Gamer Girls

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8LbpN6QNSE

Happy Holidays, everybody!  Which holidays?  Well…all of them, I guess.  Flag Day, Arbor Day, Secretaries’ Day.

She’s playing Christmas-themed Mario hacks.  Not Hanukkah Mario hacks.  Not Eid Mario hacks.  Not Geeta Jayanti Mario hacks.  Not Lunar New Year Mario hacks.  She’s playing CHRISTMAS Mario hacks.  

But she’s afraid to say it.

I remember when this wasn’t an issue so it must have happened in “the 90s”.  So for all of Erin’s life, this is what people would say.  “Happy Holidays.”  

I know that there was and probably still is backlash to this.  And the backlash is stupid.  Everything about this is stupid.

But this is a uniquely American hangup.  In the rest of the world, people are free to call Christmas “Christmas.”  Crazy.  And it’s not because the rest of the world is backward and not as progressive as wonderful Californians like our friend Erin Plays.  It’s because the rest of the world aren’t a bunch of giant pussies.

I used to think that a lot of things were “normal” like this “Happy Holidays” debate.  But no.  Here’s a list of things that are unique to the Land of Opportunity:

Baseball caps

Adult men wearing shorts

Commercials for medication

Non-Jews using Yiddish terms (mostly unknowingly)

“Have a nice day”

High fructose corn syrup

Clearly partisan news outlets

Mudding

University tuition so high that it enslaves you for life

Filing bankruptcy over medical bills

Everybody going to “therapy”

Self-bowlderised profanity

Two weeks off for vacation, if you’re lucky

Almost non-existent worker protection laws (e.g. “right to work” states)

People boasting about their “freedom”

So back to the video.  Some of that “holiday” Mario action.  And we know what a pro Erin is at Super Mario Bros.

0:00 – “Hey guys!  It’s the holiday season”.

I just can’t.  What fucking holiday?  Who is she trying to appease with this?  Probably nobody.  She just thinks that this is normal. 

She’s there with a fucking Cacodemon stuffed animal.  She only played Doom recently, on stream for money.  But now she’s all about “cute” Cacodemons, I guess.  And it’s wearing a fucking pink Santa hat.  You know…for the HOLIDAYS.  Santa Claus, that guy who gives presents to good boys and girls on the Martyrdom of the Sahibzade.  And all of the holidays.  Every holiday in December.

The very notion of “Happy Holidays” is still Christian-centred.  People only (nominally) give a fuck about the holidays of other religions in late December.  This just so happens to coincide with Christmas.  It’s patronising.  

Is there a single Jewish person out there who feels good about “Happy Holidays”?  “Oh yeah!  Erin is including Hanukkah in that vague phrase!  That’s the sort of inclusiveness I like to see!”

“What better way to celebrate than playing some Mario Christmas hacks.”

Wait…now I’m confused.  Which…I mean…you said “holidays”.  I expect to see some Tohji-Taisai Mario hacks.  Don’t you care about Tohji-Taisai?  We don’t all celebrate Christmas, you know.  

0:15 – “So first up we have Luigi and the Christmas Quest.  From 1999.  By Darknight13.  I wonder where he is now.”

Probably getting fucked in the ass.  But she’s just reading the text.  That’s all that she can do.  She’s completely unable to provide anything even resembling interesting commentary because she doesn’t know anything about video games..

Then she starts the game.  She describes everything that she sees on the screen.  Every power up.  Every sprite.  They all get a mention.  Because she doesn’t know anything about video games.

0:30 – Then she thinks that she got trapped.  How to describe this?  You can just go to the video but there’s a block and a pipe and there’s only enough room for small Mario to get through.  OR, if you know anything about Super Mario Bros, you can crouch jump as big Mario and slide past.  It’s a pretty common trick that people pick up on when they play the game for a while.  But Erin doesn’t even know about it.

Erin has said that she had Super Mario All-Stars as a child.  She said that the first game she ever played was Super Mario World at a friend’s house.  Why is she so unfamiliar with the game then?

Then there’s some of the worst platforming you’ve ever seen in your life.  She had to jump on a spring that was on a single block and she missed it by a mile.  She doesn’t seem to know that you can steer Mario (or Luigi in this case) while in the air.

0:45 – Then there’s just an edit to a “cute” sprite.  “Look at him throwing the candy canes.”

1:30 – “This is a terrifying hack.  Why are Mario hacks like always a soul crusher.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about.  I don’t know what’s so terrifying about this.  I think that she means difficulty-wise.  This does not look difficult.  She just keeps missing the jumps because she’s bad at the game.  And of course she continues to point out “cute” enemies every time a new one appears.

1:45 – She jumps up on a rope.  Then there’s another rope a little bit away from her.  And she says, “I don’t know what to do.”  Then she falls in the abyss.

I guess that jumping on to that other rope didn’t occur to her.

On the next attempt, she STILL doesn’t know what to do.  But by dumb luck, she manages to land on the second rope.  She thinks that what she did was the correct solution to this “puzzle”.

2:00 – “First of all, why are there little candles on their butts.”

This is the video.  It’s Erin pointing out every fucking “cute” enemy that appears and the worst Mario gameplay ever committed to video.

Every fucking jump, she’s hesitant to jump and she’s amazed when she actually lands the jump.  It’s unbelievable.  This is somebody who has CLEARLY never played Super Mario Bros before.  What other explanation can there be?  

2:45 – “I was scared.  For a minute I was like, can I not beat the first level of this stupid Christmas hack.”

You know, that’s a good point.  It really puts things in perspective.  Erin is so bad at video games, and Super Mario Bros in particular, that she finds the first level of this normal difficulty hack to be really, really challenging.  Verging on impossible.  

And we can see the gameplay.  It’s absolutely atrocious.  

My sister babysat for some kid and they got an NES.  And I remember sitting down with him and playing some Super Mario Bros and he was better at the game than Erin is.  He was five years old and only had the game for a short time.  

I just don’t know how it’s possible for Erin to be this bad at the game.  Let’s assume that the only time she played Mario was on stream, for money.  She’s played Super Mario type games, be it Super Mario Maker or whatever, for at least two hours (on stream, for money).  That should be enough to be semi-comfortable with the controls.  But she isn’t.  Everything is a struggle for her.  

I just don’t get it.  How can she possibly be this bad at the game?  This game that she alleges to have had for DECADES.  It was one of the only games she had from the ages of..whatever…12 to 29.  Didn’t she ever play it?  Was it always this challenging?  She just never improved?  

If that’s the case, that’s also very perplexing.  People generally improve at video games as they play them.  Why didn’t Erin improve?  At all?  She’s still at absolute beginner stage.

3:00 – “Oh, they have little flurries from Mario 2.  They’re so cute.”

PLAY THE GAME, YOU SIMPLETON!

3:45 – “More ropes.  What is this?  Belmont’s Revenge or whatever that Castlevania Gameboy game is where it’s just a bunch of ropes.”

Another reference to a game that she played on stream, for money.  And once again, she doesn’t even know the name of the game.

But no, this is Super Mario Bros.  Don’t they have rope sections like this?  Now I’m second guessing things.  Yeah, in Super Mario 2 there are definitely sections like this where you have those ladybug enemies climbing up and down the ropes.  And you have to jump from one rope to the next.  

Erin isn’t jumping from one rope to the next.  She’s just falling.  Can’t you jump off of these?  

4:30 – The music speeds up and Erin says, “Is something bad going to happen right now?”

She doesn’t know what it means when the music speeds up.  This is conclusive proof that she’s never played Super Mario Bros before.  We can stop the video right here.  We can stop the entire blog right here.  

ERIN DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS WHEN THE MUSIC SPEEDS UP IN SUPER MARIO BROS!!!

This is clearly a fraud.  She’s a liar.  Completely and utterly.  

4:45 – Then she’s amazed when she makes an easy jump on to another rope.  “Hey, first try!”

I mean, every jump is a struggle with her.  She panics over every jump.  She has to pause to try to make sure that she jumps at the right spot.  And of course, some jumps require some degree of momentum so you can’t do this.  You can’t pause at every jump.  Erin doesn’t know this because she never played the game before.

6:30 – She gets hit as big Luigi and thinks that she’s going to die.  But no…she just becomes small Luigi.  “Oh, thank god.”

I…it speaks for itself.  Let’s move on.

6:45 – She stumbles through the level and Toad says, “Your present is in another castle.”  She says, “Oh my god, I wonder what the present is going to be.  I bet it’s Santa Mario.”  And then there’s an edit and she says, “Or maybe it’s Christmas lingerie for Peach.”

She actually had to edit that in.  Her initial “joke” was that the present would be Santa Mario.  But then she had time to think about it and came up with that lingerie “joke”.  

She’s just so slow witted.  This is awful.  She has no charisma.  She can’t think on her feet.  That’s another reason why we just get this running commentary on “cute” enemies that she sees.  

“Wait, why would they be giving that out to Luigi?”

So Daisy.  Change your “joke” to Daisy.  You know about Princess Daisy, right, Erin?  And how she’s like the girlfriend of Luigi?  You know the canon, right?  Super Mario Bros was the game that got you into video games.  You’re all about Super Mario Bros.  You know all the lore.  Don’t you?

 7:00 – “Snowballs!  I like that they have eyeballs.  It makes me laugh.”

And in this very screen, we see the clouds that have eyes.  It’s a common theme in the Mario universe.  But this is all new to Erin.  

7:30 – “Cheeps cheeps and reefs (?) reefs (?).  Ha!  That’s funny!  That’s really…that is so random.”

Oh.  “Wreaths”.  I thought that she was laughing at her own stupid “joke”.  But no, she was talking about a wreath enemy.  Like a Christmas wreath.  Or a Holiday wreath, I should say.

By the way, she always strives to mention the names of the enemies that she encounters.  She’s showing off her great knowledge of Super Mario Bros so even name drops obscure enemies like flurries.

But she never mentions the hammer bros by name.  She mentioned that they throw candy canes but never uses the words “hammer bros”.  And she encounters these enemies a lot and has a hard time with them, dying often.  She doesn’t know what they’re called.  She probably doesn’t even recognise these as a re-skin of an actual enemy in the game.

7:45 – She’s at an underwater level.  “What is holiday time like under the ocean?”

All marine life is Jewish so they celebrate Hanukkah.  Thanks for being so sensitive and asking about “holiday time”.

10:00 – She gets hit by a hammer brother again and becomes small Luigi.  But she has to be big Luigi to break the blocks and get out of this area.  So she says, “Oh, I’m stuck again.  I have to just run out the clock?”

Now, previously, in the Jewish water level, she was in a similar predicament but she knew that if she died to a cheep cheep, she could continue with the game.

Here, similar thing, there are bullet bills constantly coming at her, there’s one near to her character as she’s saying this, but she still thinks that she has to let the time run out.  

Why?  How could she forget what she knew two minutes earlier?  Let the bullet bill kill you and continue with the level.  You don’t have to wait for the timer to run out.

But she moves on to the next “holiday” game.  

10:15 – “Next up, we have Toadette’s Christmas Adventure.”

10:30 – “They’re little presents!  Look at the little mushroom!  Look at the little wiggly thing up there!”

Yeah.  We can all fucking see these things.  Do you have ANYTHING worth listening to?

“And the music is so like…it’s so cute.”

So no.

11:15 – The music speeds up and she says, “Oh, my god.  It gives you so little time.”

So…now she does know what the music speeding up means?  Or did she just happen to look at the timer?

12:30 – She’s at the end of a level, there’s a pipe, and she doesn’t know what to do.  She eventually figures it out.  “Oh, I go down?  Okay.”

Yeah.  You know…like in so many levels of Super Mario Bros.  

13:00 – She reads “X-mas” as “ex-mas”.  

I don’t want to boast about my knowledge of the catechism but the “X” is a Greek letter that roughly translates to “Christ”.  So…it’s pronounced “Christmas”.  Or “Holiday”, if you prefer.

13:15 – “See?  That’s cute!  It’s nice and short and sweet.”

Oh.  Riveting commentary.

Then she moves on to what is hopefully the last game in this trilogy of tedium.

13:45 – This is a Super Mario 2 hack.  “I’m always Peach in Super Mario 2 so I’m going to stick with what I know.”

Why do you suppose she chooses Peach?  Because it’s the easiest character to control or because she’s a girl or because she’s cute?  Maybe all three.

“Little palm trees have icicles.  That is so cute.”

Oh…

Then she tells a story about a fucking commercial.  I was hoping that she was going to tell a story about something that she experienced.  Like the time that she went to Florida or something.  But no.  It’s a commercial.  What a miserable life she must have had.

14:30 – “So I don’t know what to say about this one.  It’s literally Super Mario 2 but Christmas-y”.

I think you meant “Holiday-y”.  But yeah.  It’s a sprite swap.  You’re familiar with sprite swaps, aren’t you Erin?  You’ve heard of this term before, haven’t you?  It’s pretty common in the rom hack community.

15:00 – Oh, she actually uses the term “sprite swap”.  Good for you, Erin.  You’re a real gamer!

16:30 – “So that was it.  Happy Holidays!  And I’ll be back again really soon.  Bye!”

I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  I’m full of holiday cheer now.  I’m going to decorate my holiday tree and then go door to door and sing holiday carols.  Oh my god.  I forgot to send my holiday cards this year.  I just got so caught up in the holiday spirit.  

You know, for a lot of people holiday time is difficult, especially this year with the bad cold lockdown.  You see happy people in their holiday sweaters and they’re buying holiday presents and whatnot.  Having a good time with their family, you know.  

But you might not have a family.  You might be living with a man you don’t love in a Youtube promotion for buttsex situation.  So people get depressed.

But it’s okay.  People are in different situations.  People make different choices in life.  There are many millions of people who aren’t having a Norman Rockwell Holiday.  Just do what makes you happy.  Maybe masturbate to an Erin Plays video.