Underneath my yellow skin

The next big thing (gamewise)

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In yesterday’s post, I intended to talk about what my next game might be. I veered wildly off into brand loyalty and how I don’t think I’ll be playing FromSoft games for much longer (and why I’m OK with that. Well, not ok, but resigned).

I’ve played several demos, and I immediately uninstalled several. Why? There are a variety of reasons. Some required twitch responses that I did not have. I was really sad about a few of them because I really dug the aesthetics, but I simply could not play the games.

Here are thirngs that will cause me to uninstall a game quickly.

1. Mini-games that make me do QTEs, any kind of ‘fill in the circle’ motion that has to be precise, and anything of that ilk. It seems to be something that more indie games are doing, sadly, much like parrying is king in most triple A action games.

Side note: I don’t know when it happened, but I flinch now whenever I hear the word ‘parry’ as the main combat in any game. I hate the word ‘soulslike’, too, because it usually means the game has taken my least-favorite aspect of From games and glorified them to kingdom come.

I know I have said this over and over again, but I’ll say it one more time. Most devs don’t give a shit about accessibility. Sadly, that includes many of the indie devs, too. I give them more benefit of the doubt–at least, the teams that are small, like 20 employees and under. They simply don’t have the resources to do everything that the bigger companies can do.

However. That doesn’t mean I actually want to play their games.

Side note: I didn’t realize the whole time I was playing The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games) that the game was first-person. I mean, I knew it was, but I did not have the negative reaction I normally have to first-person games. I mentioned it to Ian, and he said that in keeping with the ’90s feel to the game (no bobbing of the head, for example). In thinking of it, it made sense. The only time I got slightly nauseous was when I swung the camera around too quickly–and that was on me.

I cannot tell you how many times I have regretfully turned off a game because the first-person perspective made me sick to my stomach. Sadly, Blue Prince (Dogubomb Studios) was one of those games. Not only was it in first-person, it had a fish-eyed point of view that increase my nausea. The game didn’t have much to fiddle with, sadly. Yes, there was a FOV slider, but it didn’t do much. I played an hour at a time, gritting my teeth as I played. After three hours over two days, I gave  up. I really liked what I played, but I just could not do it.


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Why I don’t do brand loyalty

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I am at a loss as to what game to play next. This happens when I get obsessed with a game. In this case, The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games). I was obsessed with it, and I want to parse what kind of games sink their claws into me. I will break down the games into two different categories: FromSoft games and non-FromSoft games.

FromSoft games are in a league of their own. I have a longstanding rule that I do not preorder games. Except. FromSoft. If they put out a game, I’m buying it (if I can. Still bitter over Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, and now The Duskbloods on The Switch 2). I will say that my faith is a bit shaky with Nightreign and Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon coming out in the last few years and now The Duskbloods.

Side note: I don’t have loyalty to brands. Our relationships are purely transactional. As long as I enjoy/like/get use out of your product, I will buy it. If standards start slipping or I no longer like your product, I will no longer buy it. That’s pretty much it.

It’s the same with FromSoft. Well, not exactly the same. I had a much more emotional connection to the ‘product’, but….

I can feel the games going out of my reach. I have known since the DLC of Dark Souls III that there would be one day I could no longer play the games. My abilities were shit to begin with, and I struggled to complete Dark Souls (my first From game). It took me roughly 150 hours to finish it (with the DLC) for the first time. I had the Prepare to Die edition, which meant it was the whole game. I remember a games journalist casually saying there was no way anyone could take a over a hundred hours to finish the game (sans DLC). He was very much, “No one is different than I am. I am the gold standard for how to play Souls games”, but even so.

I almost quit once, and I did quit for a year another time. I struggled so hard. But I kept going back to it. Ornstein and Smough killed me over a hundred times. Well over. It took me roughly seven hours (one hour a day for seven days) to kill them. Why did I stick with it? I have no idea why.

The funny thing is that they didn’t make me quit; it was the Gaping Dragon, of all bosses. It’s not a particularly difficult boss, but it has a ton of health. It’s a very tedious boss if you don’t have at least a +5 weapon–which I did not. After spending a billion hours chipping away at its health (only a slight exaggeration), I got it down to one or two hits. I stepped back to avoid an attack and–stepped into nothing. There was an abyss I guess I didn’t see, and I died a most ignomious death.

I was furious. I was used to dying–good lord, I was used to dying. I mean, it’s in the name of the edition: Prepare to Die. But not to a fucking hole in the ground. I threw the controller and gave up the game on the spot. A year later, I picked it up again. Why? I’m not quite sure, but I think it had something to do with Scholar of the First Sin coming out.


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The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games): A quick (?) look and review, part two

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I 100%ed The Spriit Lift (prettysmart games) today. The immediate feeling I had was relief. Relief that I could quit playing the game and move on with my life. This is something I hate about trying to 100% a game, by the way. How much I hate the grind and tedium by the end of the game. Dark Souls III (FromSoft) was my favorite game until Elden Ring (FromSoft again) dropped. When I went for the plat/hundo chievo, I was naive as to how much it would take out of me. By the end, I was hating the game with all my heart. And this was a game I played every day as my comfort game. When I got the plat*, I exhaled slowly, put down my controller, and did not touch the game for several months.

I did eventually pick it up again, but it was a journey. That plat was brutal and trash, by the  way. I have a completely unsubstantiated theory as to why the From plats are so terrible. It’s because Miyazaki did not want to do them, but he was pushed to do so. So he made them awful as his way of retaliating. Again, I have nothing to base this on, but it’s a theory that makes sense.

And the reason that Elden Ring‘s is a dream in comparison is because it was meant to be a mainstream hit/breakthrough. That’s not a diss on the game, by the way. It’s my favorite FromSoft game by a hair over Dark Souls III. Something can be a massive hit and still be unique to the vision of the director. I really hate people who act as if something that has mass appeal is automatically a sellout.

Ahem.

Back to this game. Here is part one to my review from yesterday. When I realized that I was close to the plat, I should have just shut down the game and walked away. Why? Because I knew what it was going to do to me. I knew that I get obsessed and my brain turns weird. I knew that I would keep on grinding until I got the two or three meaningless items I needed to get the plat.

I did not want to do it, but I knew I would.

Did I walk away? Of course I did not. I got into that flow state that I hit when I’m focused on an objective. Here’s the thing, though. With the Dark Souls III plat, I knew what I needed to do. I did not like what I needed to do, but I knew each grueling step. The worst was ten hours grinding to get a certain covenant item. Anyone who went for the plat and didn’t want to do the online PvP knows what I’m talking about.


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The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games): A quick(?) look and review

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I have been obsessed with a game for the past three weeks or so. It’s called The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games), and there’s a demo on Steam. Full disclosure: My good friend, Ian, is on the marketing team, which is how I heard of it. It’s a roguelike/lite deck-building ’90s teen-starring game that has ghosts and monsters in it, and it’s lots of fun.

I tried the demo, and I vibed with it immediately. I really dig the nineties aesthetics with the saturated colors. I also like that the teens are very diverse as far as race and ethnicity. Yes, some of them border on stereotypes as characters (the hunky jock that is obsessed about his next meal rather than any big issues; the goth girl who is miserable all the time; the nerdy photographer who is always snapping pics, but I’m fine with that.

The demo hooked me, and I bought it immedaitely. I played run after run as it had that ‘just one more run’ feel to it. Now, three weeks later, I almost have the plat. I just need to find two pieces of evidence, which is frustrating the hell out of me. I’ll get to that in a minute.

The launch trailer, which I have included below, has an appropriate grainy/scratchy VHS feel to it, which is not really what I felt playing the game itself. That’s not a slam on the game, by the way. If anything, it’s a testament to how absorbed I get when I’m playing that I don’t really pay attention to the graphics. Which are great!

Here’s the basic premise. The class of whatever year it is are paryting at the Vexington Hotel their senior year. Three of them stumble into the elevator and go floor by floor, fighting monsters along the way. Then, of course, they meet the big boss up in the penthouse, and that’s the end of the run. One run, if it goes the distance, is about forty-five minutes.

It’s funny. I would say that I’m not a turn-based kind of person. And yet, I played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) and this game. As I said to Ian, I had more fun with this game than with CO:E33. I drive people crazy when I say that one game is more fun than another while also saying that it doesn’t necessarily mean the former is a better game than the latter. Which, I admit, is jerk behavior on my part–but I have to have my fun somehow.


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Free to be me (maybe?)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about bras. Why? Because they are symbolic of societal norms that I consider pointless. I mentioned that so many women on the blog I was reading (and commenting) were so vehementy pro-bra, it surprised me. Not that they wore them or felt compelled to wear them, but that they were downright venemous about people with boobs not wearing them to work.

It caught me off-guard until I realized that it was the same thing that made women furious with me when I was in my twenties saying I was not going to have children. What’s more, I did not want them, and I was not apologetic about it. At all. Mind you, I wasn’t rude about it, either. I never brought it up myself because why would I? I didn’t think about it except when I was asked about it. Like, I wouldn’t mention I never thought about buying a drum set, either, because I don’t tihnk about drums at all.

I received a bunch of reactions to my decisoin–which I naively thought would only affect me. I was so young and so silly. How could I not know that the state of my uterus was public knowledge and that everyone had a say in the contents thereof? Am I being sarcastic? Fuck yeah! I took so much shit back then for not wanting to have children, and it took me at least a decade to unpack the layers.

I want to mention that these were all women. Men did not care if I wanted to have children–in fact, most of them wanted me NOT to want to have them (at least in my twenties). The biggest reaction by far was the condescension of, “Just wait until ______” (You get older, you hit thirty, you meet the right guy.)

That infuriated me because they presumed to know me better than I knew myself.  Or they wanted to ram me into that female-shaped hole, my actual personality be damned. Also, even if I did change my mind at some point, tthat wasn’t where I was at the time I met them, so mentioning future me was futile.

Then there were women who were just curious about me saynig I did not want kids. What did I mean by that? How could I not want them? These women had a hint of envy in their voices, and I think they were questioning their own choices. I didn’t mind nudging them to seriously consider not having children.

Then, there were the women who got angry at me. Like, actually furious. They said I must think they were stupid/bad for having children/wanting them. No matter how much I said I didn’t think that of them (hell, I didn’t think about them at all, which probably would make them feel worse), they just got angrier and angrier.


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A freak like me

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I’ve been talking about gender for the last few posts and how I don’t get it. Now, I want to get more broad (heh) in general because that’s how I feel about so many things.

A few years ago, I started chatting with someone in a Discord I’m in out of the main forums. In private messages, in other words. She and I have a lot in common, and we clicked once we started DMing each other.

She and I got to talking about neurodivergency because I had struggled with fitting in all my life. After we messaged back and forth for a length of time, she asked if I had ever thought that I might be autistic. That never occurred to me because I had the stereotypical image of autism in my mind. My brother? Yeah, he was on the spectrum. Me? Hell, no!

It was only after talking with her and simultanuously watching a few videos on autism that I slowly realized the stereotypes weren’t right. Or rather, they only depicted a very narrow kind of autism, which, not coincidentally, centered on young white boys.

(Lengthy rant on sexism in health issues inserted here.)

The biggest thing that shocked me to learn was that it’s not true that autistic people are not empathetic/don’t feel emotions. I mean, there are autistic people like this, true (like my brother), but there are also plenty of autistic people who feel too much emotions. Or, they feel other people’s emotions, but don’t know what to do with them or misinterpret what those emotions are.

There’s a saying when it comes to autism–if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism. There are throughlines and shared traits, yes, but every autistic person is diferent. In my case, I had to deconstruct the image of a person with autism because it was getting in the way.

There are some common traits, of course, such as hyperfocus on certain interests, stimming, and  uncomfortableness in social situations, to name a few. The problem is that for non-male people (women and others), those traits are liable to get overlooked, chalked up to something else like anxiety, or used against said people more harshly than they are against autistic men (which is already harsh).

How often do you now hear about men acting badly, “Oh, maybe he’s on the spectrum” as a way of excusing his appalling behavior? And yet, you don’t hear it about women and other non-male people hardly at all if ever. They don’t get the same grace and/or amused tolerance.

Side note: By the way, you want to know if someone is acting badly on purpose or if he’s ignorant about it? Look to see if he’s acting the same way with people who have power over him or with men in general. If he’s trulyy autistic, then he’ll be awkward around everyone–not just grossly so around the women he wants to fuck.


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Gender-defending, also known as gender shit (part five)

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Let’s talk more about gender. I want to lay it all on the table so we can finally figure it out together. By the time I’m done, I will have figured out, definitively, what gender is. Once and for all! Obviously, that is said very tongue-in-cheek. If I did not have to think about gender ever again (and people would be chill about it), that wouldbe my happy place. Here is my post from yesterday that about the difference between Asian sexism and Western sexism.

Alas, that is not to be. I still can’t get over the fact that one of the things the people on the right were obsessed with as a reason to hate Bad Bunny was the fact that he liked to wear dresses and skirts. I didn’t even realize it until it was pointed out. Then, I went back and looked at several pictures, and, yes, he does enjoy him a nice dress and/or skirt.

Better him than me! I don’t like dresses. Some skirts are fine (flowy, very loose, and thin), but in general, I am a pants kind of person. Or rather, I am a naked kind of person, but you have to wear clothing in public if you don’t want to get arrested.

In general, I don’t like tight clothing. It’s a sensory thing (another trait of autistic people I have found. Having sensory issues, I mean). I can’t stand anything touching my skin, really, so the less the better. That’s why I don’t wear underwear or a bra, either. I stopped wearing both completely during the pandemic. I was wearing them rarely before that–only when I went out–and then I went feral during the pandemic. And realized that I really preferred going free.

Oh, and I also talked about having anorexia and bulimia while I was in my twenties. That was also as a result of very harmful sexism, both Western and Eastern. Both demanded that girls/women be practically nonexistent, but for different reasons.

Side note: With my recent Kpop Demon Hunters obsession, I’m starting to notice how that sexism plays out. One big way is how painfully thin the female characters are in the movie. Hell, most of the guys are as well. But the women more so. Yesterday, I included the video clip from their song Golden. Today, I have included a video of them singing it live below. You w ill note  that EJAE (Rumi) and Rei Ami (Zoey) are both really skinny whereas Audrey Nuna (Mira) is heavier. She’s not heavy by any stretch of the imagination, but she’s not painfully thin, either.

Side note to the side note: Mira is my favorite character in the movie from the clips I’ve seen. She’s sarcastic, moody, an oddball, and defiant. Audrey Nuna is wise-cracking in a deadpan kind of way and calls herself emotionally constipated. And I love her striking hairstyles. Very non-traditional.

Why couldn’t Mira be heavier in the movie? Again. I’m not asking the impossible. I’m not asking that she be *gasp* plump. Just that she didn’t look like she could be blown over by a sharp wind. The funny thing is that the three women are constantly eating ridiculous amounts of food. It’s true that many Asian women are tiny and can eat a great deal, but still. Let one of them be more than a shadow.


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Talking a bit more about gender (part four)

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I’m back to talk about gender again. I want to make ‘gender-blender’ happen, but I doubt it’ll catch on. In my last post, I finished it by talking about EJAE, the singing voice for Rumi from Kpop Demon Hunters. She never made it as a Kpop star in Korea, and she has said it’s because her voice was deemed not feminine enough. I have watched a bunch of reactions to her singing the songs that she’s pprobably an alto with a really big range. Yes, everyone loves her high notes (and she nails them; they’re so pure!), but several singers/voice coaches have commented on how warm her low notes are. And how dark. Honestly, I like it when she’s hitting the low notes more so than when she goes way high.

I know that South Korea in general is obsessed with looks and rigid gender roles. When I watch Kpop singers, it’s very clear that so many of them have had work done, even though they’re in their twenties and thirties. When I was in Taiwan, I got made fun of by my Taiwanese cousins for being fat. When I was in Thailand, I was told I looked like a man, basically. This was thirty-plus years ago, but I’m not sure how much it’s changed now.

I used to say that I got hit with rampant sexism from both my cultures, just in different ways. It really did a number on my head to be told in so many ways that I was just so wrong. The weight was the first of many things that I was supposed to change. My mother put me on my first diet when I was seven. But, at the same time, I was supposed to eat everything on my plate because she was an Asian mom at heart.

I was seven. Seven! Being told that I was fat and gross. Maybe my mother didn’t say the second word, but she made it painfully clear that she felt that way. She did actually say, “Your face would be so beautiful if yonly you weren’t so fat.” I think I was a teen or in my early twenties then.

When I was eighteen and about to go to college, I decided to lose weight. I went hard and lost forty pounds in two months. And became anorexic. Not on purppose, obviously, but it happened. I almost feel ilke it was destined to happen given my mom’s nagging. Then, in college, I could not keep up my exercise regime (I exercised up to seven hours a day), so I started adding casual bulimia to the mix. What do I mean by that? I mean that I ‘only’ did it two or three times a week. I put only in quotes because I know how that sounds now, but at the time, it made perfect sense to me.

I didn’t have the strength to starve myself the way I had before. I would try, but–see. I only slept three hours a night. That left me with several hours in which I had to stay awake. And not eat. I would eat oyster crackers for breakfast and lunch. A cup of them. Then I would have maybe a bit of fish and rice for dinner. Then,  I would stave off the hunger until two or three in the morning. When I could not stand it any longer, I would buy several packets from the vending machine and scarf them down. Then, I would feel guilty about it and throw it back up.


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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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More musing on gender rigidity

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I have more to say about gender, imagine that. I am almost resigned at this point to have this be an outsized issue because of the way the world is.

Side note (and this may be the soonest I have included a side note in a post) : The Super Bowl happened last night. There was a big cacaphony on the right because the halftime performer was Bad Bunny. Man, did they let their racist freak flags fly high, proudly, and very loudly.

One of the things that they did was rush to have an alternative half-time show starring Kid Rock. There were other country singers, but some of them dropped out (most likely because of all the outrage they received, and rightly so), but there was one country guy who was still in it. Don’t know who he was because I only saw it through the outraged lens of Jon Stewart.

He was singing about how hard it was to be country in this country these days, which Jon Stewart immediately ripped into. The singer goes on to say that he wants to drive his truck, feed his dog, wear his boots–here, Jon played innocent and said that all seemed easy to do. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, which it of course did. The singer went on to say that in this (he called it earlier cancel-culture country, which, ugh. I have done that rant before, and I will probably do it again, but not right now) country, he can’t have a birthday party for his daughter and tell her that boys aren’t girls–or something close to that.

I knew it was coming (or something like it), and yet, I still winced. Jon was right when he said that for a gorup of people who spent so much time complaining about how the left were such snowflakes who were triggered by everything and needed safe spaces, they were just projecting. I mean, we all knew it, but wow did they make it so obvious with their Bad Bunny outrage.

Back to gender rigidity. I was writing yesterday about reading The Rules and how horrifying the book was. It did tickle my funny bone that the version I read noted that one of the authors divorced her husband between the first print of the book and that one. I left off the last post by saying that the last line of the book was something like, “And it doesn’t stop once you’re married”, which caused me to groan, roll my eyes, and toss the book in the trash. Well, probably not literally*, but I wanted to.

Ever since I was a  little child, I never got gender. I mean, I well understood how society viewed it (binary and restrictive, not to mention reductive), but I never understood it for myself. I just knew I was wrong and bad, and I needed to change my entire being. do you know how daunting that is? To change everything about yourself? And how dismaying?

Side note: I think this is why tradwives lose their shit at some point. You can’t suppress your entire personality all the time without completely losing it. You just cannot as I can attest. At some point, you’re going to let it out. That can be in a positive way or in a not-so-positive way. I’ve done both, and believe me, the former is better than the latter.


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