Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: streaming

Gatekeeping is bullshit, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

The boys are back in town! RKG boys, that is. Retry Elden Ring, Season/Series 2 premiered today–and they gave us producers an additional episode. They premiered it at 1 p.m. my time, which meant I had to skip the first half hour because I had Taiji. Once I hopped into the Discord, it was so cool to watch with the gang. I watched the begininng of the first episode after it ended and now I’m watching the second episode.

In the last post, I was talking about the small minority of very vocal voices in the RKG community who want to dictate how Rory plays.

Anyway. Here’s the thing about gatekeeping–it’s just bullshit. The older I get, the more I’m just so over it. I don’t want to even acknowledge they have a point because they don’t. I have always been of the mindset that if it’s in the game, it’s fair play. Even if it’s a cheese strat, so what?

I have never understood and I will never understand why people are so salty about how other people play the games. Well, I do know why, but I simply don’t agree. I also don’t think that just because someone pays money for content (Patreon), they got to dictate the play. I am well aware that I’m being a bit hypocritical because I so emphatically want him to be able to use the spirit summons–but only whenever he wants to. There have been times when he’s chosen not to do it and have been times when he just forgets he can.

But in general, I say let him play how he wants to play. To me, I chose to be a patreon because I enjoy their content. I appreciate Rory for who he is, even when he annoys the hell out of me. Even when he annoys the hell out of me? I like that he’s chaotic and all over the map. I like that he stubbornly clings to something that is no longer serving him. I like that he has excellent twitch responses that sometimes makes him overreact to the circumstance. I like that he has a childlike wonder for some of the things he’s seen in the games.

That’s what I don’t understand. Why would you pay money to a content creator and then try to change the way they operate? If you enjoy what they do, would you not want them to do more of it?

If I were to steram a From game, it would be with many caveats. One, it would not be on a first playthrough. I just would not and could not do it. I’m already stressed the first time through because I am so bad at these games. Rory is so much better at these games than I am, it’s hard not to be jealous because they are pretty much all I play. Or rather, I always have a From game on the go. And I still suck at them. I know it’s because of my hidden disabilities, but I get frustrated because my love for the games does not make me any better at them.


Continue Reading

Streaming for thee, but not for me

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m taking a break from talking about my mental healt because something else came to mind. The RKG boys have been spoiling us with trailers for Season/Series 2, which starts on Saturday.

The first thing they gave us was an almost-twelve-hour video of all the bosses Rory has killed in the first season. It’s a good wy to quickly (well, more quickly than watching the whole series) catch up on the first season.

The first trailer was set to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman (which was Mama Finchy’s theme song. Aunty Finchy, this player characetr, is her sister).

Here’s what you need to know about that. Krupa is doing a shadow playthrough on the PC with a ‘no-enemy’ mod running so he can do all the NPC questlines and get all the great shots/B-roll. In this trailer, he matched Aunty’s clothing/hair/movements to the song, which is wild. Such as turning her around on ‘let’s go girls!’, making her hair teal instead of pink for ‘color my hair’, making her wear the marionette’s armor and no pants for ‘man shirt, short skirt’, a shot of Astel for ‘really go wild’, ‘making her naked (well, bra and skimpy panties as that’s as nude as you can get in the game) for ‘gonna let it all hang out’, having a mustache for ‘forget I’m a lady’, and the first night shot for ‘going out tonight’ are some of them–if not all. I didn’t catch them all, but I got them in the comments/RKG Discord. And a few from Krupa himself. And, no dislikes! And no negative comments! (I scrolled, so I might have missed a few, especially at the end). That means this trailer is exempt from what I’m about to say in the rest of the post.

I will say it’s a superb trailer and if it wasn’t for the other trailer, this would have been my featured video. It truly is one of the best teaser trailers I have ever seen. It’s clear that Krupa put so much effort and time into it (And maybe Gav helped out? But I’m sure it’s mostly Krupa), and everyone loved it. I have watched it at least a dozen times and have gotten hyped each thime.

It helps that they dropped a date that was earlier than we expected. Which was also brilliant marketing, by the way. I think they told us they were aiming for June, or we just all collectively thought of it because it was the accepted timeframe for the new season. “Rory’s birthday.” Heh. Inside joke. Gav asked him  waaay back in season one of Prepare To Try when his birthday was, and he said summer. He refused to give a date for several minutes while Gav and Krupa scolded him for being so weird.


Continue Reading

Let me entertain you

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I was talking to K yesterday and we got on the subject of what I want to do with the rest of my bonus days. I’m working on some writing projects, but that’s not unusual because I always am. I’m also toying with doing video. I hate the idea because it’s so not my medium, but writing is dead and I have to adapt with the times.

I was mentioning how I’d said on Twitter once that I was thinking of streaming from my couch, Shadow on my lap, as I drank my coffee and surfed the internet. This was years ago. I actually had a few serious ‘I would watch that’ responses, which floored me. I mean, it shouldn’t. There are mukbangs, ASMR, people reading out loud, and a bunch of other stuff that is just basically watching a person existing.

Which, ok, fine. But it’s still weird to me. I mentioned this to K and she said she could see it (with me). She reminded me that I had acted in my twenties and that maybe because of that or something else, but I had a presence. I immediately jumped in and said, “I have charisma.” I know it. ‘ve known it since I was in college. But because of what I’ve seen my father do with it,

It’s hard for me to see it as a positive, but these are my bonus days. If I can’t do something differently now, then when? My brother has been saying for a long time that I should use my charisma for good. Not to mention my ability to read people.

I’ve been on a kick of feeling myself (literally and metaphorically). I tweeted Lizzo’s Good As Hell video (live from Glastonbury) because that’s my theme song for this year. Yes, I’m late in the Lizzo love, but I got there eventually. Someone on Twitter told me that his ex was jealous of his friendship with me. Like, it actually became an issue in their relationship. That floored me because I’m not particularly flirty on Twitter. Yes, I will talk about sex or my as or whatever, but it’s not as if I propositioning people. Also, I don’t do pictures. At least not at that time. I have posted a few selfies post-hospital, but mostly with my mask on.

I thought it was really wild that his girlfriend at the time had an issue with us being friends, but when I told K about it, she said she could understand. And it reminded me of when I was in college, I was friends with a lot of guys. Back then, I was into the cool chick meta for many reasons. One, I liked ‘guy’ stuff much more so than ‘woman’ stuff. Two, I wanted to be accepted by guys. Three, It was a way to hang out around the guys I liked without being threatening. I could be one of the guys and laugh at them about the other silly women. At some point, though, I realize that I was only there on sufferance and if I ever slipped in my behavior, I would become one of those ‘silly girls’.


Continue Reading

The Politics of Art

Posted on by • 0 Comments

So, I love to write. A lot. Prolifically. Garrulous. It’s the equivalent to a chatterbox who cannot keep her mouth shut. I can’t keep my fingers from banging away at my keyboard, and I have many broken keyboards to prove it. In fact, this one (on my laptop) is on its last legs, and I should replace it pretty soon. The problem is, people are reading less and less. Rather, they’re reading less of actual longform pieces and novels. I’m old woman shaking my fist at the clouds, but I also acknowledge that it’s probably not going backwards any time soon.

What’s the new big thing? Videos. Streaming. It’s all the rage with the kids these days, an it’s something I’ve thought about doing myself. The problem is, first of all, I hate the way I look on camera. Now, of course, I could stream a game without face-cam, but from what I’ve seen, you get more views with the face-cam on, especially as a woman. Which, therein, is my second issue. The world of video games is still a man’s world with a very bro-y culture. I don’t watch streams on Twitch (except Ian’s! twitch.tv/eenbou) because the chats are fucking toxic. I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s sadly true. Anything over ten viewers, and it’s ‘fuckbois’, ‘faggot’, and ‘i’d fuck that ass’ all the damn time. There’s a streamer I did watch occasionally when he wasn’t too big yet, and I already felt not included by dint of being a woman in my forties. I watched a vod of a recent stream, and he’d changed from being low-key and lovable to low-key and ‘fuckbois’, and it really disappointed me. I’m not naming  him because it’s not him–it’s the ethos of chat. I’m stil working on my Theory of Dudes in which the more dudes you have in one place, the grosser the culture becomes.

Anyway, I watched a podcast with four female streamers, and they were emphatic about not being just boob jigglers, but one of them is known for that, and another is known for being bro-y in her chat. They were all young and conventionally pretty, which is another double standard for women who stream. Dudes can be any age, shape, size, or look, but the women have to be young, not fat, and hot. In addition, most of the female streamers are even bro-y-er than their male counterparts as a way to overcompensate. It’s the same with streamers girlfriends/wives. They put down women, make sexual innuendos, and are pretty jerky. They also feed into the stereotypes of the nagging wife, which is annoying as hell as well.


Continue Reading