One must find enjoyment where one can, though if your idea of an enjoyable dish in the dinning room of life is a bit spicier than others, do not force peppers into your shared preferred dish of choice when cooking for the entire crowd.

Spending time with family is a great example of just how individualized and uniquely common activities can look when viewed through someone else’s eyes

Related to that visual gag, but only in a small helping as such, I provide only a quick thought today, as there yet remain rare moments where I attempt to grapple with this whole “free time” thing I keep hearing about, and see what this wacky rumored nonsense is all about.

Even in these moments of rarity, where I approach a greater, casual flippancy when throwing thoughts into the ether of the internet, I still find the restrained notionality to moderate myself with a sense of focused propriety, reminding myself that even in my weakest moments of recreational refrain, I yearn for the mutinous resolve of discipline in the face of unyielding chaos the everyday provides.

I have been reminded on quite a few occasions that Lies of P, a brutal, over the top Gothic fantasy Soulslike take on Pinocchio, structured around a world not unlike Bloodborne, is coming to PS+, and it’s a title that has routinely got rave reviews for all of the aforementioned reasons. One of the addendum’s to the formula provided by the title, is its one of the few Soulslike that has been adamant about pushing back on the narrative that it’s difficulty or bust within the genre, and spits in the face of this wisdom by providing an easier difficulty, with which gamers can contend with. You’d think this conversation around difficulty wouldn’t be a big deal within the space, and you’d be dead wrong, as the amorphously, yet rigidly bullheaded masses who cry-out about the possibility of inclusion related to their furious little frustration fests continued loudly and mostly unabated.

With both of these articles elaborating on why this remains an issue/non-issue , and continues to be of a topic of interest worthy of a far more critical deep dive then I’m providing here with my drive by posting, I still remain astounded at the resistance from others brandishing the pitchforks at the notion of yielding said shared space to even the simple idea of sparing strangers you’ve never met yet some breathing room in tackling virtual behemoths in a less trying manner.

I’m not of the exact same mindset of the naysayers who poo poo offering an easier mode to the genre, and those who wish to experiment within it, though I do share in the camaraderie involved with the masochistic levels of self-abasement in desiring to participate in such dreadful levels of maddening loss with brutal repetition, though I do not define myself by it. I think those that find an easier option so unacceptably offensive are merely showcasing and broadcasting the standards with which they live by, and for some, the only defining standard they live by, meaning the games who possess this level of requirement almost act as a proof of existence for those able to master them. Without them representing this pinnacle of patience and insistence of requirement, gamers who cut their teeth on mastering the experiences seemingly evaporate in an existential mist of nothingness without them, having been robbed of the only metric of success they define themselves with.

In some ways, they take the idea of social credit, and objectify the notion, imbue it within the Soulslike tites, acting as a distilled essence of their identity. With these individuals wrapped up in a watering down of the ratification of self, by virtue of what they see as a relevant guilty by association happening, like adding an easier way to conquer the experience, and one that helps define their own personal claims of worth, are henceforth diluted, poisoned, and otherwise perverted by the mere mention of it, let alone the actual implementation of it, leaving them feel violated in the act. This pretension will of course erode over time, and the zeitgeist surrounding the affair will be remolded with the forward momentum of time itself, as a generation folds into assimilated progress, leaving the hardcore to abandon the lockstep catharsis that would come with the dissolution of ego, finding solace in the forgotten corners of nostalgic mustiness that will help to cloak them in outdated repulsion.

Such is the way with the lost and broken souls who seek self-imposed, solitary confinement in their preferred purgatories that help to define their sense of arrested development. Perhaps that is part and parcel involved with the psychological mechanisms related to why they feel the impulsive need to punish themselves so relentlessly, and adds to their own warped salvation they claim through the farce of simulated martyrdom. and victim complexities.

Leave them to their joyless pain; they desire nothing else.

-Pashford