Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: gatekeeping

Gatekeeping in FromSoft games, part two

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In the last post, I was talking about gatekeeping in FromSoft games. I left off by bringing up the ongoing debate in the RKG Discord/Patreon about the *sigh* use of summons. I sigh because it’s boring as fuck. It’s pretty much as simple as if you don’t like that the boys use them, then, BYEEEEEEEE!

Look. There are hundreds if not thousands of Let’s Plays that do it with no summons. Believe me. I’m watching one right now. And there are plenty with people who dual-wield, no shield as well. If this is what you want, there is an embarassment of riches from which to choose. If someone chooses to watch RKG, I would think it’s mostly for the bants. The way they interact is the reason most people watch. It’s why I watch–well one of the top reasons. I also love that Rory’s brain is wired differently, so he often comes up  with zany ways to tackle bosses. And, he’s often his own worst enemy. There is–ok.

Let me explain. There is a new mechanic in the game that is the Flask of Wondrous Physick. In it, you can put two tears. You will be able to find tears around the world. There are maybe twenty of them? They are usually at the base of an Erdtree, and you have to fight an Erdtree Avatar to get the tear. The tears do everything from give you an extra flask (either red or blue) to more endurance to unlimited blue (mana) for a set amount of time. And more. I usually have the extra health flask and the unlimited mana for a set amount of time combo.

There is a tear that explodes when you drink the flask. Once Rory found this tear, he was enamored with it. Krupa explained that some people used it and called it the Homeward Boom (there is no Homeward Bone, an item that brings you back to the last bonfire at which you rested) because people would take it at the end of a boss fight, kill the boss and themselves, and end up back at the Site of Grace.

Of course, Rory had to do it. And messed it up more than once. Fortunately, he gave it up after using it on three or so bosses. But it was hilarious to see him pull it out! This is why I watch, to be honest. I love seeing what Rory comes up with in that brain of his. In the video below (and I started it at roughly the right spot), Rory was using it against the Putrid Avatar. Also, I forgot he was into the whip at this point. Ah, good times. He took the Homeward Boom flask with maybe three hits left on the Putrid Avatar, but was too far away. He missed, then went in to whip the Putrid Avatar (instead of using the twinblade, which is what he’d been using up until then). He whipped it twice and had one hit left when he swung the whip and the Putrid Avatar jumped up, landed on him, and Scarlet Rotted him to death.


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Gatekeeping in FromSoft games

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I am pretty tired of the topic of gatekeeping, but I need to talk about it as a FromSoft fan. There are two reasons I’m specifically bringing it up now, and I’ll try to get to both. The first is *sigh* the isuse of accessibility options in games. You would think that in the year of our bullshit, 2024, that people would not give a shit about something that did not affect them. In this specific case, it’s the new Dragon Age game having the option to not die. In Elden Ring, it’s the request for a pause button. In both cases, you don’t have to engage with it at all if you don’t like it. I mean, you never have to touch the ‘no death’ option in the former, and you never have to pause the game in the latter.

But, apparently, it’s too big of an ask to even have them in the games. Stephanie Sterling talks about it in her latest video. She also covers the shit that Alanah Pearce got in her video for discussing accessibility options in gaming (I’ve included the latter video below. I watched it before seeing that Sterling had talked about it in her current video.)

Pearce is passionate about accesibility in gaming. She has madeher own gaming awards show because of that passion. It’s part of her day job (accessibility consulting), and it’s personal. The video in which she was talking about it as pertaining to gaming was about Elden Ring. I like that she goes off on tangents because that is how my brain works. She doesn’t necessarily tie them together, which is also something I relate to.

Anyway. The point I want to talk about is putting a pause option into Elden Ring. To me, it seems like a small ask, especially for an offline game. Yes, you can play online, but you can also play it offline–and there is no fucking reason you should not be able to stop. People talk about the ebb and flow of combat, which, yes, but also, no.

What I mean is that if you (general you) feel you need to not stop during a boss fight, for example, you don’t have to! That’s the beauty of playing a game–you can ignore things like the pause button if you don’t want to use it! Pearce was trying to talk about a complex issue–how disability can be situational or time-constrained, and not just chronic, and she used the example of being a parent.


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Gatekeeping is bullshit, part four

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The boys are back in town! RKG boys, that is. Retry Elden Ring, Season/Series 2 premiered today–and they gave us producers an additional episode. They premiered it at 1 p.m. my time, which meant I had to skip the first half hour because I had Taiji. Once I hopped into the Discord, it was so cool to watch with the gang. I watched the begininng of the first episode after it ended and now I’m watching the second episode.

In the last post, I was talking about the small minority of very vocal voices in the RKG community who want to dictate how Rory plays.

Anyway. Here’s the thing about gatekeeping–it’s just bullshit. The older I get, the more I’m just so over it. I don’t want to even acknowledge they have a point because they don’t. I have always been of the mindset that if it’s in the game, it’s fair play. Even if it’s a cheese strat, so what?

I have never understood and I will never understand why people are so salty about how other people play the games. Well, I do know why, but I simply don’t agree. I also don’t think that just because someone pays money for content (Patreon), they got to dictate the play. I am well aware that I’m being a bit hypocritical because I so emphatically want him to be able to use the spirit summons–but only whenever he wants to. There have been times when he’s chosen not to do it and have been times when he just forgets he can.

But in general, I say let him play how he wants to play. To me, I chose to be a patreon because I enjoy their content. I appreciate Rory for who he is, even when he annoys the hell out of me. Even when he annoys the hell out of me? I like that he’s chaotic and all over the map. I like that he stubbornly clings to something that is no longer serving him. I like that he has excellent twitch responses that sometimes makes him overreact to the circumstance. I like that he has a childlike wonder for some of the things he’s seen in the games.

That’s what I don’t understand. Why would you pay money to a content creator and then try to change the way they operate? If you enjoy what they do, would you not want them to do more of it?

If I were to steram a From game, it would be with many caveats. One, it would not be on a first playthrough. I just would not and could not do it. I’m already stressed the first time through because I am so bad at these games. Rory is so much better at these games than I am, it’s hard not to be jealous because they are pretty much all I play. Or rather, I always have a From game on the go. And I still suck at them. I know it’s because of my hidden disabilities, but I get frustrated because my love for the games does not make me any better at them.


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Gatekeeping, brutally frank (part five)

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At the end of the last post, I was musing about being on the inside or the outside and why people don’t like outsiders. I got tired and abruptly ended the post so I wanted to expand on it in this one.

For a lot of people (especially cishet white guys), there’s an over-identifitcation with the pop culture they like. I see it all the time. Making definitive statements about what they like as if it’s fact. I’ve even seen them declare that something is ‘objectively’ this or that when it’s literally just their opinion. I marvel at the enormous amount of privilege it takes to think that way. Not only do they just assume their opinions are the norm–they don’t evev have enough self-awareness to think for a nanosecond that this might not be true.

“I think The Beatles are the greatest group of all time” versus “The Beatles are the greatest group of all time.” Many people say the latter when they mean the former, but don’t realize there’s a difference.

I would like to go through a day with that much obliviousness and certainty in my own opinions. Instead, I am painfully aware that most of my opinions are thought of as trash. Back when I started reading mysteries, they were put on their own shelf under mysteries because how dare they think they might be put amongst the literary fiction? Needlsess to say, that was quite some time ago. Now, murder is considered literature (or at least not sectioned off), and no one bats an eye if you read mysteries.

Pop culture is meaningless, right? It’s just fluffy goodness (or badness) that appeals to the masses. Except. What gets considered good or bad pop culture? Over the years, it’s been shown that things that girls/young women like, for example, get dismissed as terrible. Boy bands, Twilight, and Barbies are all examples of this. It makes sense, really, as women’s pop culture is also dismissed more readily then men’s. Women will consume pop culture aimed at men, but not vice-versa.

Let’s add to that nonnbinary, genderqueer, agender, and all the other genders. There’s no way in hell cis het white men are going to get anywhere near any of that. I have talked to other queer people about how cis het white men are almost like another species. There are downsides to this, obviously, but, dang. That undeserved confidence, though. It makes me simultaneously shake my head ruefully and envy them.

I wish I had half the confidence. Even though I have more self-esteem now than I did before my medical crisis, I  still keep many of my opinions to myself. I just…am tired. I am not one or two deviations from the norm–I’m about four or five. And not in a fun way or a cute way. I am no manic pixie girlfriend, and I am very low energy. Plus, I no longer call myself a woman, so there’s that, too.


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Down with gatekeeping, part four

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In the last post about gatekeeping, I went on a wild tangent about my mother and how she did not accept any part of my being so I stopped telling her anything of importance. It relates to gatekeeping because when I was in my early thirties, I finally realized that I would never be what she wanted me to be. Bear with me because this is related to gatekeeping–at least in my brain.

Every time I told her something personal about me, I expected more support than I got. Which, to be clear, was no support. Jvery major announcement I made to her was met with negativity. And, since I was a slow learner, I kept telling my mother things I really should have kept to myself.

They include: Being bi; getting my first tattoo (I have four now, including one to cover my shitty first one); losing my religion (I never reallly told my mother untilc she would not shut up about her God and I blurted out, “I don’t give a fuck about your God!” Do not recommend; not wanting children; not wanting to get married; and studying Taiji. You would think the last one would be innocuous, but she said, “That will let the devil dance on your spine.” Which sounds intriguing, btw, but I have no idea why she said that. She tried to defend it, but it made no sense at all. It hurt just like her reaction to me telling her I was bi hurt. Oh, I don’t think I said–after saying that I had always been so boy crazy, the next thing she said was, “What’s next, animals?”

By the way, I don’t understand that at all. Why is the go-to for homophobes animals? I don’t understand the logic of thinking cross-species interaction is even on the table, let alone the first thing to cross your mind–well, technically second, but still.

Nowadays, I’m not keen about the word ‘bi’, but it’s still the best of the insufficient words. The current thought behind bi is ‘people who are like me and people who aren’t’ in terms of gender. So, for me, that means agender and every other gender. I have considered and rejected pansexual, omnisexual, and anything else of that ilk. I’m a plainspoken person, though very verbose, so I like every day vernacular.

I tried to use queer for a while, but people just assume that means gay. This is is the issue with many of the labels, by the way. POC means black even though supposedly, it’s person of color. Same with BIPOC. It all means black because other colors don’t exist.


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Gatekeeping has got to go, part three

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In the last post, I talked about how an ex dumped me because I was honest about my opinion of Pulp Fiction. After he dumped me, we remained friends. Well, let me be honest. I wanted to get back together with him–why, I do not know–

Actually, I do. It’s because my mother hammered it into my head since I was very young that a girl’s sole purpose was to, in order, A) get a man. And, yes, specifically a man. That was made excruciatingly clear when I came out to her as bisexual. She’s a psychologist and had been very accepting of my cousin when he came out to her as gay. That was a few days before I came out to her.

When I came out to her, she reacted very badly. She made a face that I have now come to think of as sucking on lemons.  It’s her reaction when she’s upset about something. Or disgusted. Or any other negative feeling. She will not flat-out say that she doesn’t like something (that’s cultural, too), but she will make it very clear to anyone paying attention. I can read her like a book. Every pause, every sigh, every flinch–I know what she means by them.

The first thing she said to me when I told her I was bi (and, by the way, I learned over time never to tell her anything important) was, “But you’ve always been so boy crazy!” Which doesn’t really matter in the context of being bisexual. I answered, “I still am. I’m just girl crazy as well.” Not a great answer for many reasons including limiting myself to the binary, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. Now, I would tell her that it had nothing to do with being bisexual. Acutally, I wouldn’t have told her in the first place because, frankly, it’s none of her business.

I think it was Captain Awward who said that reasons are for reasonable people. If she did not come up with it, she at least says it regularly. I completely agree. We want to be kind to the people in our lives, yes, but we also need to be clear-eyed about the people in our lives. From the time I was a tiny child, my mother made it clear that I was supposed to be a clone of her. Even though she was miserable beacuse she had made choices that her mother had coerced her to make. Not physically, but verbally and emotionally.

I was so fucked up for the first three decades of my life beacuse I was so sure I was a complete and abject failure for not living up to my mother’s standards. Once I realized that it was ok to not want what she had (and resented having), it made life much easier. But, it also made it harder because I had so much rage at my mother for pushing her shit on me. And I had to find a way to detach from her without it tearing me apart.

I realized that the only way for me to deal with her was to not think of her as my mother. If I viewed her in that category, then the anger flowed through me. Along with the pain, disappointment, and the buried sadness. If I just thought of her as a deeply flawed old woman who was in the final part of her journey and who was never going to change, one who had been given a bad hand and never tried to make it better, one who at age eighty had to struggle with a husband with ever-worsening dementia, I could find a modicum of compassion for her.


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Gatekeeping has got to go, part two

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I want to talk more about gatekeeping. In the last post, I started with pop culture and then quickly went deep. It’s all related, but I want to try to keep this post light. We’ll see how well I adhere to that.

I started the last post talking about someone gatekeeping coffee. “If you can’t drink coffee black, then you’re not a real fan.” The woman who said it was not joking, though she said it in a jovial tone. And I have to think, why does it matter how someone else enjoys their coffee? And who made hre the arbiter of what made a true coffee fan?

Seriously. How did it affect her enjoyment of coffee if someone gasp liked to put cream and sugar in their coffee?

As a queer freak, I am by default ‘not how things are done’. Throw in Asian, agender, areligious, and a bunch of other minority qualifiers, and I should just be banned from polite society. Seriously. Why the hell does it matter to someone if someone else likes pineapple on their pizza or not? Or anchovies? Or that I don’t like pepperoni and vastly prefer sausage? Pepperoni is way too salty for me. Much like bacon, which I also don’t like. I also think Spam is fine, though it would not be my first choice of meat.

Other things I’ve taken flak for because I did not like them: The Beatles, The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, The Titanic, The Rolling Stones. Things I don’t like, but never talk about: Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Se7en, The Simpsons.

I will be transparent and say I have only seen one episode of Game of Thrones (The Red Wedding) and one episode of Breaking Bad (the penultimate one), but I loathed both of the shows with all my heart. I don’t think I would have liked either of them even if I had started from the start because I don’t care for ultra-violent media.

Here’s the reason why. Well, one reason. My brain can’t differentiate between fake violence and real violence. Even though I know it’s not real, I still react as if it is. There are scenes I’ve seen in movies that have stayed with me for decades and still upset me when I think about them now.

Anyway. Powers doesn’t like The Beatles. Someone in the comments said that he didn’t trust anyone’s taste in music who did not like The Beatles. I think the commenter was joking, but I’ve heard many versions of that comment said in all seriousness about all kinds of things.


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Gatekeeping has got to go

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I was watching an episode of Hot Ones, and the guest was a coffee connoisseur. Sean asked her about the quintesssential coffee, and she said something about someone not truly being a coffee aficionado if they could not drink a coffee black.

I rolled my eyes so hard, I think I sprained one of my eyeballs. She said it with a laugh, but she meant it. And it’s so meaningless, I don’t understand it. Most of my friends are weirdos, and we’ve talked about how being a weirdo is a gift is so many ways. One of them is accepting other people’s quirks and realizing that there’s no validation for liking something that other people don’t.

Because of this, I have absolutely no patience for gatekeepers of any sort. I have talked about this at length when it comes to From games, but I’d like to make it into a more general statement. Even before I got into the From games, I have being a weirdo when it comes to pop culture. I don’t like things other people do, and very few people like what I do. In addition, I am very open about the fact that I don’t care if what I like is canonically considered good or not, and I will vigorously agree when people tell me I have terrible taste. Which, by the way, takes the wind out of their sails. Which is hilarious in its own right, though not the reason I started doing it in the first place.

I honestly don’t get it. Pineapple on pizza, for example. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it, either. And I don’t get why people give a shit if other people like it or not. Honestly. Who the fuck cares that much?

But I get it on some level. I don’t drink. At all. It’s in part because I’m allergic to alcohol, but it’s more in part because I hate the way it tastes. All of it. Beer and wine are terrible-tasting to me, and hard liquor is the least offensive, but still not on my list of top ten things to drink. One is water with Mio. Two is carbonated flavored water. Three is coffee. Four is tea. These are the ones I drink on the regular. Five would probably be Diet Coke, though I haven’t drank that in ages. Or iced tea. Then six is the other one. I could come up with a dozen other drinks I’d prefer to alcohol. Basically, I would not drink alcohol in any situation. Well, other than my life was at stake for some reason, and even then, it would be with hate in my heart.

When I was in my twenties, I got so much shit for not drinking. And qusetions why. And people insisting that I just had to find the right beer. And I don’t talk about it beacuse people think it’s some kind of judment about them (which it wasn’t at the time).


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Everything can be OP if you want it to be

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It’s that time again when I go on a long, angry screed about how magic is not OP in FromSoft games. Or rather, it’s not the only thing that’s OP, depending on how you want to frame it. In the latest episode of Roundtable Hold (companion show to the Elden Ring Retry  by RKG), there was a question sent in asking if Rory was going to be allowed to use magic. Or something like that. There has been a long-standing toxic masculinity bullshit meme that magic is OP in From games.

I have ranted about this before, but I need to do it again. Even, sadly, Krupa buys into it to a certain extent, and it’s because you don’t “get in there” and get “up close and personal”. Except that’s not right, especially not in the actual Souls games.

Let me step back a second and explain. Apparently, in Demon’s Souls, magic was OP. I do not know because I have not played it, but there’s a ring that steadily (but slowly0 regens your MP. FP. Mana. Whatever it’s called. And the spells look siiiiiiiick as fuck. Anyway, I will grant that it seems like it might have been OP in that game. However.

In the first Dark Souls, I started as a Pyro. Pyromancies did not have stats in the first game, which made them great for the onebro run, apparently. And they were considered OP. I did not find them OP because you had limited casts. Once I ran out of casts, I had to use my plink-plonk axe, which did not do much damage because I did not level up my strength. Or rather, I leveled it up enough so I could use the Battle Axe, and that was it.

Also, the magicks in Elden Ring are incredible. I was skeptical that they would be better than they were in the previous games, but they are. So much better. So much more varied and diverse, and such a wide array. You have glintstone sorceries, night sorceries, gravity sorceries, and more. Then in incantations, there are buffs and cleansers, holy order incantations, lightnings, pyros, and so. much. more. Let’s not forget the dragon incantations, which need a bit of arcane.

In addition, the way Rory plays, he will not have access to the most powerful spells because he’s very much into spreading his levels around. In addition, he rarely remembers to level up at all. It’s fascinating, actually, how he’s foregone leveling up, keeps switching weapons, and hasn’t leveled up his weapons much or his spirit ashes at all. Also, he refuses to have more than three spells becasue that’s all he can handle. Sometimes, he forgets he has magic at all.

In other words, he’s very chaotic, which is both one of his best qualities as well as one of his worst. I feel bad for him because viewers constantly complain about the way he plays, no matter what. I know it’s part of being a content creator, especially someone who streams a popular niche series of games, but it has to be disheartening.


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All the gatekeepers of the world can fuck off

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In the RKG Discord, someone was going off on gatekeeping. Not in video games, but elsewhere. His main point was that as long as someone wasn’t hurting someone else, let them like what they like. I agreed because I have been put down for my tastes all my life. I find it more amusing than hurtful, but it’s still annoying after a while.

To be clear, I don’t go around saying I think Star Wars is boring (I do) or that I found The Big Lebowski exceedingly distasteful (which I did), but I’m also not going to lie about it if I’m asked. I don’t like many of the popular pop culture, but I keep my mouth shut. Unless I’m specifically asked. Or, if I’m opining on my own Twitter feed/Facebook wall, etc. In other words, in my own home. I’ve had people take offense at that, and I take great pleasure in agreeing with them that my taste is terrible.

I mentioned boba tea, which was invented by my people–the Taiwanese people, that is. It was all the rage when I was in the Bay Area, and I tried it when I was out there. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but I was given a contaner of tea with big, thick, chewy tapioca ‘pearls’ at the bottom of the cup. There was a big straw in the cup, and you were supposed to suck up the pearls through the straw.

I could not suck hard enough to get that pearl through the straw. Wow. That sounds sexual, doesn’t it? I could not do it. No idea why I wasn’t given a spoon as well, but I faithfully tried again. When I managed to get one through the straw, I momentarily panicked that it was going to get stuck in my throat. Plus, it was soft and squishy. I do not like solid things in my liquids, at least not the ones I’m drinking (which excludes soup).

When I moved back to Minnesota and it became a thing here (roughly three years after it was a trend in San Francisco, I refused to get any. Even though people around me raved about it. Now, I would not be able to have it because it has milk in it, which is fine by me.

I get that people have their own preferences, but I don’t get why people care so much about what other people like or don’t like. I have a friend whose husband takes it very personally if she doesn’t like the same thing he does. He takes it as a rejection of him, which I understand, but I don’t agree with.


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