Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: romance

Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock): RATE THOSE DATES!

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I have done it. I have 100%ed Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), and I’m ready to move on. The minute the last achievement popped, I stopped playing the game and closed it in relief. I did not have to do the grind any longer. I was freeeeeee!

It sounds as if I was really down on the game, but that’s not the case at all. It’s just that it falls into the trap that other cozy indie games do, and I had my frustrations with certain aspects of the game. I’ve talked about that ad nauseam, so I won’t get into it again.

What I want to do now is talk about romance in the game. Please be aware that I’ll be spoiling a lot, including a character who arrives to the town after the main storyline ends. So, we’re talking the second year in the game. Google tells me summer of the second year, which is the second season of the second year.

The minute I met this character, they shot up to instant favorite. Well, ok, not first favorite, but second for sure. Unlike with the other characters, I never got tired of talking to this one. Then again, I spent much less time with them because they came into the game so late, so I did not see as much repeat dialogue.

Now, I will be spoiling all the dating possibilities as I rate them last to first. There are eight.

8. Cameron. By a wiiiiiiide margin. He’s the leader of the alternative religion in town, and I was gritting my teeth from start to finish whenever I talked to him. I have a very bad history with religion, and he reminded me of the worst parts of it. Plus, he was just so boring. He even acknowledges that his tastes are basic. I disagree slightly, though, that pumpkin-based whatever is basic. Pumpkin flavor is delicious! Even when it’s really cardamom.

When I was dating him, I mashed through the dialogue as fast as I could. Each dateable calls you a term of endearment once you’re together, and his was ‘darling’. Which, from his lips, made me do a full-body shudder. It was both condescending and creepy, and I could not get awy from him fast enough.

It was hilarious when I married him, though. With everyone else, the other characters were happy for me and saying what a great match we were. They gushed about certain characteristics of my partner, and in general, everyone was really pleased for us. With Cameron, though, only his followers were happy. Everyone else either threw shade, wished me luck (implying I would need it), and in the case of one character (head witch), I think she did not show up to the wedding. Or at least, I did not see her at the ceremony.


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Taking the romantic plunge

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Love stinks. At least, that was my motto until roughly a year ago. On and off. When I was a teenager before I got my first date, I desperately wanted it. It was the only thing on my mind and I cringed at how desperate I was. Unrequited crushes that never hid and other assorted embarrassments–I was just the worst. I had a crush on the same boy from first grade until sixth grade and only stopped because we went from elementary school to middle school, which had many more kids. I couldn’t keep tabs on him like I could in elementary school.

I was a freak from the start. A second-generation immigrant kid from a weird Asian country well before being Asian was exotic and cool. I was fat, awkward, and way too smart for my own good. I got picked on by the American kids for being too foreign. I got scolded by the Taiwanese moms for being too boyish. My home life was shitty and I lost myself in books because I hated the real world so much.

I got my first boyfriend when I was sixteen. Seventeen? Summer before 11th grade so sixteen. He was smart and cute and very kind-hearted. We went to different schools so only saw each other on the weekends. We dated for two years and while we both wanted to wait to have sex, we did almost everything but PIV in those two years. I enjoyed it at first, but it got to the point where it was all we did every time we went out (in his SUV, which, you know, romantic), which started to make me uncomfortable. I couldn’t find the words to tell him, however, and went along with his plans to go to California for college. He was going to Stanford and I had applied to UC…want to say Santa Cruz? Whichever is closest to Stanford. He said that if I didn’t go with him, we had to break up.

I had my eye on someone at work (mall. Different stores), anyway, so I broke up with him. I called St. Olaf to see if they still had a spot, they said I had half an hour to decide, so I did. That’s how I ended up going to St. Olaf, which was–an interesting place to go to college. That is not the point of this post, however, so I’m just going to walk on by that.

I had a serious relationship while I was at St. Olaf that seriously messed with my brain. Let’s face it, I had issues beforehand, but it didn’t help to have someone who didn’t know what he wanted himself. Or rather, it would have been more honest of him to say that he wanted sex and a companion, but not a monogamous romantic relationship. In fact, he asked me out after omitting the fact that he was in a romantic relationship that he demanded open up when his girlfriend went abroad for a semester. He wanted his cake and to eat it, too, and he seriously messed me up in the meantime.

I want to stress that I was in no shape to be in a relationship in the first place. I was looking for all the wrong things and for all the wrong reasons. I wanted someone to complete me and fill the hole that was inside me (innuendo semi-intended).Don’t get me wrong. I loved him with all my heart, but it was not a good kind of love. I was too clingy and too needy, and I didn’t know how NOT to be that.


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Romance and vidya games

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on paper, a good fit.
Does it tick all the boxes?

Back in the Stone Ages, I waded into the world of online dating. This was before CupidOK became huge, and waaaaay before Bumble. I was and am a cheap gal, so I only used the freebies such as Craigslist and Plenty of Fish. I waded through a lot of responses (see what I did there? Waded? Fish? Never mind), and the results were very much a mixed bag. I mostly posted in Casual Encounters because I was just looking for Netflix and chill at the time, but I did post in the dating section from time to time as well.

Do you know what I remember the most? Dick pics. Lots and lots of dick picks. Even when I specifically said not to send them. By the way, that’s the other thing I remember about that time–dudes don’t read the ads themselves. My ad specifically said that I did not want dick pics or Asian fetishists, and the vast majority of my replies started with, “I looooooove Oriental girls!” I never included a picture in my ads, so it wasn’t even my specific look, but just ‘Oriental girls’ in general. Let me tell you, there is nothing that warms a gal’s heart more than knowing she’s interchangeable with literally millions of other women.

I vividly remember one guy proudly writing that he was a member of the 8-inch club. What’s worse, he included a picture of him having sex with a woman, but don’t worry! He black-barred her eyes, so it made it totally ok. Now, maybe she was fine with him bandying about a picture of her getting fucked, but I highly doubted she even knew. In addition, OW NO! I don’t know why guys are so hung up (pun not intended, but snickered at, anyway) on size. Most women who enjoy copulating with men aren’t size queens, and I think, just as women dress up for other women, men are stuck on dick size because of other men. Someone pointed out years later when I relayed the story that sending a pic of him having sex defeated the purpose of his boast, anyway. Which, true, but also did not need to think about. Thirdly, it’s so easy to lie about dick size. Who’s going to pull out a ruler and measure?

I was looking for women concurrently, but I only ran into women who were in couples and ‘allowed’ to play with a third. I’m not against that situation, but it felt gross to me reading ad after ad from women who made sure to mention their husband/boyfriend and how he was fine with them playing around, but only if they (boyfriend/husband) was present. Again, I’m not against a threesome as I’ve done them in my past, but it just grossed me out that the ‘bi’ part of these women felt so performative or at the behest of someone else.

I found online dating to be mostly a loss for me. I tend towards inertia in general, and communicating with someone online–I could do that indefinitely. Going out and actually meeting them? Not so much. I only had one instance of an in-person meeting working out well, and that was only for a few months, anyway before I got dumped because of my opinion on Pulp Fiction.  Yes, for real, and, no, I’m not going to talk about it because it’s not the point of the post. Yes, I know, that hasn’t stopped me before, but moving right along.

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Becoming what I feared

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When I was in my twenties, I used to joke that I was attracted to the exact wrong person for me. Gay men, straight women, anyone who was taken, or someone who was simply not interested in me*. If I walked into a room with 100 people and 99 were eligible dating partners, I would inevitably beeline towards the one who wasn’t.

In my late 20s/early 30s, I declared stridently that I didn’t want to be in a relationship. I was an independent woman, damn it! I didn’t need no (wo)man to make me complete. Of course, underneath it was my terrifying hunger to be in a relationship. I was told all my life it was the only thing that mattered, well, along with squirting out children, of course. It was confusing because I was also told I WOULD go to college, but at the end of the day, I better be married and have children.

Side note: When I turned 26, my mother started pushing me to have children. It reached the point where I began dreading talking to her because she would bring it up. Once summer when she visited, she mentioned it every goddamn fucking day. Her comment when I turned 26 was that she had my brother at that age. My immediate (internal) response was, “I’m not you, thank god.” I have been fortunate that I realized fairly early (21 or 22) that I did not want children. It was such a relief when I finally truly realized I did not have to spawn, I nearly cried. My mother did not stop trying to get me knocked up for the next fifteen years. I only relate this to underscore how much pressure I felt to marry (implicit in the preggers convos) and have children. The only time I ever had an impulse to have children was after my mom had been nagging me for days about it, and I thought, “I should have a kid just to shut her up.” Fortunately, I came to my senses and realized that having a child to please my mom would be a recipe for disaster.

I want to be clear. I was not a great girlfriend back in the day. I was too clingy and too eager to merge into one being. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of social support for a woman offering endless emotional support without receiving any in return, especially twenty years ago. In addition, there is the idea that you’re supposed to be the ‘cool girlfriend’ who is ‘chill’ and doesn’t get upset about, well, anything. It’s a neat way of keeping a woman firmly in her place (in a het relationship). Still. I fell into many of the traps of het relationships of that time, and I was not my best self in those relationships.

Many times, I was just desperate to be in a relationship, any relationship, because my self-worth hung on what my partner thought of me. I put up with a lot of shit that I shouldn’t have because I thought I didn’t deserve better. It was a vicious cycle, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. Hell, I wasn’t even aware of the problems for a long time. Once I became aware of my own issues, it was hard not to see it in myself all the damn time. I worked hard on it through a lot of therapy, but some of the issues are so deep.


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New year and it’s time to get it on

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I’m writing this Christmas morn, and I’m already over it. Let’s face it. I was over it from the first time I heard a Christmas carol (which was two months ago). I was over it the day after last Christmas. Of all the ‘big’ holidays, Christmas is my most hated for how disgusting I find it. I’ve shared before, but I wrote an article for the school newspaper in either eighth or ninth grade about the crass commercialization of Christmas, and it’s only gotten worse since. I’m able to cut down on how much Christmas crap I have to ingest because I don’t watch TV at all. But, just hearing a Christmas song or commercial is enough to put me in a grumpy mood.

I was going to try to be more complacent about it this year, and the results were mixed. In general, I was less inundated because of the aforementioned no-TV watching and because I have cut down on my social media intake, so I was less irritated in general. If something about Christmas came onto the radio as I was listening, I quickly changed stations after a flash of irritation. On the other hand, it’s been a rough whatever-many months, and Christmas is just rubbing the salt in the wounds. I like being single and living alone with my cat, but it’s not easy to shut out the constant barrage of FAAAAAAMILY  for Christmas.

The rational part of my brain reminds me that there are many people who hate going to the family for Christmas but feel they can’t get out of it. I read advice columns in which there is nothing but agony about the holidays with FAAAAAAAMILY. Little reasons, big reasons, any reason at all. The holidays can be fraught with tension, especially since they’re billed as being all about family.

In the end, I’m not much more depressed today than I was, say, a week ago. As long as I don’t loiter on social media, I don’t have to see Christmas crammed in my face. It’s totally within my control, which is exactly how I like it.


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50 goals for turning 50

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In taiji yesterday, a classmate was talking about celebrating her youngest stepdaughter’s birthday. She (the stepdaughter) turned 51, and my classmate said that ‘young’ is relative. She also mentioned that the stepdaughter made a crack about some old man, and her sister said that someone who had just turned 51 should be careful about calling someone old. It got me to thinking about turning 50 and how I’m not ready for it. I’m 47, and, yes, I know that’s closer to 45 than 50, but this birthday was really hard for me for some unfathomable reason. I don’t usually care about age, and I’m not upset about being 47 specifically. It’s just that it crept up on me, and I don’t know what happened to the last ten years. I’m nearing half a century on this planet, and I have nothing to show for it. It’s messing with my mind, and I think par of my current depression is because of this.

So. Resolutions.

1. Health. I’ve talked several times about not being happy about my weight. It’s not about health, though I’m sure that could be improved as well. It’s that I hate the way I look, and I want to do something about it. I thought giving up gluten and dairy would help, but it hasn’t. Probably because I started eating rice again which is SO GOOD but calorific. I haven’t eaten as much as of late, so that’s probably helpful. As much as I love rice (and I love it a lot because I’m Asian), it doesn’t really have any nutritional benefits. I’ve also cut out potato chips, added them back, and cut them out again. I’ve slowly added back fruit and veggies, and I cut down my caffeine intake by four-fifths.

Which, by the way, was by far harder than giving up dairy and gluten. I was so logy and cranky, I could barely function. It was two weeks before I felt human again, but I’m still adjusting. I have one cup of tea/coffee a day and have completely given up pop. I had some while I was in Malta, but those were extenuating circumstances. I will have a glass occasionally if I’m dining out, but more often than not, I’ll stick to water.

Side note: I want pizza right now. I want it so bad, I can taste it. There are many tasty substitutes for many gluten and dairy foods, but gluten-free/dairy-free pizza just isn’t that tasty. A local pizza joint had a fall special a few years ago that had sausage and sauerkraut, and it was amazing. So delicious! Heavy as hell, yes, but I would eat it every day all day long. I have a feeling I’ll break soon and get one because I can’t stop thinking about it, but I don’t want to fall off the gf/df wagon. I did while in Malta, but again, it was extenuating circumstances. How the hell could I not try pasta in Malta? Especially pasta with cheese in it?

I need to start cooking. I’ve said it several times, but I’ve yet to do it. I’ve boiled gf macaroni and added spaghetti sauce to it, but that’s not exactly cooking, now is it? I should get a pressure cooker because it’s magical, but it seems like a lot to learn. I could be wrong and probably am, but that’s how it appears to me.

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Romance is dead

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or, until i get sick of you.
Until death do we part.

I read a lot of trashy teenage romances when I was a teenager–and several Harlequin Romances as well. I had my first crush on a boy when I was in first grade, and it lasted until I was in seventh grade. It only died out because we went to junior high school, which meant I didn’t see him nearly as often as I did in elementary school. I can still remember his name and how he looked, which is indicative of my passions in general.

My parents did not have a good marriage (and that’s an understatement if I’ve ever written one), but I completely bought into the idea that you had to be married in order to be a complete person. To be fair to me, it was pushed on me by my mother since I was rather young. She might not have explicitly said it, but it showed in everything she did. She had a full-time job, but she did all the housework and parenting as well. She arranged everything around my father, and I can remember the countless arguments when he would come home late at night without a single word of explanation other than he was ‘working late’.

I saw my mother frantically turning herself inside out to try to please him, and when I was a preteen, I became her unwilling confidante, and she poured out her woes to me on a regular basis. She was deeply depressed, and I begged her to divorce my father. It didn’t happen, unfortunately, and I continued to learn warped ideas of what a relationship should be. I had two cultures telling me that it was my job and duty to please my man and to keep him happy at any cost. It was better to be in a miserable relationship than to be alone, and as much as I didn’t want to believe it, it seeped into my soul.

To make matters worse, I was a fat*, ugly**, awkward Asian girl in a lily-white suburb. It was before Asian girls were exotic and hot–back then, we were just not considerable dating material. That’s actually not completely true as I knew a very popular Asian girl who probably had many dates, but it’s true in the sense that we were not the norm, so it would take someone thinking outside the box to ask us out. I had my first date when I was sixteen, and because I had internalized a lifetime of ‘you’re a loser if you don’t have a boyfriend’, I clung to him as hard as I could. The first kiss was disappointing, but it got better. He was a good-looking, smart (fucking smart), kindhearted boy, and I had a hard time believing he wanted to date me. I met him at summer school, and he went to a school thirty minutes away from me. Little did I know that long-distance relationships were to be a staple of my dating life.

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What’s That Feeling Deep Inside?

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I’m a lifelong single person with brief periods of coupledom, and for most of my life, that’s the way I’ve preferred it. When I was in my teens, I despaired of ever having a boyfriend*, and when I was asked out by a boy at the not-so-tender age of 16, I was ecstatic. Not only was he cute and smart (oh, boy, was he smart), but finally, I felt like a normal teenage girl. I met him in summer school (T-CITY, Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth. He was in physics, I believe, and I was in theater or writing or Latin). He went to a different school, which means we only saw each other on the weekends. It’s funny because most of my relationships have been long-distance, and this probably started the whole thing. I’m more comfortable with people if they’re not too close to me, if you get what I’m saying, and I think you do.

We dated for two-and-a-half years, and despite him being a great guy, I started not feeling it near the end of the relationship. I was working at a Claire’s in a shopping mall, and there was this really cute boy who worked at the shoe store down a level. He was a tall drink of hello, cutie, and I would flirt with him whenever I had a break. I was anorexic at that time and actually wore makeup at that point, so I was cute as hell in the stereotypical way. He was definitely into it, and while I didn’t do anything because I was in a relationship, there was definitely a zing there.

My boyfriend was going to Stanford for college (did I mention that he was super-smart?), and he insisted I had to go to school near him or we’d have to break up. I had applied to schools around his, and I got accepted to the one in CA (one of the UCs, Santa Clara, I think), but the closer it got to the time to leave, the more I started panicking. I wasn’t ready to be out of state. I wasn’t in love with him any longer. I didn’t want to go. We had several emotional discussions about it, and we ended up breaking up. I asked out the shoe shop guy after that and ended up going to his place. We made out, and he made it clear he wanted sex. I wasn’t into that, and we ended the date, amicably, I thought. Well, he rebuffed me after that, so it was pretty clear what he wanted.

During my twenties, I thought I should be in a relationship. It’s what you’re supposed to do, right? At that time, it was still the norm that a woman’s first obligation is to get married (in my Taiwanese culture as well), and the joke, “I’m going to college to get my MRS degree” wasn’t so much of a joke, frankly. I had several bad relationships in my twenties as have a lot of people, I suspect. In my thirties, I thought I *should* be in a relationship, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted it. In my early twenties, I realized I didn’t want kids. In my mid-twenties, I realized I didn’t want to live with someone. In my late twenties/early thirties, I realized I didn’t want to get married for political and personal reasons. I still felt I should be in a relationship, however, because only losers were single for their whole lives. I would loudly declare that I didn’t want to be in a relationship while secretly wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn’t be in a relationship while simultaneously dating exactly the wrong people. Yeah, I was a mess, yo, and I didn’t know how to get out of it.


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Love in the Time of Stubbornness

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I’ve been thinking lately a lot about dating. Why? I don’t really know, but I’ve discussed it with friends to try to puzzle out my feelings. I’ve written before about how I realized in my early twenties that I didn’t want children. That’s also roughly the same time I realized I was sexually attracted to women as well as men. In my late twenties, early thirties, I decided I didn’t want to get married. It’s only recently that I’ve questioned whether I want to be an a monogamous dyad relationship or not. I’ve been in an open relationship before, but it was more because that’s what my boyfriend wanted than because we both agreed, so I don’t really count it when calculating my metrics about what I want from a relationship. I also realized in my mid-twenties that I was more comfortable with casual sex  than are many women, but I didn’t really know what to do with it.

Now, I’m questioning whether I want a traditional romantic relationship or not. I’ve been reading a shit-ton of Captain Awkward, and I must admit that the letters she gets makes me very disinclined to date. Intellectually, I understand that she’s seeing the worst of the worst because you don’t write to an advice columnist if your relationship is peachy keen. However, the steady stream of women (let’s face it. A vast majority of the emotional labor done in a heteronormative relationship is done by the woman) writing in with horror stories that curl the very straight Asian hairs on the back of my neck confirm my bias for just snuggling down on the couch with a good book, a mug of tea, and my cat instead of venturing into the dating world.

I hate dating. I always have. I know most people don’t love it, but I hate it to the point of revulsion. I don’t like making small talk with people I know, let alone people I don’t, and there’s the possibility of rejection constantly hovering in the back of my mind. It’s hard to not feel as if I’m auditioning for the role of girlfriend, and it’s only recently that I’ve realized I have veto rights in a relationship, too. In other words, I’m not just auditioning for them–they’re doing the same for me. Even so, the thought of having awkward  conversation with someone while sipping coffee makes me cringe. When I used to meet people online for dating (read, sex) purposes, I was very comfortable with the emailing portion of the ‘courting’. I’m a writer, and my strength is in my words. I can be witty, vibrant, intelligent, and fearless in my writing. It’s quite different when I actually open my mouth. It’s the same with me and my Twitter persona. No, I’m not being someone different, but I’m being a more confident, more brash me. I’m sure if people on Twitter met me in real life, they would be slightly (or not so slightly) disappointed that I wasn’t as dynamic as I am online. Also weird–I swear way more in writing than I do in real life.

The real me is low-key to the point of inertia. I have low energy, and it takes a great deal for me to do something that it outside my norm. Take going out dancing with my bestie, for example (when she used to live here). We would set a day to go to First Ave. I’d be up for it when we set the date. Then, when the day arrived, I would think, “I don’t want to get dressed and leave the house. I have to drive to bestie’s house, which, ugh. Then, I have to dance around people I don’t know and maybe fend off unwanted advances. Then, I’d have to drive home again in the wee hours of the night.” I didn’t want to do any of it in the moment, and I’d have to force myself step by step. I had a great time when I went, and I love spending time with my bestie, but my depression makes it seem like going out is a mountain when it’s really a molehill.


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Romance? Bah, Humbug!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about romantic relationships lately, in part because I’ve been reading a shit-ton of the Captain Awkward’s archives, and it’s not surprising that she focuses heavily on fucked-up romantic relationships. She’s a woman, and most of the people who write in are women. I see myself in many of the letter writers, and who among us has not found herself in a relationship thinking, “What the fuck am I doing here?” And, even acknowledging how fucked-up it is, have stayed? I’m sure most of us can relate to this, and it’s the bulk of Captain Awkward’s letters. Sure, there are some letter writers who truly have incompatibilities with their partners, but it’s mostly that they’re in a toxic relationship and are trying to either convince themselves that they are bad partners who just need to work harder/grow up/be more generous, etc., or they’re trying to convince themselves to leave. The latest letter on fucked-up relationships hits Captain Awkward BINGO, and it’s fucking depressing. She thinks she needs to work harder? B! She thinks she needs to grow up? I! He treats her with disdain (‘accidentally’ giving away her clothing when he was donating his is the most egregious example)? N! He controls her to a ridiculous degree and makes her feel like she’s the controlling one? G! Is she sneaking around in secret to do her laundry? O–wait a fucking minute. She’s sneaking around to do her laundry in secret because he gets mad. Not that she’s not doing his, but that she doesn’t wait until he deigns to do hers (and ruins it when he does it which is just short of never). That’s B-I-N-Get the hell-Out of there!

Captain Awkward is wonderful as an advice columnist. She gets right to the point, but she shows endless compassion for the letter writers. She gives great scripts for difficult situations, and her GIF game is on point. I know she gets burned out from all the shittiness she reads (understandably), but she doesn’t let it show in her answers. One thing she’s pushing  back on is the idea that relationships take work. Or rather, the kind of work they take. In another letter, the letter writer (LW) details all the recent problems and how her girlfriends are like, “At least you have a boyfriend”, when it’s clear that he’s just not into her any longer, and Captain Awkward said this:

There’s this Hollywood & Glossy Magazine narrative we have that privileges having a (heterosexual) relationship over being alone (no matter the quality of the relationship) and that puts it on the woman to do the emotional work of keeping the relationship together by having the big serious talks and speaking up about feelings and stuff. And I use the word “work” on purpose. We hear that “relationships take work” and what they mean is “women’s work” – the work of reading magazine quizzes and carrying the emotional water and looking pretty all the time and finding ways to “drive him wild” in bed and cooking new recipes and making excuses.

The commentariat is all over it, saying it shouldn’t be work in the ‘I hate my job and have to do it’ kind of way, and it should be work that both partners participate in.

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