Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: content creation

Streaming is not for me, part three

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I’m writing another post about streaming becasue why not? In the last post, I allowed myself to be distracted by the new FromSoft trailer because how the hell could I not be?! Funnily, I’m stlil not going as hard into it as I did with the last trailer, albeit a month late.

I’m a weirdo in that I don’t like to read/watch other people’s lore that much because I prefer to come up with my own. At least not before going into the thing. Watching any FromSoft trailer ahead of time is so dangerous because tehy show everything–and I mean everything. For Dark Souls III, they had the last boss on the box art.

The thing is, though, that you won’t know what any of the trailer means before you actually play the game. Krupa said this to Rory and Gav before they started the game–he could tell them exactly what was going to happen, and it would mean nothing to them. He’s right. However, if you want to go in completely unspoiled, you will most certainly not want to watch any of the trailers. They show EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. This was another thing Krupa said to the other two about the story trailer for the base game–and it was why he refused to show it to them. I watched it after watching that exchange, and he was so right about  how much it revealed. I don’t remember watching it at the time, and I probably didn’t because I wanted to be fresh. I did watch this one because…well, I just wanted to watch it. Probably because I was robbed of the full joy of the last trailer.

I haven’t gotten deep into the depths of this trailer beacuse I don’t want to make myself sick of it before the DLC even drops

Anyway. I was talking about how a small, but very vocal minority of the RKG community are gate-keeping as hard as they can, and how I feel the boys are absorbing some of it to a certain extent.

I want to make it clear that I love Retry. I have been a fan since their Prepare To Try days, and I aprreciate that they are fairly toxic-free. I know that sounds damning with faint praise, but it’s really hard to find on YouTube, especially in the FromSoft community. When I dip into other FromSoft content creator chats,I leave within a few seconds. They are just so gross af toxic, I feel as if I need a shower after dipping a toe in.


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Why I will never stream a FromSoft game, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about gate-keeping in gaming communities. Oh, not directly, but it was there. I was talking about the second series of Retry Elden Ring for RKG and how there is a small, but very vocal sub-section of the community who just want to bitch about how RORY IZ PLAYIN’ GAEM RONG!!?#$%! It’s in every community, I know, and it’s much less prevalent in this community than in any other I’ve dipped a toe in. And by this community, I mean the RKG community, not the FromSoft community at large. The latter is a toxic hellhole.

By the way. I woke up to a message from Ian that included the story-trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, one month before the release date. I will include it down below. And, man. I was so stoked and hyped. The first trailer dropped three months ago the day my personal tragedy happened (well, that day and the day after), so I was not in the headspace or the heartspace to appreciate it. Now, even though I am still dealing with the tragedy, I can fully appreciate the new trailer.

Which, by the way, is fucking fire. Both literally and figuratively. From does not miss when it comes to their trailers, and this is no exception. There are a million things to dissect. It says everything, and it says nothing at all. And, of course, taking it in tandem with the first means that we can just go off on it. The RKG Discord Elden Ring channel has been busy today in a way it hasn’t since the release of the last trailer.

I have two characters ready to go, one who is my first character and the other who is my wildly OP strength character. I will probably play the DLC with both, but it’s a question of successive or concurrent runs.

Anyway. Back to what I was musing about.

No. Wait. Can I just say that FromSoft’s trailers are just masterpieces. They say so much, and yet, they say nothing at all. Even having had played the base game several times for hundreds of hours, even having had watched the first trailer dozens of times as well, I still have little idea what the DLC is going to be about. I mean, I know the basics, of course (Mesmer, flames, etc.), but other than that, there is just so much room for speculation. And to notice details you hadn’t seen before.


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Streaming for thee, but not for me

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I’m taking a break from talking about my mental healt because something else came to mind. The RKG boys have been spoiling us with trailers for Season/Series 2, which starts on Saturday.

The first thing they gave us was an almost-twelve-hour video of all the bosses Rory has killed in the first season. It’s a good wy to quickly (well, more quickly than watching the whole series) catch up on the first season.

The first trailer was set to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman (which was Mama Finchy’s theme song. Aunty Finchy, this player characetr, is her sister).

Here’s what you need to know about that. Krupa is doing a shadow playthrough on the PC with a ‘no-enemy’ mod running so he can do all the NPC questlines and get all the great shots/B-roll. In this trailer, he matched Aunty’s clothing/hair/movements to the song, which is wild. Such as turning her around on ‘let’s go girls!’, making her hair teal instead of pink for ‘color my hair’, making her wear the marionette’s armor and no pants for ‘man shirt, short skirt’, a shot of Astel for ‘really go wild’, ‘making her naked (well, bra and skimpy panties as that’s as nude as you can get in the game) for ‘gonna let it all hang out’, having a mustache for ‘forget I’m a lady’, and the first night shot for ‘going out tonight’ are some of them–if not all. I didn’t catch them all, but I got them in the comments/RKG Discord. And a few from Krupa himself. And, no dislikes! And no negative comments! (I scrolled, so I might have missed a few, especially at the end). That means this trailer is exempt from what I’m about to say in the rest of the post.

I will say it’s a superb trailer and if it wasn’t for the other trailer, this would have been my featured video. It truly is one of the best teaser trailers I have ever seen. It’s clear that Krupa put so much effort and time into it (And maybe Gav helped out? But I’m sure it’s mostly Krupa), and everyone loved it. I have watched it at least a dozen times and have gotten hyped each thime.

It helps that they dropped a date that was earlier than we expected. Which was also brilliant marketing, by the way. I think they told us they were aiming for June, or we just all collectively thought of it because it was the accepted timeframe for the new season. “Rory’s birthday.” Heh. Inside joke. Gav asked him  waaay back in season one of Prepare To Try when his birthday was, and he said summer. He refused to give a date for several minutes while Gav and Krupa scolded him for being so weird.


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Content creation and me

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I have been watching several videos of autism and gender. Well, not exactly. I have been watching the first five minutes of several videos on gender and autism. The reason I haven’t made it past that is–there are several. In one, the woman repeated called herself ‘a female’ and women in general ‘females’. As a noun, not an adjective. In 2023, nearly 2024. This is not on because many people who do it are doing it as a slur or a way to undermine women. I am not here for that. At all. I winced every time she said, “I am a female with autism or anything similar.” In addition, I am not a woman. I am woman-adjacent, but not a woman. At least not as defined by society. Which is part of the whole point. If society’s rigid definition of a woman includes must wear makeup and a bra, have children, not laugh too loud, or just no take too much space in general, then burn it all to the ground. And I’m not just talking about the bra.

I also quit watching some of the videos because of the hypercuts. I can’t deal with flashing images, which some of the videos bordered on. One person kept making air quotes with their fingers, which I could not handle. Not only was the visual bothering me, but so was the meaningless of the air-quotes. I knew why they were doing it, but they were doing it wrong. And that annoyed the fuck out of me. Another person was spinning a ball or something. I get why they were doing it, but that also bothered my brain.

Side Note: I hate ASMR. It makes me rage. Insta-angry. It wasn’t, “Listen to the ASMR. Note that it was irritating me. Then, become upset about it.” It was, “Listen to the ASMR. RAGE SHUT THAT SHIT OFF AHHHHHHHHHHH!” with me scrambling to turn off the video. I’m saying this because some of the videos had the same insta-rage in my brain.

Here is what I like in my content creation. Chill people. Natural reactions. No forced shouting and forced outrage. Dare I say it, boring? Yeah, other people might find it so. No flashing lights. No spikes in sound. And no jittery camera work.

Here’s the other realization. Just because someone has, say, autism, it doesn’t mean they can talk about it in a way that is compelling or understandable. It’s like anything else, really. And, despite the intimate nature of most YouTube channels, it’s still a performance. Or at least public speaking. Which not everyone can do.


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Impossible idealist

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In my idealized world, I would be able to express my opinions without getting o ton of pushback every time. To be clear, I’m not talking about truly reprehensible opinions such as “All (kind of animals) should be killed.” or “(Group of people who can’t change who they are) should not be allowed to live.”

I’m talking about opinions such as “You don’t have to have children to be a good adult person (specifically woman)” or “I don’t want to get married.” Things that don’t affect anyone other than me is basically what I mean.  Decades after I got flack for stating that I did not want kids–

I want to emphasize once again that I never brought it up on my own bceause it simply didn’t enter my mind. As I’ve said, it’s the same as if I would mention that I didn’t play the harp–which would be weird. We normally don’t bring up things we aren’t or don’t have unless it’s to complain about not having it.

I get that having kids is in a category of its own. I’m not trying to diminish it by comparing it to playing or having a harp. My point is that I think about not having kids about as often as I think about not playing the harp–which is never.

Honestly, the only time I think about not having children is when I write posts about it. I was relieved when I realized that I didn’t have to have children, and it’s still the best decision I ever made in my life.

I am an indecisive person. I can regret what I choose to have for breakfast. The only time I had even an inkling of doubt about my decision not to have kids was when my mother was badgering me for the millionth time about it, and I thought for a brief second, “I should have a kid so she’ll shut the fuck up about it!” I was filled with such rage, but I managed to swallow it as I always did, plus I realized that having a kid to shut my mother up was a terrible idea.

I teeter between the idea of having one umbrella channel and different subjects for different days as I mentioned in the last post, and having separate channels. I know what the righ thing to do is–the latter. I talked about how it’s good to have a niche and flog it mercilessly. Right now, my mind is pretty occupied with my father lost in dementia.

There was a question into Slate…Dear Prudence I want to say from a man who  had been taking care of his parents for decades. First his father until he died and now his mother. Sounds like Huntington’s (that came from the comments). He works full-time and claims to do over half the chores at home (which I doubt beacuse he included washing the floors which is not a daily or even weekly task–they don’t have children). He would go to his mother’s house every day after work and do what needed to be done for hours. His wife used to help out, but she and his mother would scream at each other. He told his wife to take a break, but now he wants her to get back to it. He said in the last three times she tried to help out, she and his mother ended up screaming at each other.


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Life goals now that I have a life

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It’s been over a year-and-a-half since I died twice and came back–twice! I mean, it had to be twice, right? It would have been pretty weird if I said I came back once after dying twice. Not only would it be weird, but it would be not possible for me to die twice, come back once, and be writing this post.

Clearly, I use humor as a way of dealing with the experience. No wait. That’s not right. I’m not using humor to cope with what happened because cope gives the wrong impression. I don’t knwo how to put this delicately, but…aw hell. I’m just going to say it. It was not a traumatic experience in and of itself. I was out for a week, yes (in a coma), but when I woke up, I had all my faculties intact–more or less. Just a reminder–non-COVID-related walking pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and an ischemic stroke. That’s all the things that happened to me within twenty minutes. I mean, I had the pneumonia to begin with, and it’s what triggered the  rest.

This is going to sound like a humblebrag, but trust me that it’s not–I brushed my shoulders off and kept it pushing. Ok, yeah, it is a humblebrag even though I don’t mean it to be. It’s one reason I don’t talk about it much. It’s hard not to be all like, “Yeah, it was nothing” and have it land. Most people who have had strokes have to deal with the aftermath. Me, I have a few small things such as not being able to do simple math in my head and forgetting things, but those are easily remedied by writing shit down.

I feel slightly guilty at times for getting off so easy. I’ve researched the effects of a stroke. I watched a video from a Mayo Clinic doctor (best hospital in the world, and local!) stressing that someone with a stroke can’t think of going back to normal. He was much more diplomatic than that, but that’s what he meant. Basically, he was saying, it’s going to change. Your life, I mean. He was pretty unequivocal about that. Even while he was trying to be positive, it was clear that he wanted people to understand that life as they knew it was over.

I keep remembering a comment I read on Ask A Manager. I don’t remember the context, but it was in April of last year from someone who had had a stroke in January of the same year. She said that she went from having a full-time job to only being able to sit up for a few hours at a time. She would never drive again–which, by the way, is funny because the only time I was forbidden from driving was for a day after my angiogram. Other than that, driving was not mentioned at all. The physical therapist watched me walk twice (for five minutes each time two days in a row), then said she had nothing left to teach me. I passed all the tests with colors if not flying colors. Everything got checked off. Speech, eating, grooming, and walking. They never tested my writing, but that’s not necessary these days. I don’t type quite as fast as I used to, but it’s still faster than the average. I used to type over a hundred words a minute, and I’m probably closer to 80 WPM these days. Touch typing with the Dvorak system, yo.

Anyway. Back to the commenter. She could only sit up for two or so hours at a time. She couldn’t work more than four hours a day. She could only type with one hand. She wasn’t going into the office, but working at home. She tired easily.

It really affected me because it was clear that her life had changed. Mine, not so much. Again, there are some small things I have to adjust for. I will say that I’m not comfortable driving, but I never was. It’s just that my peripheral vision is even worse now than it was before. But it’s not a big deal. Lyft is a thing and my brother is willing to drive me if he has time.


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