Why How I Met Your Mother Ended Well.

So I've recently (Like in the last twenty-four hours) finished the How I Met Your Mother T.V. series and contrary to popular belief I thought the series ended on a relatively high note. I certainly don't think that every character got their ideal ending, but that would've been ridiculous if that had happened and I think it works out better for the group it ends this way. It does make me a little sad knowing that Ted had to get snubbed the hardest to make this happen, since he was my personal favorite, if nothing cause he was the one that was consistently single and I'm consistently single as well so I connected with him. Regardless I'm going to go through each of the five major characters and give both a grade for their ending and why I gave it that grade. Marhsall/Lily (They're a unit) get a A, Robin get's an A-,  Barney receives a B+, and Ted scores the lowest with a B-. If it isn't already insanely obvious there are complete and total spoilers for those of you that haven't finished the series.

SPOILER ALERT

Stop reading now if you care about that sort of thing. 

So let's talk reasoning. Marshall and Lily are the real winner of the series since they both get to go and live their dream jobs, have a wonderful family and arguably the deepest relationship in the series. Seriously, they go to Italy, have more kids, Marshall becomes a judge and then makes the state supreme court and they somehow manage to keep their whole group together in the end even though they came insanely close to losing Robin, but I'm going to assume that with Ted and Robin getting back together she is able to more consistently make group outings since it's not such a huge pain for Robin so Lily keeps her best friend. Yes, the Eriksens do alright for themselves if I do say so myself.

Next up we get Robin. Initially I thought that Robin had the most satisfactory ending, but as I thought more about it, I had kind of hoped that her and Barney had made everything work out and could stay together. Alas, that was not meant to be as there were other factors in play, but she does get to have an incredible career as a news anchor all over the world (Is that even a thing?) and does eventually end up with the guy that was probably better for her in the end.

Let's talk Stinson, here's where I get into the other factors I mentioned with Robin. We're all aware of the fact that Robin can't have children, nor does she really want them anyways. Barney wants kids though, mostly I think so that he can have all the experiences of being a parent and having a family that he feels that he didn't get to have because of his father leaving. It feels weird that only by random chance that Barney actually does have a child, but it's all he needed to really change into the person he always could have been. I would've given him an A if there was something that confirmed that he and the mother of his child make it work, but with literally no info I'm forced to keep him at a B+.

Ted, Ted, Ted. It does suck quite a bit that his wife does die in the manner that she did, but it's also oddly appropriate. Ted only got the opportunity to meet her because the love of her life died early so it makes sense that something similar would happen to Ted. Ted without a doubt though met the love of his life though and got to have all those wonderful experiences that go along with that. You know, kids and all that jazz. It would have been better I think if the wife hadn't died obviously since she was like totally perfect for Ted, but having it this way allows for a better end for all the characters. The waiting six years thing makes it much better in my opinion as well since it makes it into a scenario where Ted wasn't just waiting for the opportunity to go after Robin again, but rather reinforcing that Tracy (The mother) was the one for him but its time to move on.

So in the end Ted and Barney didn't get what I would have ideally wanted for them, but this ending  is pretty good still. It's definitely not the best end to a T.V.  series in my opinion, but its far from the worst as well. That's my two cents at least.

This scene was absolutely adorable though and I'm not afraid to admit it. 

A Quick Response to "Video Games vs The Brain"

A good friend of mine recently wrote a post on her blog titled, "Video Games vs The Brain" wherein she talked about a study conducted by a professor Akio Mori. In the study Professor Mori brought in subjects that fit into one of four categories: normal, (Those who rarely played games) visual, (Those who are avid TV viewers) half-video game, (Those who played played less than fifteen hours a week) and video game (Those who played games at least two hours a day.) Professor Mori then measured the brain waves of the subjects and found that those in the visual and video game group did not have much activity in the areas of the brain related to creativity and emotion. Shay (The author of the blog) Then extrapolated some of her thoughts on the results of the study and about excessive gaming and television watching in general.

Now before I get into my response I would like to say a couple of things, first off being that I quite enjoyed this post. It's an interesting discussion and I thinks its good to have discussion about it. Secondly, can we be real for a minute and mention how absolutely awful having the font, size, and colour of the text change seemingly at random throughout the post is? I love you Shay, you are a good person, but seriously that just looks so bad. Just painful to read. I mean I think I get why you changed font the first time as you transitioned from writing about the study to your thoughts, but it's 100% unnecessary. It makes it look like you just copy pasted a paragraph from somewhere else onto your post and it looks bad. Now that we got that out of the way, let's actually talk about what the words said an not the font.

There are already a bunch of Facebook comments that highlight the major problems with this post. The study doesn't say what games people were playing which could have a dramatic affect on what kind of brain activity the subject will show. Imagine a hypothetical situation where the game being played is pong. Everyone knows that game right? You move a paddle up or down to hit a ball back and forth. There is nothing else to it, you could sit Leonardo DaVinci down with pong and he's not going to show off creative thoughts because there isn't anything to that game. That's just one hypothetical situation though. The other problem with the post highlighted by Facebook comments was that it was a study of correlation and not causation. A study like the one conducted by Professor Mori simply can't offer itself as evidence that excessive games or T.V. stop your creative thinking, it can only be evidence that a relationship between the two does exist.

Another problem that I did not see mentioned was the fact that it was only one study. That's a problem. This study might show a relationship between excessive gaming and a lack of beta waves, (Which are thought to be related to creative thinking and emotion) but another study might show something completely different. I'm not saying that another study will, but leaving that question unanswered erodes the credibility of an argument. Also don't think for a second that this isn't an argument being made because it is.

Now I only have one more thing I want to bash at in this post, the last paragraph made me cringe. No word of a lie. To quote, "If you answered the same as I'm doing today, Then I'm sorry, but you are living your life not to the fullest, and that's where regrets come form." Not only does the wording feel awkward, (living your life not to the fullest? Really? How about but you are not living life to its fullest. Don't lead you reader into thinking your going to say one thing and then turn it around on them like that, feels weird to read.) especially since in the previous paragraph she stated to take things in moderation, and now she's saying it would be good to cut it out completely. The real problem though is that it's an absolute statement. What if I meet my long lost brother and the only thing we have in common is playing games? I'd say playing some with him would still be well within living life to the fullest, and I know that's a really extreme example, but you expose yourself to problems like that when you make absolute statements about subjective things. Honestly I was thinking this was actually a great post until the end of it, now I'm forced to call it just "good."

Alright I'm done, hate train has departed. There are definitely flaws with the reasoning in the post, but I applaud Shay for taking the time to open up a discussion about this. It's nice to see discussion in comments on Facebook rather than just a mass of likes. Keep it up Shay.

Just a reminder of some of the really great things about games.