Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: new year new me

New year, pop culture, and me

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I’m not a big pop culture person. I quit watching movies several years ago, and I have been sporadic in my book reading. I do ‘listen’ to songs on YouTube (videos), but it’s very now-and-then, and it’s usually something I already knew. TV? Can’t remember the last show I watched with any regularity. Why is that? Well, strap in because I’m about to tell you.

I don’t realized I don’t like movies in general about twenty-five years ago. When I mentioned that to my substitute professor at my grad school, she looked at me as if I had grown another head. She didn’t say anything for several seconds, then blurted out, “That’s like saying you don’t like sandwiches!” in a shocked tone.

I didn’t say it to her, but that didn’t seem weird to me, either. If someone didn’t like two slices/pieces of bread/breadlike substances on the outside and meat, veg, cheese, and whatever on the inside, then that person had just eliminated sandwiches as a whole. Which I could see someone doing. As I said, I had the good sense not to say that out loud, but I was thinking it.

I get why it seems weird that someone doesn’t like movies, but my brother made me see one reason why. When I told him about it, he laughed and said, “Of course you don’t like movies. They aren’t real enough for you.” Which, he’s right. Even realistic movies aren’t real because they can’t be. They have to make cuts and concessions or every movie would be as long as it would take to actually do what’s happpening. Or it would be a David Cage* game, and ain’t nobody got any time for that.

No movie feels real to me. Even the best acted ones, I am well aware that I’m watching a movie. And, I’ll be frank. I don’t want to watch a bunch of white men doing white men things, which cuts out a good chunk of Western movies. If I don’t see a person of color as one of the first six actors, I won’t even consider watching the movie. I don’t care how good it is: if there is not diversity in it, I shall not watch it.

That’s a red herring, though. I don’t have any plans on watching any movies any time soon. There is nothing that appeals to me, not that I’m plugged into the movie circuit. Wait. There is one movie that I have interest in–Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler. That looks interesting to me, but that’s it. The last movie I watched was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which I really likked–until the last monologue by Michelle Yeoh. That completely undermined everything I had previously felt about the movie, though it took some time to sink in. It’s a shame, because I enjoyed the movie tremendously (despite itself) up until that point.


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New year, new me, who dis? 2026, part three

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Before my medical crisis, I had a good routine. I got up whenever and did my Taiji regime (as I fondly called it). That took an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, I had my coffee as I slowly browsed the ‘net. Once I was done with that, it was time to write a blog post. After that (which took a couple of hours), I would do my work during the afternoon, and then write for a few hours at night. I had Taiji class three times a week and a private lesson every other week. That was my life, and I was comfortable with it.

Then, medical crisis and a disruption to my life at the end of 2021. And while I still do my Taiji/Bagua routine, everything else has gone sideways. I still write a post a day, but it varies wildly when I actually get it done.

I do start out with my Taiji/Bagua routine, which takes roughly two hours. That’s because I dawdle here and there, though. The routine itself is probably about an hour and a half. Lately, I’ve been scrolling in between (and while) doing, which makes it stretch out.

I want to get back to having a schedule so I don’t feel adrift. And because it’s too easy for me to shrug off the nighttime writing without it. It used to be that I did all that on my laptop. Now, I only do the fiction writing on my laptop and the rest on my desktop. Since I’m spending most of my time on my desktop, it’s too easy to just not go to my laptop until it’s time to sleep.

I need to do whatever it takes to get back to writing. I miss it. I have said that it’s a fair trade to give it up for being alive, but I don’t see why I can’t have both.

I do think that my brain is different since then. That’s not bad or good–it just is.

When  I talked to K the night before last, we were discussing life in general and this stage of life in specific. She was saying that she was starting to think about what she really wanted to do next. She urged me to do the same, and while I got what she was saying, I had a hard time envisioning what I wanted.

I have not ever had a dream or a vision or a plan for my life. I never had a five-year plan or anything grandiose like that. Basically, I was just trying to make it from one day to the next, and I don’t really have a bigger picture plan.

She’s not wrong, though. It is about time for me to take a stepp back and soften my gaze so I can see the world (and my life) more broadly.


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New year, new me, who dis? 2026, part two

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In my second post about my life and goals in 2026, I want to talk about going outside the box. I have a tendency to keep to a strict routine, in part because I have a bunch of allergies and health issues that makes it difficult for me to be around other people. I want to slowly expand my life, and I have a few ideas what I want to do. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about a few things I wanted to do in the new year.

I want to expand a bit more on Taiji and Bagua. I have gotten lazy with my practice, and I want to tighten up my forms. I also want to not scan my phone as I’m practicing. I have started the bad habit of scrolling on my phone whilst practicing, and that’s not something I want to keep doing. Not only is it bad for my concentration and form, I lose track of time and my regime takes much longer than it should.

I want to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I’ve started doing it already. Initially, it was so I could do mud stepping on the left side, but now, I want to teach myself the form in the standard way. I don’t really consider that teaching myself a new form, though. I also want to make sure the 3rd part part of the 3rd section of the Solo (Long) Form (Taiji) is solid. My teacher’s teacher has changed quite a few things in the Solo Form, and I tend to neglect it for other more exciting things.

I also want to teach myself the Swimming Dragon Form with DeerHorn Knives, but that’s a bit more complicated than just adding DeerHorn Knives to the form.

I was talking to K, and she mentioned something called The Moth. It’s like slam poetry, except it’s short stories. She told me about it because she loved the stories I told her about the delusions I had in the hospital. At first, she said I should write a book of short stories about my delusions, and then she mentioned The Moth. Coincidentally, they were here in MN last night (when I talked to K). I took that to mean that I should look further into them. To that end, let’s continue my list.

4. Writing about my medical crisis. This is what I was talking about above. Yes, I will be including it in my novemoir (I AM going to make that a thing), but I also want to write something specifically about my medical crisis. It might be a bunch of short stories. It might be a screenplay. It might be a performance piece. I used to write and perform performance pieces when I was in my twenties and early thirties, which was draining, but very fun.


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The state of my gaming , 2026, part three

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I want to talk some more about me and gaming. Here is yesterday’s post in which I talked about indies versus AAA games. Funnily enough, one of the big debates this year for The Game Awards is what is an indie game versus a AAA game. Why? Because Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) is nominated for (among other awards) Game of the Year, Best Indie Game of the Year, and Best Debut Indie Game of the Year. Polygon wrote a great article about this, including the fact that CO:33 feels more Double A than indie.

To me, I think that if a game is up for Best Game of the Year, maybe it should not also be up for Best Indie AND Best Indie Debut. I know that CO:E33 does qualify for all these categories, but I would liek to see the love being spread around. I didn’t realize just how loosey-goosey The Game Awards are, and they really don’t mean anything (other than attention for the winners). Basically, different outlets nominate games in the different categories, and then people vote. There is no curating of the choices, so if a thousand people want to write in a decade-old game for one category, they can.

That’s why there are so few surprises, really, and why tthe awards skew towards the popular. I’m not saying that as if it’s a bad thing, by the way. Just that smaller titles aren’t going to get the love that the behemoths get. Or the critical darlings that everyone rallies around. They are safe choices, ones that go down agreeably with the masses.

Again, I am not slamming the awards for that–ok, yes, I am. Just a little, though. Can we at least have one category that is for the freaks and weirdos out there? A category that recognizes truly small games–and that is not a diss on Hades II (Supergiant Games) or Silksong (Team Cherry). They worked hard and they deserve all the flowers they get.

But, I will always have a very warm space in my heart for the oddballs and the misfits. The devs with so much heart, even if their games aren’t beloved by more than a very dedicated small group of people. I have several games that I played this year which would fit into this category, and in fact, I may do a whole post on them at some time closer to the end of the year.

Here’s the thing. I don’t care for many of the more popular categories (I’m talking about multiplayer games, mostly). That leaves out a huge swath of games that I will just never touch. I also don’t have a Switch or a Switch 2, so I don’t play Nintendo games. I’m fine with taht as most of them don’t seem like my type of game, either. Or, if they are, I can find similar games on the PC.


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The state of my gaming, 2026, part two

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Let’s talk more about the games I like and the games I want to play next year. Before I get into that, though, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by one game in particular this year, but I am not going to talk about this now. You can probably suss the reason why, but I’m going to leave it purposefully vague. In the last post, I talked about why I did not like the (heavily assumed) game of the year for this year, but that is not what I want to talk about in this post.

Let’s talk briefly about the game I was most anticipating this year, Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have mixed emotions about this game as well. When I bought the first game, it was after it came out of Early Access. I did not like how it felt when I first started playing it, but by the twentieth or so run, I was into it. I still wasn’t any good at it, but it had it hooks on me.

When the sequel was announced, everyone was surprised. Supergiant Games was known for trying a completely different genre with every game. Hades was their fourth game, and it was drastically different than the game before. So, even though Hades was outrageously successful, everyone assumed they would do a different kind of game for their fifth game.

They followed the same ppath with the sequel–It was in Early Access for over a year, and there were constant updates. True to my nature, I pretended it didn’t exist until it was actually launched for real. Then, I jumped in, curious to see if it lived up to the original.

For the first few runs, I would say that it exceeded my expectations. It was faster, slicker, and felt better (probably because I was already used to the layout from the first game). Except RB being used as the interact button. As a FromSoft person at heart, RB is and always will be light attack. I don’t think I could change the controls, but I don’t remember.

I’m not going to get too into it because I have written umpteen posts about this game as well. I will say that the charm wore off somewhat, and I will never forgive or forget what they did at the end of the game. Yes, they patched it and made it better, but still.

I’ll be honest. I am not getting my hopes up because there is no chance there will be a new FromSoft game next year. Well, except the one that will be exclusive to the Switch 2 and multiplayer. I will not be playing that game, sadly, nor do I have much interest in it. Though FromSoft has said reppeatedly that it isn’t going to stop making single-player action adventure games, I have my doubts. I don’t know why, but I feel like they’re ready to move on. Permanently.


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The state of my gaming, 2026

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This year has been a weird one in many ways, but I’m going to talk about it from a gaming standpoint today because I can. And because it makes sense after talking about the ten games that define me. I have played many games this year, more than I normally do. New games, I mean. (Not new as in totally new, necessarily, but new as in new to me. In other words, I was cleaning up my backlog. But, also, new games.)

Usually, I play a few new games and then stick to FromSoft games for the rest of the time. They are my comfort games (along with some casual games), and I return to them when I need to nurture my soul.

This year, I feel like I’ve played a bunch of games–more than I normally play. The one I want to start with is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) because it’s going to win every award known to humankind, and I want to vent my spleen about it because once again, I am in direct opposition to it being the game of the year, and I am registerirng my protest here.

I have played the whole game, and I have written several posts about it. As much as I did not care for the game, I could not quit it. I should have after the first act ended, but I did not. Why? Well, for a few reasons. One, it had its hooks in me. I will admit that it has that ‘keep playing’ feel to it. Two, I wanted it to get better. I so desperately hoped it would get better. To sum up what I’ve said before, the prologue was solid, though overwrought. The end of the first act was a shocker and really effective, until I started thinking about it more. And until the second act happened.

The second act threw everything and the kitchen sink at me, and the story was a hot mess. Everyone is gushing over how great it is, and I’m just not seeing it. I saw the twist coming a mile away, and I kept hoping the story wouldn’t go how I thought it was going to go. Then, at the end, you have to make a choice between two miserable endings. And it was, again, what I thought it was going to be.

Everyone went crazy for Maelle (main character), but she left me cold. I’m not going to get into it in this post, but her character really ticked me off. Luna was my favorite, but she didn’t get much screentime. I could not stop thinking of how everything in the game felt forced. Such as, this thing happened because this thing had to happen in order for the following thing to happen. I know that’s the way plots work in general, but it felt very obvious to me in this game.


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