Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: picky

The choice is yours

My brother and  Iwere talking about dating last night. He has been working the apps hard and having a steady stream of dates. Unfortunately, he’s having the same trouble I usually have–falling for people who aren’t currently emotionally available. But, that’s not the point of this post. We were talking about the criteria we would have for a dating partner. He has graduated college as his base education level. He said that he knew it was probably cutting off some women he would click with, but he felt it would at least indicate a level of conversation he wanted.

I could tell that he thought I would argue with him though we have talked about this before. He had said some of his other critieria, and I had been critical about it. For example, he likes really skinny white women. Which, ok. I firmly believe you like what you like. However, it’s undeniable that media affects what is and isn’t considered beauty, and it’s not coincidental that skinny blondes are considered the ideal.

What I DID push back on was when he talked about heavier women in disparaging terms. Saying obese like it was an epithet, for example. Or when he put down Asian women with accents as sounding less intelligent. Yes, internalized racism is a thing, sadly. I did not brook with either of these especially as there was a hint of ‘fat women are gross’ to the former. In addition, he’s not skinny himself. And my brother likes skinny. No boobs, but with hips. No ass, though. I had to let him know that what he liked wasn’t that achievable for most women.

Also, I do not truck with hearing how gross he thinks big boobs are. I have massive tits! They are not gross. They might not appeal to everyone (but, honestly, they do to most people), but they are not disgusting–which was the vibe my brother was giving. Not about my boobs, obviously, but about big boobs in general. I tried to get him to understand that I wasn’t saying he hated to date fat women or women with big tits, but he might want to mind how he talked about them. And take into account how deeply sexisst our society was in the demand that women take up less space.

I did emphasize, though, that of course he was attracted to whomever he was attracted to. I didn’t like the castigation from people saying everyone should be attracted to_______. I read an article by a trans woman who said that if you did not want to date a trans woman, you were transphobic. Or that if you did not want to date black men, for example, you were racist. Which might or might not be true, but why the hell would byou want someone to be guilted into dating you?


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At Least I Know What I Don’t Like

it was made for my hands.
I love my Xbone controller so hard.

I’ve written before how since I’ve finished the Souls series* I’ve been struggling to find a game that I enjoy playing. I heard about this game called Unexplored, which has been described as a cross between Dark Souls and Binding of Isaac. I’ve played the shit out of both of these games/series, and I’ve always said I wanted to play a hybrid. It went on sale at Steam for nine bucks, so I snatched it up. It’s a really cute dungeon crawler in which you’re a one-eyed fluffy circle creature with a cape that has a weapon poking out in front and a side weapon you can throw. Before you enter the dungeon, you talk to this guy, and he gives you tips on the dungeons. You have to buy him beers (5 gold each), and the tips don’t seem that helpful yet.

It’s easy to see the Souls/Isaac influences from the very start. A little bit of Enter the Gungeon, too. The tutorial is straight out of Gungeon, but I didn’t even notice it was there until after I’d done a few failed runs. There will be many comparisons to Souls/Isaac because that’s what the game is clearly modeling itself after. Even with the tutorial, there isn’t much said before you jump into the game. I used keyboard/mouse, but there is gamepad support. However, according to the forums, it’s not intuitive, so I stuck to the keyboard/mouse with the typical WASD movement. I had to switch my keyboard from Dvorak to QWERTY, but I’m just glad I was able to do it. Some games consider this a problem. E is look, which is weird, and TAB is map. I’d prefer M for map, but that’s a little thing. I played on Normal, which was…weird. On the first floor in the first dungeon, I wandered around exploring everything. What I found was a lot of…nothing. I ran into maybe a half dozen enemies and a couple of puzzles, but that’s it. I went down to the next floor, and it was more of the same.

When I die, it’s a perma-death, and the next run is the heir of the first character. So, Mulan Rogue the first gives way to Mulan Rogue the second, etc. I don’t think you keep anything other than your gold for the next run. You start with different items, and I believe it’s procedurally-generated. You can right-click and see what they do, but true to rogues, some things need to be identified. Scrolls, potions, and rings are what I’ve found so far. Scrolls and potions are identified the second you use them (and, also true to rogues, some are positive and some are negative), but I had to wear the ring for five minutes before I knew what it did.

There are libraries with cryptic books, which you can take or copy to your journal. I chose to copy more often than not because there is a limited inventory, of which I am not fond. I hate limited inventories with a passion, and the one mod I used when I played Skyrim was the Convenient Horse mod, which allowed me to carry unlimited items. I do like finding the lore by reading books, which is similar to reading item descriptions in Souls games. I don’t mind finding things out in drips and drabs.

What I don’t like is persistent status effects with no antidote, pun intended. There was one level that had a gas atmosphere, and I couldn’t find a way to counter it. I had to go through it, but my health was dropping at an alarming rate. I lost all interest in the run. To make matters worse, when I was in the middle of a good run, the game started freezing on me, and I had to shut down the game. This happened again, and I lost any interest in playing it.

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