Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: social mores

A (not-so) beautiful (and-complex) mind

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I’m back to muse more about neurodivergency, societal norms, being a weirdo, and how this is all connected. Here’s my post from yesterday about how I just think differently than other people in many things. I ended it with the example of my feelings about two video games, The Surge and Nioh.

To sum up, Nioh is widely considered one of the best soulslikes out there. It’s exalted for its endless systems and the way they level up the weapons. So many people hold it in high esteem. I tried to play it when it came out, and I made it about a third of the way through before finally declaring defeat. No fun was I having, and I just could not do it any longer. (I also tried Nioh 2 right before my medical crisis in which, I kid you not, I died to the second boss 99 times. Nioh 2 keeps track of how many times you die to a boss.)

The same year the first Nioh came out (2017), so did another soulslike called The Surge. It was so janky, it was soon fondly known as Junkyard Souls. The novel thing about this game was that the enemies were some kind of robots (sautered mechanical bits to them), and you could attack their limbs rather than just kill them. If you managed to sever a limb, you got the armor or weapon that came with it.

And, one of the best things about the game was that the category your weapon was in leveled up as you used that weapon. That meant that your weapon leveled up with you. The downside to that was if you wanted to switch weapon categories, of course.

That’s just the backstory. I was in the public chat for a content creator I watch. Yes, it’s FromSoft-related. Some of the guys (and, yes, they were all guys) were gushing about how great Nioh was and how it was the best soulslike by far. Now, there has been some discussion about whether Nioh really was a soulslike or not, but let’s just take it as a given that it was a soulslike for this discussion.

I commented that I had more fun with The Surge  than I did Nioh. I very rarely say that one thing is better than the other because I don’t feel I can objectively judge that. I usuall say I preferred one to the other or some variant thereof.

Why? I’m well-aware that I’m a freak and that my opinion is rarely in line with the majority. And, I can differrentiate my opinion from facts much of the time. I used to watch a content creator who could not fathom that something he did not like might be good because as he said, “If it was good, I would like it.” He would show this cirrcular reasoning without an ounce of self-awareness.


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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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Anarchy is not a four-letter word

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I had started a different post, but Ian just said something to me that completely blew my mind. We were talking about societal powers and how we both called ourselves socialists. Comfortably. I would not even blink twice if someone callde me that. I mentioned that I was a libertarian with a small L because as long as you did not harm someone, I did not care what you did. I do not follow societal norms that are meaningless to me, which, to be fair, are pretty much all of them.

Ian fired back that he thought I was past libertarian and into anarchist. My immediate reaction to that was, “Fuck no!” because while I don’t care for societal norms, I am also a rules-follower to a certain extent.

I thought about it, though. What I know about anarchy is that it’s about dismantling all systems and lawlessness. It’s very much a pejorative as it’s used in society in general. But, as I’ve learned in my many years on earth, that’s what the powers that be want us to think. Same with calling people communists during the Red Scare.

I looked up anarchist and talked about it more with Ian. He said it’s not thinking you can dismantle all systems of power, but always holding those feet to the fire. Anarchists know that there will always be power structures in the world; they just want to make sure they are as fair as possible. Of course, some anarchists want to take them down, but others acknowledge that it’s more about improving the systems.

Yes, it’s a far-left ideology. I knew that already. I have also heard people use it in terms of romantic relationships, meaning that they didn’t want any struture to their romance. No partners, no obligations, etc. I have to say that I find that unrealistic, but only because i do think you owe people you love some courtesies. And I think it’s really hard not to have any jealousy at all, but I suppose it’s possible to have a very low level. But, I think it’s going to be difficult to find many people who don’t have any jealousy at all. Also, I think it’s reasonable to expect someone you love to, say, not disappear on you for two weeks at a time.

I have to say, though, that I have been reevaluating my feelings on romantic relationships for the past decade. Back when I was a youngin, I thought I’d marry and have children. That was just a given. My mother made it plain that I was going to get married and have children because as a girl, that was my fate. I was not happy about it, but so be it.


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