Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: easy mode

Wish I may, wish I might

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Alternate title: Playing life 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.


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Playing life on hard mode

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Over a decade ago (ouch), John Scalzi wrote a blog post entitled, Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. In it, he endeavored to explain to straight white dudes what privilege was without actually using the word privilege because they were so turned off by it. He said at the outset that he was writing it as a straight white dude, and the police blew up. It went viral, and it was deeply polarizing. He did a few updates to the post as well. I just reread the piece, and it still holds up today.

As a person of color, I think this is a solid post. Is it a bit snarky? Well, sure. That’s his style. But he’s also speaking their language (in this case, specifically, white nerd boys) by using the analogy of playing a video game called The Real World. Being a white het dude is Easy Mode, and he explains why. He also adds that ti doesn’t mean they will ‘win’ the game or that they won’t have a hard time. He’s just saying they start with an advantage that other people don’t have.

I want to springboard off that point to say that I really wished I hadn’t chosen to live my life on difficult mode. Or even maybe nightmare mode.

I will start by acknowledging that in one way, I am on easy mode. That is money. Scalzi says that’s a stat rather than a skill, but I will say that not having to worry about money is definitely easy mode for that particular stat. Especially in America where one hospitalization whilst uninsured can leave you bankrupt for life. So, I disagree with him on that. Not having to worry about money is hugely stress-relieving.

Having said that, almost every other skill/level/stat I’ve ‘chosen’ is bullshit. The reason I put it in quotes is because it’s more that I’ve realized things about myself rather than chosen them. Me being Asian (Taiwanese) and AFAB are both knocks against me.

Now. From here on out, I could have theoretcially chosen to do the straight (heh) and narrow. I could have gotten married to a man and had 2.4 children. Well, not the .4 bit. I could have gone to church dutifully every Sunday and taught Sunday school.

And my soul would have died. Several times. Over and over because nothing sounds worse to me. I never wanted children, but just assumed I had to have them because I was seen as a woman–and that’s what women did. Spawn children. That was the most important purpose for a woman–and maybe the only, don’t you know.

Here’s the thing about being bi. Back when I realized it (thirty years ago), it was drummed into my head that it wasn’t a choice. I didn’t CHOOSE to be attracted to people of both (at the time) genders. Now, all and any genders, and none at all. Which is true. But I could choose who I wanted to date. At that time, I didn’t want to deal with being bi so I ignored that part of me. Once I embraced it, I realized that i would have chosen to be bi even if I weren’t.

I wasn’t supposed to say that, though. Because the formal queer line was that it wasn’t a choice–you were born that way. Like Lady Gaga sang. But what if you did choose it? It would still be a valid choice.


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Fuck the gatekeepers

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On the RKG Discord, someone wrote the words that are guaranteed to enflame me (even as a Pyro!): DS 2 doesn’t have an easy mode. It was said presumably to me and another person discussing the fact that you cannot start as a Pyro in DS II. I can tell you my immediate impulse was to cuss out the guy because it’s so fucking tedious to have guys (and it’s usually guys) whining about easy mode in FromSoft games, but I bit my lip hard and just wrote that being a Pyro in the original Dark Souls was not easy mode.

I have written countless words about this, but it continues to linger as a mindset in the community. And it sucks. It’s so not welcoming and it’s gatekeeping at its worst.

He wrote back to say that using pyro melts all bosses except Seath (which is funny because he is susceptible to fire), especially if you use PW (Power Within, a pyro that increases your damage output as it steadily depletes your health).

I said that you could say the same about any playstyle you maximized, which most people don’t do on their first playthrough. I pointed out that a Zwei+15 did the same, which I can say with authority because I’ve done that playthrough, too. He said that was fair, and I left it at that.

I’m still ticked, though. It’s such a stupid knee-jerk thing to say, and it makes the community so much less welcoming. There is already the belief that you have to beat the bosses solo in order to be a ‘real’ Fromsoft fan or you’re cheating. Cheating whom, I can’t tell you as it doesn’t affect me in the least when someone else plays the game differently.

There is cheesing in the game, such as using poison arrows to kill Gwyndolin without him ever disappearing for one. It takes forever, but it does get the job done. I don’t have a problem with it, though, because who cares? During my plat run, I had fun cheesing various bosses because I got bored doing it the conventional way. I tried the bomb cheese for the Bed of Chaos, but was only able to get one orb that way. I used the arrow cheese on the other orb, and then got the Bed herself in the old-fashioned way.


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