Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: misogyny

I am over the soulslike genre

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Five years ago or so when the glut of soulslike games really started taking off, I was intrigued. I tried most of them, and I didn’t like any of them. I have listed them in the past so I’m not going to do it again. Every time, I went into the game with hope in my heart. Every time, I was disappointed and shook my head (metaphorically) as I set it down.

Fast-forward five years, and I am done with the genre. DONE. I am so over it. Now, I sigh heavily when I hear the phrase ‘soulslike’, and while I may try the game, I know I probably won’t enjoy it. I did not like Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), which I did finish; Lords of the Fallen (Hexworks); and I really did not like the demo for The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople). I played maybe an hour of it before metaphorically hurling it into the trash.

In fact, I can’t think of one that I really  liked. I enjoyed Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios), but immediately forgot about it once I was finished (which was halfway through a second playthrough). The reason I liked it so much, though, was because it hewed so closely to the Dark Souls formula.

The reason I don’t like the vast majority of soulslikes is because they focus on making their game hard–which is the least-interesting aspect of the From games to me.  I put up with those things in a From game because the level design is beyond compare. And I just like the whole gestalt of the games.

Yes, when I played the three Dark Souls games and Bloodborne, I bought into the ‘you must solo the bosses’ mentality. And in Sekiro, you have to solo the bosses because there is no multiplayer. Elden Ring broke me of that because there was no way I was going to do that shit again.

The reason I’m musing about this is because there’s yet another soulslike coming out. It’s called WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers (LEENZEE), and it’s from China. It is heavily influenced by FromSoft games–it’s easy to see from the trailers. I’m including the gameplay trailer, and the first boss the protag is fighting is the last boss from Sekiro, and it’s even in a similar field. And it’s tagline is ‘Nothing is Forever’. That has BIG ‘Shadows Die Twice’ energy.

Side note: I HATE that they made the protag a walking sex doll. Yes, it’s a woman, and they clearly spent a lot of time on their jiggle physics. And they have several (I’m assuming) very skimpy outfits (I saw two). Come the fuck on. It’s 2025. Why the fuck are we still treating female characters like anime dolls? For fuck’s sake!


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More boobs, er, hills to die on

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More talking about boobs. I just watched a video by Rachel Bloom called Heavy Boobs. It’s very catchy and I agree with the sentiment…. but she says she’s Double D. That’s not heavy. That’s what I said I was when I stopped buying bras, but I knew I was MUCH bigger than that. Much. Like, Z big. Yes, I know that’s not an actual size, but someone with Double Ds is average. I just Googled. The average bra size is 34DD.

Of course, we all know that women’s clothing and numbers are bullshit. It’s one reason I just don’t any longer. I stick to clothing that is S, M, L, XL, XXL, and higher. Oh, yeah. XS and going in the other direction as well.

The reason I gave up on jeans is that when I was as my skinniest (eating disorder, yo), I could not find a pair of jeans that fit properly. In theory, I was at the ‘perfect’ size to find a pair. I could not. I spent hours in a dingy Target changing room with lights that hurt my eyes, discarding pair after pair while my then-boyfriend waited with four or five pairs of jeans in his hand. Jeans he was going to buy without ever having tried on because men’s clothing goes by measurement, and not some nebulous number system that has no basis in reality. At the time, I wore anything btween a 0 (yes, there is actuallly a size 0 for women, or at least there was twenty years ago) to 11, depending on the brand. That’s awide range.

I could not find a single pair of jeans that fit. I was getting more and more depressed as I tried on the jeans, and then I realized, “Fuck. I don’t need to wear jeans.” And I haven’t since. If I have to wear pants, then I wear flowing pants that have elastic at the waist and are comfortable. What a relief!

Hm. So at the end of the last post, I was writing about how women are often the worst for upholding the patriarchy. So many women who think women’s bodies are gross just makes me incredibly sad. I can’t even get angry about it. Going through life with that much safe-hatred is tiring; I jnow this from experience. And if you’re wasting so much emotion on hating yourself, well, that’s time you can’t spend doing literally anytihng else.

This was something I realized in my late twenties (though I could not fully embrace it for decades): It benefits the partiarchy to have women focused on hating their bodies because it means they won’t think about other things–including how much the patriarchy sucks. In the last decade or so, there has been a slow movement towards the idea that an indidual of a minority can’t do anything wrong. Menaing, if a woman does something, the action in and of itself is feminist.


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Internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug

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Today, there are 2 letters at Ask A Manager that relate to gender-specific assumptions/statements. The first is just a hot mess of internalized misogyny and doesn’t really need much dissection (though she got a ton of it from the commentariat–and I will probably add to it myself. Alison had an excellent and thorough response to the question), but the other was more interesting in part because of the brevity of what she said about the other women in her office. In addition, my immediate response was different than my follow-up opinion once I actually thought about it–but only marginally and didn’t completely nullify my original reaction.

In the first letter, the letter writer (LW), a woman, talks about her bias against women who went to all-women colleges. She thinks they are too precious, special snowflakes who need to be coddled (she actually trots out that tired old trope), that they can’t deal with reality and men, and that the colleges get too much money/endowments (yet, does not mention the Ivies here). The last is truly bizarre to me because she says that money can be used to uplift so many more women if used elsewhere. Oh, and she mentions that a men’s only college would be banned (uh, no. There are men-only colleges in the US. Not many, but they do exist. A commenter pointed out that the LW might be confusing the order for The Citadel and VMI to accept not just white men with a country-wide ban on men-only colleges. The former is because they are state institutions. Private colleges have no such restrictions.

It was breathtaking to read this letter and the ‘cool girls’ vibe to it. When I was in college, I had a ton of guy friends. My boyfriend at the time uncharitably said it was because they all wanted to fuck me (which I don’t think is true). I had female friends who complained that all the guys liked me and not them. I retorted it was because I treated them like they were human beings–which they were. I was more interested in sports than fashion at the time (no longer true. I am equally interested in both now–which means not at all), and I found it easier to talk to guys than women.

If I were to be honest, I felt smug about it. I wasn’t like those other girls, being silly and vapid. I was a serious woman–one who could talk about serious issues like football. But, also, one who could joke about sex because I was not a prude.

The cruel reality was, though, that I was there on sufferance. I was accepted as long as I agreed that those other women were silly and not worthy of attention–except as fuckable objects, of course. If I ever disagreed, I would be relegated to the ‘no fun’ zone, which is equivalent to the ‘vapid and silly’ bin. I had to tacitly agree that men were better than women in order to remain one of the gang. I did not realize any of this at the time, but it was clear to me in retrospect.

It’s similar to trying to be the good minority or the respectable queer person. It’s all based on societal norms that we would do well to question. We are not going to get rid of them overnight, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we should just go with the status quo.


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The maternal blues

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My mom called me last night to talk about things. It was fine until she brought up my brother. It was his birthday yesterday, which is probably why she called me (after calling him). I’ve explained that my brother is not an emotions guy. Nor is he a talk with no purpose guy (unless an idea comes into his head that he wants to ruminate over). My mother wants something from him that he is not able to give, and she doesn’t help by pushing it.

For example. Her birthday is ten days before his. She called him on her birthday and said, “What day is it?” I cringed as she told me this (she was laughing as she did, which is her way of indicating she knows she’s out of line, but is going to do what she wants, anyway) because I knew what she wanted, and I knew she wasn’t going to get it. My brother said he didn’t know and she told him it was August 5th. Which, I think he knows is her birthday? I’m not sure. But he certainly doesn’t care. For whatever reason, my parents have taken to pestering him about my birthday as well, and I really hate that. I don’t celebrate my birthday, and I certainly don’t need him to be guilted into doing something for it.

But this is a big part of my mother–she has a rigid idea of what should and shouldn’t be in a FAMILY, and fifty years of being in our family hasn’t shaken her beliefs one whit. They are very traditional with the mother being the homemaker and the father being the money earner (though, weirdly, my father insisted that my mother work fulltime their whole marriage). My mother claimed she wanted to stay home with my brother and me, but here’s the thing. She doesn’t like either of us. As people, I mean. My brother is not emotional enough, and three kids is too much. He was being reckless by becoming a realtor, and he never got an advanced degree (he mentioned he felt that made him lesser in our family). Me, well, everything about me. I’m not feminine in any way except my long hair and big boobs (which isn’t something I have control over), being queer, fat, not married, no kids, not religious, ad nauseam. This was really hammered home during my medical crisis. She may love me as her child, but she doesn’t like me, the person. She thinks Taiji is of the devil, and she thinks me doing weapon forms is ‘cute’.


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Close to throwing in the towel

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Life is not great at the moment. Still. I’ve been unable to try new games because when I get like this, I revert to comfort. DemonCrawl even though it’s…not great, for example. I recently reinstalled Binding of Isaac: Rebrith. It is very soothing for me to play now (except when I get no upgrades in my skill and a ton of health so I can’t die), and I don’t really have to put much effort into it. There are a few games that I’m interested in that are coming out either in the near future or the undetermined future, but I’m pretty underwhelmed by the big games that other people are hyped about.

Let me come out and say it. I hate what I’ve seen from Cyberpunk 2077. It’s probably the most anticipated game to come out in some time, and everyone else seems to get more hyped about it over time whereas I am not even lukewarm about it.

Let’s roll it back a bit. Cyberpunk 2077 is the newest game of CD Projekt Red who made the huge hit, The Witcher 3. My boo, Geralt of Rivia, was the protagonist of that game. It was an incredible game, and I put probably a hundred hours into it. I did have a bit of a qualm about how white the game was (yes, set in Poland) and the fact that all the women were sexy and fuckable whereas the men were allowed to be of all sizes, shapes, cleanliness, etc. I also grew weary in the last few hours of the game. I blamed that on myself, however, because I tend to binge on games until I’m absolutely glutted. In this case, it was because I was in some cave with a witch, and I had to find my way out of it instead of her simply transporting me out when the quest was over. The map didn’t help, and I became increasingly lost. I almost quit, but I knew I was really close to the end. I don’t remember how I got out, but I finally did. I’m pretty sure this was a mandatory quest, and I was pretty pissed that I had to do it.

The ending I got was worth it, though. Spoiler warning, I guess if you don’t want to know one of the several endings for The Witcher 3. I chose Triss over Yennefer, and I retired at the end of the game in a small house in the woods somewhere. Ciri takes up the mantle of witcher, and there’s a very touching scene between us before I got my epilogue. I was extremely satisfied with my experience in the game, if somewhat burnt out by the end. Then the first DLC dropped. I eagerly snapped it up, and…I fucking hated it. The main antagonist is a violent, arrogant, narcissistic prick, and I have a really difficult time dealing with them given my personal history.


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