Underneath my yellow skin

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Gender-blending or is it gender-bending? Gender-mending it is!

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This is the third post on gender rigidity that I’m writing in a row. It’s on my mind now because well, the state of the world is on fire, so why the hell not? In the United States, we have the “religious”* right going on a crusade against trans people because, uh, bathrooms? It’s telling, by the way, that the transphobes harp so much and constantly on “bUt WhaT aBouT ThE BatHRooMS?” and claim that it’s for the sake of those poor fragile women in the bathroom who might be subjected to–you know what? No. I’m not going to write it, even in jest because it’s foul.

And, funnily enough, the same assholes who bleat about this stay mum about actual sexual harrassment issues or, say, the Jeffrey Epstein files. I mean, one of them actually said that sixteen was practically an adult so who cares? I’m paraphrasing, but it was very similar to this. So. Just to make sure I get it right. Trans women are a threat to women in bathrooms because ooga booga, but actual sexual predators and rapists of teen girls are, what. Fine? Excusable? Victims of the female hussies?

It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so grotesque and so harmful–to all women, I mean. And so fucking transparent. And transphobic.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the damage they are doing with their rhetoric, I would simply laugh in their faces. And wonder who raised them. And why they were so insecure in their own gender that they had to lash out at people who weren’t like them. This is what gets me, by the way. All this hatred for people who are just living their best lives.

I mean, really. Think about it. Somenoe being gay/bi/trans/nonbinary/agender has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. Me being bi and agender affects absolutely nobody. Ok, sure, maybe someone I’m dating–you know what? Not even then unless I decide to reveal it myself. Seriously. If someone is attracted to me, does it matter what my label is? Since I do everyone, ahem, any gender (or none at all), that is not limiting to me.

Side note: I remember when I first realized I was bisexual, there was an emphasis on how bisexuals were NOT sluts. I get that bis wanted to counter the beilef that we would go for any and everyone, but what if, and hear me out, it was actually true? I found that many bis liked to joke that they were sluts, and I’m one of them. See, I don’t buy the moral framing of having a lot of sex with different people as being bad. Or wrong. Or immoral. I just don’t.

Sex is a pleasurable activity in and of itself. And it doesn’t have to be connected to love–at least not for me. A friend of mine gave the analogy of playing a board game. Sure, it’s more intimate when done with a partner, but it’s still fun to do with friends, strangers, or a mixture of both. I’ve always been better at sex than at romance. It’s more comfortable for me, probably because I don’t have to deal with messy emotions. Also, I’m a really good lover. Not to toot my own horn–just spitting out facts.


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My 2025 game awards, part four

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I have a few more awards to give out for the games I have played this year. In the last post, I wrote about an indie game that had a lot of heart and was made by what I presume to be is a small team. I quick-Googled, and, yup. They have 29 employees, and they are an indie Australian team. I mentioned in that post how I wanted indies to take a leap and throw everything into their game that they want to have there rather than have them play it safe.

In this post, I’m going to talk frankly about an indie team that also went big to varying success. Well, it’s more complicated than that, so I want to preface this award by saying the following is a great game. I believe I gave it a 7.5 when it was all said and done–nope. I gave it an 8 when it was all said and done, but it was quite the journey to get there. I have written endlessly about this game, but I will touch upon the issues briefly after I give the award. Which is now.

The sequel that was a great game, but more than anything, made me want to go back and play the original–which I enjoyed more in almost every respect

Hades II (Supergiant Games)

This was my mostanticipated game of the year. I watched the announcement trailer, and then I stridently ignored the game as it went through Early Access because I did not want to be spoiled going into the game. I did not play the first game until it was officially released, and I did the same for this game.

When it finally released, I was initially very impressed with the game. I didn’t love the protagonist because I found her a bit earnest, but she was fine. The combat was snappy, though I was not immediately drawn to any one weapon. There were tweaks that smoothed out the combat, but it wasn’t that much different than in the first game.

Let me put it this way. If you had played the first game, you would be right at home in the second game. There was a new cast of characters with several of the old favorites nerfed for this game. Two of the best Olympians from the first game were limited to the end game in this game, which I did not appreciate. Look. Yes, Athena was OP in the first game, but who the fuck cares? Let people get OP if they want. You did not have to take her most powerful boons if you didn’t want to, and you could always get rid of her boons later if you so wished.


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My 2025 game awards, part three

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I have played several games this year–more than I usually play. Most of them were on Steam because that’s my main game client. There was a game I had heard about and had seen the trailer for the sequel, which was actually a prequel, of the game I’m about to bestow an award upon. Give me a second to come up with a a weird name for the award. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about two detective games that I really enjoyed, more or less.

The cozy game that wasn’t very cozy until I discovered the Fish Fingers trick, and then it turned out to be easy street with surprising emotional heft and depth

Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock)

This game was a mobile game first and the developers worked tirelessly to bring it to consoles and PC, and upgraded it endlessly to include things that the community wanted. I did not vibe with the art design because it was too cartoony for me, but I grew to find it low-key charming. It’s still not myy preferred art style, but I don’t hate it, either.

The basic premise is that the main character, Tara, loses her job and her betrothed at the same time. In order to lick her wounds, she rushes off to the farm of her grandmother, Hazel, who is ailing and needs help. The farm is in shambles, and Tara sets her mind to cleaning it up. Romance is a big thing in the game, too, and I really appreciated that there was a nonbinary character who was romanceable. Voiced by Erika Ishii, upon whom I have a huge crush and who is nonbinary in real life.

The big reveal (that is in the trailer) is that Hazel is a witch and part of a coven. They are tasked with turning the seasons and keeping things running smoothly in Fairhaven (the rural town in which they live). One of the early quests is for Tara to figure out who is in the coven and what their title is.

I appreciate that there are people of different ethnicities and nationalities. And sexual orientations. It’s not very realistic given the environment, but I am fine with that. I give the side-eye to people who whine about that not being realistic whereas they are fine wit the idea of mowing down enemies by the dozens.

I was frustrated with the game in the beginning because like lots of ‘cozy’ games (that really are misnamed), life is hard. Real hard. With shit stamina, vigor, and money, I could do like three things before I had to find sustenance.

This is the standard for life sim games, but it’s not fun. There is so much to do, but you can do so little. I was late in the game when I discovered the Fish Fingers trick, and once I did, I broke the game with it. I was never wanting for money after that, and it made the game so much more enjoyable.

This is another game in which I had such highs and such lows. I struggled so much in the beginning that I thought about quitting. It’s not fun to do three things then need to fuel up, do three things, then need to fuel up, etc. Part of the reason I play games is so that I can get away from reality! I have chores I have to do in real life; why would I want to do them in a game as well?

I admire the devs for adding so much content over time. I got the whole thing as one papckage, but I read up a bit about what came when. I think it plays better as a complete game, but who knows? I was not there every step along the way. I usually don’t play games in Early Access because I rather play a finished product.

The romances were interesting, in both a good way and a bad way. I appreciated the diversity of characters who you could romance, but I did not like that the trajectory of each relationship was basically the same. You had to give gifts to the person (which is common in video games) and then at a certain point, that person would ask you out. If you accept and confess your feelings, you’re off the market and dating that one person.

When the game first released, you could only marry one person per playthrough. By the time I played it, you could divorce and remarry as many times as you liked. There was a quaint divorce custom that was, well, cringeworthy, but as one of the achievements was to marry all the romanceable characters, I–oh.

Something I found out well after the point where I could do something about it was that there are two characters who, if you do not marry them both before the end of the first season, I want to say, then they hook up and stay together for the rest of the playthrough. Which means you cannot marry both within one playthrough. Which was as annoying as hell. One of them is the hardest character to romance, despite how flirty she is.

There’s a tension in games these days. If you want to even think about doing the plat, it’s best to look at the achievements beforehand. I don’t like to do that, though, because I’d rather my first playthrough be organic. I really regretted not knowing that about the two NPCS, though, because that meant I had to do a whole nother playthrough to get one achievement when I was already done with the game.

In adidtion, the relationships were pretty shallow. Some flirting led to the first date, and then yyou were a couple. A few more dates later, and you were pushed to propose. Then, marriage. Then, they lurked around your house when they weren’t at work.

In addition, when you dumped them, only one showed any real emotion over it. The rest shrugged their shoulders and said, “That’s life, isn’t it? We’ll stay friends” and moved on. In fact, the second I divorced one character, she was already in a relationship with the other character in the very next scene! Yes, I unwittingly chose one of the two characters who romance each other if they’re both single.

I will write more on this tomorrow. I’m done for now.

 

My 2025 game awards, part two

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To continue with my game awards, today’s post is going to concentrate on detective games. I am a huge Poirot fan, and I have been hungering for a good detective game. There are a few Poirot games, but they all suck. There were two recent ones done by the same company that other people loved, but that I really could not stand. I played the demo for both.

Side note: I really wish that devs would use source material other than Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. I know that they are two of the most well-known Poirot novels and have big casts of characters, but my god, they have been done to death. Controversial opinion: they are not the best of the novels.

At any rate, the games reviewed very positively, which is unfathomable to me. Not only are they not very faithful to the source material, they aren’t good detective games. Or am I expecting too much from detective games? I don’t think I am. If you’re going to adapt the books into games, they should be recognizable as Poirot games.

In addition to those two demos, I have played several detective games this year. I gave an award to one in my last post, and I’m going to give awards to two in this post as well. I just reread what I wrote aobut them, and I stand by my assessment. Hm. What am I going to call the awards and which am I going to tackle first?

The game that taxed my brain a bit too much, but was ultimately very satisfying

The Roottrees are Dead (Evil Trout Inc.)

I did not get along with this game when I first tried it out. Basically, a candy mogul and his family died in a plane crash. A mysterious person visited me (a private investigator) and wanted me to piece together the very complicated family tree. It’s a thin premise, but there doesn’t really need to be more than that to send me off to the races.

The game is set in 1998, which means the earlier days of the internet. My tools for looking up all the Roottrees are limited. There is a Google-like search engine, yes, but I have to be very specific about what I’m looking up. It’s incredible that Evil Trout Inc. came up with their own search engine for this game.

This was one of my frustrations with the game, though (to continue my theme of frustrating flaws in games I otherwise really like)–the limitations of the search engine. One reason the game is set in 1998, I think, is specifically for the ability to limit the search engine. If it were set in the last five years, for example, they would have had to have a search engine that was nearly limitless.


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My 2025 game awards

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Ok. I’ve been rambling about my year in gaming, so I’m going to jump right  into the game awards I’m giving this year. The main theme of this year has me being simultaneously disappointed and hyped about the same game. I mean,  most games have good and bad to them, but this year, there were several games that were elicited very split emotions in me.

The game I would have unabashedlly adored  if it had ended one act earlier:

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla)

Big sigh with this game. Every time I think of it, I get sad all over again. It’s such a charming, quirky, visually gorgeous game that engaged me and entertained me It’s bright and colorful, and you plpay as a dead snake who goes around helping souls in limbo release their hold on this world.

I played the generous demo and was immediately drawn into the game. You roll around as the dead snake, which is the only movement you can make. Then, you have to collect, uh, stars? Lights? Something bright and twinkly, don’t remember what, as your currency. You have to solve puzzles or mysteries, rather, and chat up several vivid, memorable NPCs. I think the demo was the whole first chapter, one out of five, which took me an hour or so to finish. And I know I missed some stuff, but I wasn’t  worried about that. I assumed I would be starting from scratch when I played the game for real.

I knew within minutes of playing the demo that I would want to play the full game. The story was simple, but engaging. A dead snake rolled his way around this world, helping stuck souls along the way. He met so many interesting characters along the way, helping several of the along the way.


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Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock); my official review, part eight

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I’m back with more thoughts on Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock). You would think that I have talked about it enough, but you would be wrong. I am so close to getting the plat. I have become engaged to the last datable person, and I’m a week away from marrying them. Once that happens, then I’m done with the game.

I have to admit it’s a relief. I’m so tired, and yet, I can’t stop playing. It’s because of that one fucking achievement that I decided not to do on my first playthrough. This is all my fault, by the way. I know me. I know how I am. I should have just done it when I had the chance. Barring that, I should have just left it undone. But no. It’s simply not in me to do that, and I’m not proud of it.

Back to the game and what I was talking about in the last post. The romance options. I freely admit that I am not about that dating life–in games or in real life. I don’t like dating sims for the most part or when there’s dating in games that aren’t focused on that. The rreason why is because it’s usually just transactional, which I understand from a gaming point of view. I don’t see it as much more than a bunch of fetch quests, though, or plugging coins in a vending machine to get what you want.

In fact, I loved Saints Row IV (Volition) because it made such fun of the way other games did romance. You can sex up anyone in Saints Row IV just by blunting propositioning them (and you get a variety of hilarious answers in response)–except Keith David. No matter how hard you try, you cannot seduce him. Everyone else, though? Very fair game.

In this game, I’m unclear how much you have to gift a datable person in order to get them to the point where they ask you out. I know it makes the progress go faster, but I think you can get there without it. I would not know because I gave gifts to the datables every day. But, when you reach a full heart, you have to trigger a special cutscene in order to move to the next level of your relationship (this is true of all the relationships in general, by the way, not just the romantic ones). Then, you go on a date (same date for every person but one), and the other person declares their love for you. If you want to move the relationship forward, you have to say yes. Or at least not say no. Sometimes there was a ‘I’m not sure’ option, but I never chose that, so I don’t know what it actually does.


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A major runner up and other great games of 2024

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I have one last really big award to give, but that is a post for tomorrow (or later). Yesterday, I gave out my game of the year to the best non-From (indie) game I played this year. I wanted to do a post about games I enjoyed, but didn’t quite make it to the ‘best of’ list, and then I remembered a game I played a ton of mid-year and quite enjoyed. I have to give it a lot of credit because it’s another smallish indie team (25 employees the Google tells me), and it made a game with a lot of heart. I actually enjoyed it more (at the time) than the two games I gave awards to in the post before yesterday’s.

I’ll talk about that first and then give out a bunch of honorable mentions to games that I enjoyed playing, but fell off of for whatever reason. Most of them are indie games, of course, and there are a lot of cats involved.

Best game in which you get to play as a cutely animated (but beleaugured) Death as he tidies up the underworld

Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios)

I played this in May, apparently. I completely forgot about it until I was thinking back on the games I’ve played this year. Then, I was confused as to whether I played it last year or this. I had to reinstall it on Xbox so I could see when I played it, and much to my surprise, it was June. I had thought it was late last year or if later than that, then in January or February of tihs year. But, no. It was June.

I had to play it on easy beacuse platforming is not my thing. At all. I have lousy reflex/reaction times, and I have no spatial assessment abilities. This has all gotten worse since my medical crisis, and I have to be realistic about what I can and can’t do. I tried to play the game on normal difficulty, but at a certain point, I realized that I had to knock it down in order to finish it.

Technically, I did not finish the game because even playing it on easy mode, I could not beat the real final boss. I could barely even unlock this boss, let alone do any real damage to the boss. I think in all my time playing the game, I only reached this boss once or twice? Hell, I don’t know if I’ve even reached the true final boss because the way to unlock them is very unforgiving, especially for soomeone like me with all my hidden issues.

I had fun with the game and was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was. Again, platforming is not my thing, but there was enough here to keep me engaged. I will say that this game has less to offer than others of its ilk, but it’s still a good game. I liked the Twinsie as my main weapon, and there are plentiful cloak weapons (powerful, but with cooldowns), and spells with different abilities (statuses like bleed).


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Indie games vs. Triple A games, part three

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More about indie games and AAA games.

Side note: And, yes, this is probably the earliest I have done this. Sony is talking about buying FromSoft’s parent company. Not because of FromSoft, per se, but that’s just a cherry on top of the deal. And it made me immediately worried because Sony looooooves themselves an exclusive, and I have no intention of buying a PS5. Plus, my PS4 is busted, I think. Totally my own fault. I hate the PS4, anyway, and the DualShock 4. I HATE that controller so much, and I can’t even tell you why. Anyway, if From games suddenly become exclusives for the PS for the first year or so, well, that is going to make me very unhappy. But I doubt I would actually buy a console, anyway.

Just finished up a cute little game called Supurr Cat Cafe: Sandwich Rush by 2 Nerdy Nerds. At first I thought it was initially a mobile game, but now, I’m not so sure. It doesn’t really matter; I played it on the PC. The basic gist of it is that you (Olive. That’s your name, not just a fruit/vegetable/ingredient in your sandwiches) re-open (I think?) of a cat cafe. You and your cat, Maka.

It has a simple premise. Olive races around the cafe with a big platter over her head. She catches ingredients as they fall to make sandwiches. Gotta start with bread (with or without butter) and then add to it. You can slap a piece of second piece of bread whenever you want as long as there is one other ingredient between the two pieces of bread. If you put three different ingredients on the piece fo bread, then another piece of bread, it’s a stack (I think?). That’s the whole point of the game–making as many stacks as you can.

As the game goes on, you get different items you can buy to make your sandwiches better. You also can buy some things to decorate your cafe with. Oh, and of course you can adopt cats and put them in cute costumes. If you level them up, they will help out with the sandwiches. Unfortunately, they aren’t discriminatory about what ingredients they put on the sandwiches, which is a problem. You can’t put three of the same ingredients on the sandwich in a row, and you can’t serve a sandwich without bread on top of it. The cats will throw the ingredients on the sandwich so fast, I can’t always avoid the ones I don’t want.


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More maundering about FromSoft games

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In the last post, I ended by saying controversially that Dark Souls III is the best of the trilogy. Overall. That’s not the most controversial opinion about the series (I have heard tell of a few people who actually believe the second game is the best game. That will get them run off the forums every time. The thing is, I can see their train of thought, and I don’t entirely disagree with them. No, the second game is not the best of the three, but it really did try to be something different than the first game. It deserves more credit than it gets for that, and it’s still eons better than so many games out there), but it’s still readily dismissed in the community.

There are sneers of fan service (but the second game got dinged for not being connected, really), but as someone in the RKG Discord pointed out, why not put in things that appeal to your fans? If fans like something in the game, why not put more in there? He was very eloquent about why the game is great, and I really appreciate it because I get tired of trying to defend the game. I remember there was a woman who played it (she loves the first game) and she was so down on it. She said she played it in thirty-five hours, and she was sure she had seen everything. I’m sorry, but no. There was no way she saw everything, even if she one-shot every boss. My guess was that she missed two of the big optional areas, which, fine. It’s not easy to find everything in the ga;me, but to say a month or so after the game was released that she had seen everything? That’s hubris.

I try not to say how long it would take to play one of these games because I’m terrible at them and take a time-and-a-half that most people take. People talk about playing Elden Ring in a hundred hours, and I was only halfway through the game at that point. My first playthrough took over 200 hours, but I actually saw almost everything in that one playthrough. Not many people can say that.

A friend of mind has suggested that I have imposter’s syndrome when it comes to From games, and it’s possibly true. The thing is that if you spend any time in a From forum (even RKG Discord), you get the toxic mindset of there is only one true way to play these games. RKG are less toxic about it than most content creators (as are the slugs, what we fans call ourselves), but it’s still a throughline of the comments, apparently, especcially on Reddit. And it’s annoying to see the results of those comments in the playthrough itself.

If I were to ever play a From game on camera, my main rule would be: No fucking backseat gaming. No exceptions. Well, one exception. Let me know if I missed a bonfire/checkpoint, but other than that, shut the fuck up. I remember one time I was watching a content creator play Bloodborne on his channel. He made it crystal clear that he was not having any backseat gaming. His commenters kept breaking that rule and worse yet, were pushing back on him for having that rule. He finally said, “It’s my channel. I get to say what I will and won’t tolerate.”


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Rigid routine–until Saturday

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So I have a daily martial arts routine. I used to call it my Taiji routine, but I have added Bagua to it so ‘martial arts’ routine or ‘internal martial arts’ routine is more apt.

I have evolved it to the point where it’s an hour long (if I don’t stop and scroll on my phone, which I actually do). If I get caught up browsing online, it can stretch to two hours.

Anyway, it goes like this. As Shadow begrudgingly eats his breakfast (or scarfs it down. Never anywhere in the middle), I start doing the arm stretches. It can take Shadow up to a half hour to eat a meal, so I can do all the stretches during that time. Arm, leg, waist, and more. Then, after Shadow finishes his brekkie, I can do the rest of the routine–which is the weapons. Oh, I also do the Bagua while he’s eating unless I’m walking the circle with the DeerHorn Knives. That takes a lot of space, which my kitchen does not have.

My weapons forms schedule is a bit more elaborate. It goes like this. Every day, I do the Fan Form, the Sword Wu-Li (dancing) Form, a row or two of the Cane Form (both sides), staff/spear drills, and the Double Saber Form. Then, on Monday, I do the Saber Form (both sides). Sword Form (right) on Tuesday. Wednesday used to be the day I did the whole Cane Form (both sides), but I’m trying to break it down a bit more to polish it. Thursday is the /egn side of the Sword Form , and Friday is the Karambit Form. The what? The Karambit Form, which is not either Taiji nor Bagua. I’ll get to Saturday in a second.

I also do the weight set on Tuesday and Friday. It’s three simple movements of a freeweight on each side. My teacher said that I only needed to use an eight-pound weight, but I’ve moved up to ten-pound weights. I have a twelve-pound, fifteen-pound, and twenty-pound, too. I gave one of each to my brother’s ex-wife (back when they were married), so I only have one of each left.

Let’s talk Saturday. That is the day I have a class. I want to add another one this year. I would like to go in person, but I’m not sure my body can handle it. My immune system is shitty, and I do not want to get walking (non-Covid-related) pneumonia again.

Anyway. Saturday. It’s the day I’ve decided I can do whatever I want with my weapons. Here’s the thing. I am very rigid in my sechduling. I like to do things in the same order at the same time, etc. But there’s another part of me that just wants to do what I want to do whenever I want to do it. That’s the part of me that I indulge on Saturday. It’s because I have class so I’ll be doing all the warmups/stretches I do on the regular. So on Saturday, I don’t do the stretches and just groove withthe weapons. It’s a nice release, honestly.


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