Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: perspective

New life, who dis?

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I love myself.

I had to start with that because it’s a revolutionary statement for me. I have spent most of my life hating myself. I was told both explicitly and implicitly that I was… just…wrong. This was suburban MN in the seventies. I was fat, Asian, brainy, and probably neurodivergent. I did not watch TV, never went to the movies, and didn’t listen to pop music. I wore dresses that my mother made, and I had the typical bowl cut that Asian kids had back in the day.

In other words, I was a hot mess. I had no idea how I was supposed to act or how to fit in. I didn’t know any cultural references, and I felt like an alien.

I feel a lot of compassion for that confused, withdrawn, depressed, anxious, and deeply suicidal child. I hated myself, and I hated life. I wanted to die. I woke up every day disapointed that I was not dead. This is not hyperbole. This went on for many years.  I was a confused child along with being emotionally abused and just dumped on in general.

I hated that little girl for so long. I sneered at her and looked down at her, treating her (in my mind) with contempt and anger. If I could, I would go back in time and cuddle her to my breast. I would whisper in her ear that she was perfect just the way she was. I’m not saying she didn’t have flaws–of course she did. But she was a precious human being who should have been treasured for who she was.

Instead, she got put on a diet at age seven and told she was too fat. On the regular. Her mother had body issues because SHE came from a deeply msogynistic society who really hated fat women. A lot. Plus, Taiwane genes mean smaller in general, so there’s that as well.


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A whole new world

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I call advice columns my stories and I enjoy reading them just as a peek into other people’s lives. However, I find most of the answers unsatisfactory, even from the columnists I usually agree with. The only advice column that I think is good 90% of the time is Ask A Manager, and she has her weird spots, too. But at least they are well-established and relatively harmless (like she is pro-pranks, as long as they don’t make others the butt of a joke or hurt them). I am firmly anti-pranks because even the so-called harmless ones are still mildly based on making someone else the butt of a joke.

But, in general, she gives thoughtful responses that take several things into account. I think she leans towards giving managers the benefit of the doubt too much, but not unreasonably so. And I love that she will occasionally publish a weird letter that has little to do with work just because she wants to. In addition, she pushes people to unionize and to protest when it’s warranted. She has a history of protesting with PETA and other political groups, so she’s comfortable advocating for it. She gives practical advice on how to do it and what to expect in response, so it’s not just her being pie-in-the-sky.

And, the commenters on that website are the best I’ve read in an advice column. In fact, they are the only comments I read. I’ve tried to read others and have been dismayed at how limited the commenters have been. For example, I peeked into the comments on several Slate articles and the viewpoints were so limited. I will note that the commentariat at Ask A Manager is overwhelmingly female–I think 90%. There seem to be more men commenting on Slate advice columns, though I have no empirical data that supports my supposition.

It’s well-known that men think they’re the experts in, well, everything. And we all tend to think our own experiences are the norm. Except me. I am a freak in so many ways, I never had the luxury of thinking that I was normal. But most people think what they went through was the norm and that everything else is an outlier. Multiple that with men actually being the norm much of the time and it’s no wonder that they think they’re the standard-bearer, especially cis het white men.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that I’m a freak. It’s another to have it rubbed into my face how different I am from everyone. I’m already shaving off pieces of my personality in order not to be TOO weird, and I don’t want to bland myself up any more.


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Get out of your head

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One of the things I dislike the most about the FromSoft community is how everyone is so sure they are right about everything. Given that most of them are young white men, it’s not surprising, but it’s still annoying as fuck. Look. I know everyone thinks they’re right all the time. That’s part of being human. Except for people with low self-esteem and anxiety, but even that is a twisted self-centeredness.

Side Note: I am very much self-centered in that way. I know that I’m right about everything, but at the same point, I know that other people have their own truths as well.

There’s always a robust debate about which game is the best. There has been a backlash against Elden Ring being overhyped and blah, blah, blah. As I mentioned earlier, I have no problems with people saying they didn’t like the game or didn’t gel with it. But Saying it’s bad is just objectively wrong. You can say that it had many issues upon release, especially the PC port.

And, lord knows there are things I don’t like about the game. I’ve elaborated on them before at great length. Shitty platforming–for the love of god. FromSoft. We need to have a chat. An open and honest discussion about your love for platforming. I say this with love, but you fucking suck at platforming. Adding a horse into the mix makes it even worse. There are these tombstone steps that dot the Lands Between. I hate them because you have to use Torrent to jump down on them, and you have to turn sometimes to get to the next one. It’s nigh (or should I say neigh?) impossible to turn on a dime when you’re riding a horse. Even a small one like Torrent.

There was an interview with Miyazaki in which he was asked about swamps. There is a swamp (or three) in ever game he’s helmed. He said he’s aware that people hate the swamps, but that he can’t help making them. So, yes, he’s admitting to trolling players. I would not be surprised if he had the same mentality when it comes to the platforming because it’s in every game.

I’ve ranted about this several times. Games that are not platformers should not include platforming in them. Platforming takes very precise inputs and hair-trigger reactions. To be able to code for that is a skill. In a game in which this is the main purpose, they can have several people dedicated to making it as pristine as  possible. When you have a game that is not focused on platforming, you can’t put as much resources into doing it well. And if you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all.


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My love-and-hate relationship with Sekiro

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a brief moment of respite.
Nothing bad is going to happen, right?

Sekiro* dropped last week–has it really been a week?!?–and as a huge FromSoft fangrrl, I was nervous, excited, and antsy waiting for it to be released. I bought it, pre-loaded it, and then spent an hour troubleshooting it to get it to run on my laptop. When it finally started running, I got that thrill I always get when I first start a new Soulsborne game. The opening cinematic sent a chill down my spine, and once I could actually play, well, I’ll get to that in a second.

One of my issues before starting was that I felt there was no way Sekiro could live up to the hype. Not just my personal hype, though I had a lot of that, but the hype that the games community (professional and players) has frothed up. Seriously. So. Many. Opinions. All the opinions in the world. FromSoft has built up a reputation for making uncompromisingly difficult games with a certain vision (Miyazaki’s), and they have surpassed the cult status they acquired after Demon’s Souls was released. They are now a Triple A dev team, although, strangely, they feel a bit mercenary gun-for-hire in that they keep changing publishers, though that might be the norm in the industry–I wouldn’t know.

As I’ve said before, I like to go into these games as unspoiled as possible. I saw the first trailer, but I ignored the rest because FromSoft likes to put allllll the bosses in the trailers. People love it, so I understand why they do it, but I prefer to encounter each horror/delight on my own. I had a million expectations going into this game, and a million fears. That’s because I’m an anxious person, but that is neither here nor there.

Did the game live up to the hype? Was it everything I’d hoped it be?

In a word, yes.

In another word, no.

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