Bits And Pieces 4 | Another Collection Of My Disconnected Thoughts

Hello everybody! Sorry it’s been taking me a while between releases. It’s just that I have a lot going on between college and my job. Thanks so much for being understanding, but rest assured that I do have something coming up very soon. Until then, please enjoy an assortment of thoughts that weren’t expansive enough for their own articles, but might be in the future. We’ll see.

Allergy Season is upon us. I’ve been experiencing mild fevers lately, only to learn that they can be caused by allergies, which is both news to me and would be new to me. Whether I’m just plain sick or reacting to allergies worse than usual, I’ve been feeling like absolute shit lately. Maybe I should have let my mom keep putting honey in my PB&J sandwiches when I was younger (she read somewhere that eating a tablespoon of honey everyday for a few weeks can permanently ward off allergies, but I made her stop after a week because I hate honey).

Maybe I’ll write a full article someday about the discourse apocalypse that was Pixar’s Turning Red, or maybe I won’t. Either way, something that occurred to me regarding the backlash to the backlash to the film is this: maybe guys saying they can’t relate to the movie isn’t them hating or being unwilling to relate to teen girls, it’s them being in denial that they were ever “cringey” teens themselves. There’s a lot of people like that. It’s not that they hate teen girls, it’s that they hate themselves.

One of my favorite byproducts of my track and field/ cross-country career is that spending over a decade as a distance runner has given me a different definition of “walking distance” than most people. Most people would drive or take a bus to anywhere further than a mile away, but not me. I go for 5–7 mile walks almost every day. It keeps me in better-than-average shape and lifts my spirits. I also listen to lots of music on those walks. It’s always the best part of my day.

I came out as aromantic-asexual to my dad the other day. He said it didn’t surprise him, which gave me a lot to think about, to say the least. At least he didn’t seem to mind, nor did he when I came out as demigirl with she/they pronouns immediately after. I’m glad he and my mom (who I came out to beforehand) took it well and are accepting of my identities. Some people aren’t so lucky.

It’s not your moral duty to tell people who play gacha RPGs that actually they’re wasting their time on games that reward money expenditure instead of skill all for the sake of PNGs of anime waifus. Chances are, people who play these and other sorts of mobile games know what they’re getting into. Like, if “let people enjoy things” (which is not an attack on the concept of criticism, by the way, but I’ll get to that some other day) was applicable anywhere, this is it.

But know this: the pay-to-win nature of most mobile games, not their predominately-female playerbase, is the reason why mobile games have a generally poor reputation. In general, the demographics of something’s fanbase are not the reason why something is hated, or at the very least it’s hard to pick out one main reason because of all the confounding variables such as Twilight being objectively terrible. Again, I’ll probably elaborate on this someday.

Thanks so much for reading. Until next time, stay on the hook!