded presentation that can appeal to a very wide audience. So I’m looking forward to that.

I think I’ve found a very close friend in Mineh. While he is very brutally honest, he also has a lot of respect for me and he also wants to help me through a lot of my problems. He’s a lot more awesome than I realized, and there’s more to him than just being that cool guy that everyone looks up to. He’s also helping me open up more by taking me to other things that I normally wouldn’t, such as a bar (although I don’t drink and neither does he, he tells me part of self improvement is trying to go outside one’s own comfort zone). He’s not going to try to get me drunk, just trying to put me in an environment I normally wouldn’t put myself in. Originally he suggested that I should go to a shooting range, but I am EXTREMELY morally against using weapons even if it’s just shooting a blank target, so after a long discussion on it he let me pick my own discomfort and I said I would be uncomfortable with being at a bar, so we went with that.

While I’m a little bit apprehensive and worried, at the same time I am also hopeful because if I really want to succeed and become a more well rounded applicant, I need to be willing to go outside my comfort zone and try new things, because my parents aren’t going to know where I can go. Apparently his girlfriend Laura has done a lot of amazing extracurriculars too, so she’s going to help me with that.

I look forward to my future endeavors and personal self improvement.

- Benson

Dear Haley,

I’m really worried about you right now. You’ve got so much on your plate and it’s very unfair. You’re being paid very little to do a lot more than most students can handle. I’ll keep you in my prayers.

That said, I don’t want you to worry too much about me right now. I know I’m one of your friends and you really care about me, but really the whole dating/not dating situation only bothers me about as much as it bothers you. It’s confusing and a little bit frustrating, but it means very little to me compared to the more important issues, like focusing on MCAT, making sure I don’t completely fail all my classes this semester, and figuring out what I want to do over the summer and for next year.

It’s especially worrisome now that I’ve been put on the ALTERNATE list for JET as opposed to an acceptance. So I don’t even know what I want to do. I have the idea to publish a book and maybe I’ll be able to get a research internship through Kelsey’s dad, but right now I have few to no definitive plans for next year and that’s an issue.

I hope that you can continue to feed suggestions in my direction as to things I can do. Anything that can fill up my resume for med school that I can at least try to see if I enjoy it or not.

But in any case I wish you the best of luck with everything.

- Benson

So I recently watched the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.

Now, FMA was one of my favorite anime series of all time. I was introduced to the show by a very good friend of mine in 2004, and the show hooked me right from episode one. With the heartwrenching scene involving Edward and Alphonse at the very beginning of the series, the show had a fine mix of humor, seriousness, and tension. The plot progression was at a reasonable pace that was fast when it needed to be, and slow when time was needed to develop characters of the series.

Given how popular and amazing the original FMA anime was, the remake had a very high standard to live up to.

So does the new series live up to or exceed the standards set by the original? I don’t want to give up right away, but I must say I was sorely disappointed by what I’ve seen so far.

The episode doesn’t even open up with a focus on Edward and Al, but rather on a depiction of some random renegade alchemist that no one really cares about. This is a stark contrast to the first episode of the original series, which depicted Edward and Al exposing the fraud of an alchemist posing as a priest and using that to take advantage of a poor, struggling city. The latter was able to place a strong emphasis on some of the major themes of the series from the get go: the Principle of Equivalent Exchange, the idea of independence, the consequences of Edward trying to act like a hero, and the idea that sometimes corruption might be better left untouched if people are happy with the way things are.

The first episode of the new FMA series has none of that. Instead, we have a lot of action, a lot of jokes about Edward Elric being short, and some very weak exposition of the main cast that introduces them in a nondramatic and, dare I say, boring manner.

In stark contrast to the balanced humor-serious character that Maes Hughes was in the original series, the first episde of this series makes Hughes come off as rather obnoxious. Roy Mustang, who was always known to be a fine mix of dimwitted, flirty, and sympathetic, comes off as rather bland and detached.

That seems to be a problem with all the characters that have been introduced so far. Compared to how they were in the original series, many of the new characters seem rather flat, 2D, and not very emotional. Of course this is only the first episode, so I am not going to judge the entire series based on this one episode alone, but so far I must say I am not too pleased.

The show failed to capture me in the first 10 minutes of the show, so I did not bother to watch the rest of the episode. I found the pacing to be way too slow (possibly because I’ve watched too much Code Geass) and the characters to lack any sort of emotional depth. Part of the reason I didn’t watch the entire episode was because I was busy with school, so I did not have much patience to watch a series that couldn’t keep me entertained the whole time.

Hopefully, next week’s episode will have a better pace, and the characters will be able to draw me in as they were once able to 5 years ago. It is FMA, so I have high hopes and high expectations.