Alternate title: Playing the game on hard mode.
I don’t like hard games. I know that sounds facetious because I play From games, but I play them despite the difficulty not because of it. I put up with the hard bosses because the level design is beyond compare.
I can’t get over how amazing the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s level design was. Elden Ring, the base game, was terrific as expected. It won game of the year and totally deserved it. Two years later, the DLC came out. I went through one of the most traumatic events of my life on the day it was announced (well, it started that day and the next day was actually the worst day of my life, but I was ready for it (mostly) when it came out four months later.
I gladly allowed my self to get lost in the moody, atmospheric DLC. I did what I always do, which is avoid the main story for as long as I possibly could.
Hey, wait. This post isn’t about that, so let’s move on. I have written about Shadow of the Erdtree endlessly, and I wasn’t going to do it again in this post. I just wanted to mention it because it’s simply amazing in the breadth and depth. The main game took me 240+ hours to complete whereas the DLC took me 70+ hours. I explored the hell out of everything in both the base game and the DLC.
I was just about to write more about it, but the point is that I don’t play the games for the difficulty. In fact, in the DLC, the last boss was just…ughhhhhh. They have nerfed the boss (or rather, the shitshow that surrounds the boss), but it’s still just an unpleasant fight.
In real life, I wish I did not unerringly pick the hardest hill to climb every time. I swear to god that I don’t do it on purpose, no matter what my mother thinks. (She doesn’t like that I’m so anti-tradition and so…weird and wrong (in her eyes).) It’s just what I feel in my heart of hearts.
In this case, it’s gender. I was reading a forum about changing your pronouns at work, and so many people were for it. Meaning they were for having them in the sig box of their emails and introducing themselves with their pronouns. These were cis people, by the way. Most trans/nonbinary people were not as sanguine about it for a few reasons.
One, for people who aren’t out yet, being made to state their pronouns could be very fraught. Or the people who haven’t decided on their pronouns yet. Or, like me, someone who is agender and does not use gendered pronouns.
More than one person said how I felt–they did not mind so much other people calling them by a pronoun, but they did not want to actually call themselves by their at birth gender pronoun. I have given up mostly on correcting people because I really don’t have the energy. Plus, I get how weird it is not to use gendered pronouns, so I can’t really fault people for getting confused. I mean, I don’t always remember for myself, either.
It’s just resignation at this point. If I used ‘they/them’, that would be understandable. Even if people don’t like it, they at least realize it’s a thing now. Even if it’s just to protest that it’s a thing.I don’t like neopronouns for me, so I don’t mess with those.
I have said that if I were in my twenties now, I probably would embrace ‘they/them’. I’m not sure because they don’t really feel like me, but I think I could have made it so over time. But I’m old now, and I’m set in my ways. I feel no affinity towards ‘they/them’, and I don’t have it in me to work towards that. Because, see, that’s too much focus on gender.
Part of my reason for choosing ‘agender’ as my label is because I don’t think about gender when I’m not pondering the social ramifiications of gender. If I was in my perfect world, I would not think about it at all. Why? Because for me, and this is just for me, gender is more an annoyance than anything else. I have said this many times, but there is nothing that I can do that is predicated on me being AFAB. I mean, other than the obvious. But even that is–ok, this post is not about that, either.
I am resentful that I have to think about it at all. I am glad that I don’t work in an office because I would not want to deal with being misgendered several times a day. I know i would be because as I said, I’m the nichest of all niches. Also, I’m not very assertive when it comes to things ilke this. I mean, I may correct people once or twice, but then after that, I would give up.
I would let people call me what they want, but I would be low-key resentful of it–and then not-so-low-key if they kept doing it. Then, at some point, I would explode, and then people would feel like I was overreacting. I would also feel like I was overreacting, but I would know that it was the build up and not just that incident.
Side note: This is often the case with dysfunctional relationships. Things build up, and no matter how hard I try to ignore my irratiton, it’s always at the back of my mind. And then because I hold it in so much, when I do let it out, it just explodes. This is not a good thing; I know it isn’t. I also know I’m not going to change it any time soon.
I really wish that I could be OK with being called female/a woman. It would make life so much easier. Or, more to the point, it would make me feel less like a freak. And less lonely. I already censor myself so much, and it would be nice if this was something I didn’t have to think about.
I don’t choose my path, hough–the path chooses me. More tomorrow.