Underneath my yellow skin

Talaknig more about weapons because I can, part six

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Am I back to talk more about my weapon forms? Hell, yes I am! Or Taiji and Bagua in general. Here’s my post from yesterday. I’m stoked to be doing a weapon form for my teacher’s demo (don’t worry. I’ll be terrified later on. I jsut have nearly a year to work on it, so the negative feelings won’t settle in until, hopefully, months down the road). Will I be terrified before doing it? Yes.

I used to do dance when I was a kid and acting/performance whwen I was in my twenties. I got nervous/stage fright/sick to my stomach every time. I’ve forgotten lines while on stage (what actor hasn’t?), and I have survived it. The one thing that I know I need to do before the demo is do the form facing different walls and in different places. It’s too easy to rely on where I am facing in the room I always practice in. I know from switching rooms in the past that it confuses me.

Ideally, I would be able to practice in the actual room where I’ll be demoing before the day of the actual demo, but this probably won’t be possible. so the best alternative is to practice in different rooms facing different ways.

The other thing that I need to do is clean it up. I’ve already tightened it up some, but I need to go back through the form and make sure I have all the postures right. I would not be surprised if I was off on half-a-dozen of the postures. I also won’t be surprised if I’ve forgotten one or two postures. I know my brain isn’t working quite as well as I did before my medical crisis. My memory used to be stellar; now it’s at best adequate. It’s partly getting older, yes, but it’s also the stroke.

It’s funny. I rarely think about the stroke, even though in most cases, it would be a really serious thing. I am still incredibly grateful that I was able to recover from it with nothing more than my memory going bad, some problems doing math in my brain, and occasionally forgetting a word. I will take that over what a stroke usually did to you.

I rarely talk even think about the fact that I had a stroke, but I have. I’m not saying that as an excuse; it’s just facts. I had a stroke during my medical crisis, and I think that sometimes, I do need to pay more attention to it than I do. Not that I have to think about it all the time, but just to take into account that it did happen to me.

I think part of the problem is that the medical crisis I had, which by all accounts, should have knocked me down for the count, was something I walked away from less than a week after I woke up from a week-long coma. I still can’t believe it happened, even though it’s been four-and-a-half years.


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Talking more about weapon forms, part five

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Yes, I’m going to talk more about weapon forms because they have changed my life. Before them, I liked Taiji and appreciated the positive benefits, but I have to admit that I struggled. I liked it enough to keep doing it, but I had to admit that it felt more like a duty than a joy at times. I struggled with the Solo Form from the start, I will admit. Part of it was because I had a horrible teacher before my current one who really messed me up when it came to Taiji. I don’t want to talk about it, but suffice to say that it scarred me so much, I did not try to find a new teacher for nearly ten years after. Well, I think it was more like seven or eight, but still.

When I found my current teacher, the thing that really made me trust her was that she would honestly tell me if she didn’t know something. I had so many questions to ask her, and she was very patient with me. If she knew the answer, she would tell me. If she did not, she would tell me that she would either ask her teacher or look it up. And she always did. That’s the important part. She always came back with an answer, even if it was just to tell me that she didn’t know or couldn’t find the answer.

I fought myself so much in the first few years of learning Taiji. My teacher introduced the Sword Form to me in my second or third year of practice, which helped. However, I still resisted practicing the Solo Form or anything related to it.

If i were to be honest, I still skimp on the hands-only Taiji. I hate to admit it, but it’s just not as interesting to me as the weapons. I do the warmups/stretches every day and one section of the Long Form, but then I spend more time with my beloved weapons. Oh, I do some other hands-only Taiji/Bagua, but it’s still not as much as I do the weapons.

I have talked about it with my teacher beacuse she’s the opposite. She likes the hands-only Taiji much more than she does weapons. I didn’t know it for a long time because she hid it well. She was more than willing to talk about weapons at length because I was so excited about them. It wasn’t until she was teaching me the Saber Form for the second time that I had the realization. And it wasn’t that she actually said it. It was just the difference in how she talked about doing the hands-only stuff and the weapons. In addition, when we talked about the first time she taught me the Saber Form, she mentioned that she had stopped at the end of the fourth line because she hadn’t been confident about the complicated steps that ended that line.

She had made a couple other comments about weapons that made me realize they were not her jam. It wasn’t something I really thought of, though, until we got to the Double Saber Form. I had seen one of her classmates do the form at the demo in February, 2020. That was right before the pandemic closed everything down.


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Weapon forms? Weapon forms it is (part four)

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We’re back to talk more about weapon forms. I need to get deep into my feelings about how learning the Double Fan Form changed me. Here is my post from yesterday talking about some of my issues learning Bagua–and some of my flaws in learning martial arts. I mentioned that I was lazy in a not-good way, and while I try not to get hung up on it, it does bother me sometimes.

Back when I first started learning Taiji, I went to one class a week. I could not make myself practice at home for the life of me. I tried and tried, but I just could not do it. In order to make up for it, I started to go to another class a week, and then another (so in total, three). I still could not make myself practice at home.

I don’t know why my brain just refused to do it. Any time I tried, it would scream at me not to do it. I could not force my body to practice. At all. So I tricked it. I started by doing five minutes of Taiji stretches a day. No actual Taiji, mind. Just five minutes of stretching. For whatever reason, my brain was fine with that. It wasn’t doing actual Taiji, see. It was just stretching.

That got by the block in my head, and then I was able to slowly build up a Taiji practice. In addition to the warmups, I did the Solo Form and walked the circle with my deer horn knives. Then, when I learned the Sword Form, my practice really started taking off. I love me my weapons, and being able to do them on the daily was my happy place.

For a while, it was just the Sword Form, left side and right side. Then, a few years later, I added the Saber Form (with much grief), right side and left side. Then, Cane Form, right and left. Hm. I might have learned that before the Saber–no, it was Saber Form then Cane Form. Then, a few staff/spear drills. Then, it was the Double Saber Form just as the pandemic hit. My teacher taught me the first part of it on Zoom (I think? I’m not sure I’m remembering it correctly), but then we reached a part that she wasn’t sure of. She didn’t say that to me, but we just did not move past a certain point.

I was getting frustrated so I asked if it was OK if taught the rest to myself. Her teacher had a video of his Double Saber Form (she had sent it to me earlier), so I could do it from that. It wasn’t ideal, but it was doable. She gave me her blessing (I wouldn’t have done it otherwise), and I went about teaching myself the rest of the form. It wasn’t too bad, though I need to do some clean up on it.


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Let’s talk more about weapons, part three

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Let’s talk more about weapons. Not necessarily which one I’m choosing for the demo because we all know it’s the Double Fan Form. It was always going to be the Double Fan Form. I mean, I did seriously conside the other weapon forms, and the Double Saber Form came in a close second. I love being a human blender with the double sabers. It’s so much fun! Here was the last post in which I–wait. I never made an official decision, did I? Well, this is the last post in which I mused a lot about it. In fact, I had made my decision for the most part before I even started musing about it, and then I was very tired, so I assumed I had made the actual decision by the end of the post.

So, just in case I haven’t been clear–I’m going to do the Double Fan Form. Which means I have to clean it up. In every form, there are a few postures that I’m not sure of and just fudge. Or I style it out. Or I just do something that’s suitable, but may not be the actual postures. In other words, I get stloppy. And then I have to go back and clean up the mess. Well, not mess, but the mistakes.

One of my flaws is that I get lazy, and not in the good way. What I mean is that I work so hard to learn a form, I’m all used up by the end. It’s a Herculean effort for me to just teach myself the form, my brain complains when I try do the corrections.

I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that I have so much time to fix it beacuse it’s almost a year away–the demo I mean. I have two modes–go hard and don’t go at all. When I am in the latter mode, it’s really hard to push me into the former. It’s best for me to stay in the former mode so I won’t get stuck in the latter.

Don’t worry. I’m not talking about being a workaholic or pushing myself to burnout. That’s not my style at all. What I mean is that once I get into the flow, it’s easy for me to stay there. It’s just getting there in the first place that is so fucking hard.

I’m going to include a video of a really cool Fan Form just for the fun of it. It’s not one I do, but it’s really exciting to watch. And I’ve posted it before because it’s just that cool.

Back to the weapon forms. I am currently working on one new one. It’s the Bagua Knives Form because without a doubt, my favorite weapon is the Deer Horn Knives. They feel so right in my hands, that I want to hold them all the time. I was doing the Walking the Circle meditation with them to avoid Taiji meditation, and they became my favorite weapon.


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Ranking my BAEs (weapon forms), part two

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Let’s talk more about the Taiji weapon forms I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m going to do the Double Fan Form for the demo of my teacher’s school next Lunar Near Year. I had a whole post about musing over which weapon form I’ll do. It was my last post, and I narrowed it down to two different weapon forms–the Double Saber Form and the Double Fan Form.

To briefly sumarize why I decided not to do the others: I love the Sword Form, but it’s done as a group for the demo on a frequent basis, so I won’t do it for that reason. And even though I’m pretty sure it’ll be the right side, I don’t want to do the left side of a form that is already being done.

Saber is not a favorite of mine. I have learned to appreciate it after hatting it from the start. It wasn’t the weapon’s fault; I expecetd it to be like the Sword Form except heavier, but it wasn’t that at all. it has a totally different feel to it. You have to move it differently, and its spirit is much heavier than the sword.

My teacher told me the saber was for cavalry as they were used as meat shields. it was considered the lowest of the forms–or rather the easiest to learn. The Sword Form, which was the first form I was taught is considered the second most difficult form. When I asked my teacher why that was the first weapon to be taught, she didn’t really have an answer.

The staff/spear is the hardest weapon to learn, by the way. I know a few drills, but it’s not really one you can practice alone, apparently. Meaning, there really isn’t a Staff Form. I think there is a Spear Form, but I am not sure about that. I would love to do a two-person Spear Form, but it’s pretty far down on my list of weapons to learn.

Right now, I’m concentrating on the left side of the Solo Form. I taught it to myself many years ago, but my teacher’s teacher was in a ‘let’s improve everything at one time’ mood by the time I got to the third section of the form. He kept changing it, and it was frustrating me.   I know that forms are meant to be living and to be updated, but I needed to learn it first before I could start tweaking it. I decided to set it aside until my teacher’s teacher was satisfied with it for a measure of time.

I’m back at it because, and I hate to admit this aloud, I feel some shame that I don’t know the left side of the basic form. I’ve been studying for twenty years, and I should have taught it to myself fairly early on. I learned the right side (the basic form)  within the first year. So, it’s about time to right that wrong.


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Ranking my BAEs (weapon forms) for a reason

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A few months ago, after I finished teaching myself the Double Fan Form, I was talking with my teacher about it and how hard it was for me–to a surprising degree. It wasn’t that I thought it would be easy–well, if I’m going to be completely honest, I did think it would be if not easy, then smooth-sailing.

See, I am good at weapon forms. At learning them, I mean. Learning forms in general, I’m decent at. The Sword Form was the first weapon form I learned, and it was a breeze. Seriously. It was the most natural thing I’d ever done in my life. I loved it so much, and it was all I ever wanted to do with my life.

I’m not going to go through all the other weapons I’ve learned/taught myself, but suffice it to say that except for the Saber Form (which I learned second and mistook it for being the same as the sword but just heavier. It was so very different. Once I internalized this, I was able to learn it fairly easily).

When I decided to teach myself the Double Fan Form, I thought that it would go smoothly. I had already taught myself the Fan Form and the Double Saber Form. Both were intense, but they were both doable.

The longest it had taken me to learn a weapon form/teach one to myself was three months. I thought that should be enough to teach myself the Double Fan Form. And this was after watching several videos of it. I could not find a Yang-style form, so I chose the official Chen-style version with the resolution to adapt it as need be.

Keep that in the back of your mind as I tell you why I’m talking about all the different weapon forms that I have learned/taught myiself.

As I was talking to my teacher about learning the form and how hard it was, we were also talking about the demo that her school always does every year right around the Lunar New Year. She said that she would love for me to do the Double Fan Form for this year’s demo. This was in December, I think, so just two months before the demo.

I quickly said that I would not be ready for this demo (especially as we were talking about me doing the Double Fan Form). She said maybe for next year’s demo as it was a big anniversary for her teacher. We left it at that and moved on with my private lesson.

Yesterday, she was here for my private lesson. She mentioned her teacher’s big teaching anniversary next year (50th). She said that she really would like me to do one of my weapon forms for it. I immediately realized it was not a request, and I said that I would do it. She said that she would leave which form it would be up to me. I immediately said that it would be cool to do the Double Fan Form. She agreed without hesitation, mentioning that no one else in the studio knew that form.


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A Quick Look at the demo of Nioh 3 (Team NINJA), part four

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I’m back to talk more about the Nioh 3 (Team NINJA) demo because I can. And because I went into the area I mentioned in yesterday’s post–the one I was sure was a boss arena. I’ll get to that in a bit.

I was hesitant to jump back into the demo. I talked about it a bit in the last post, but I’m already overwhelmed by everything combat-wise. Let me briefly mention those things. On the samurai style side, it’s the fucking ki pulse. This has been a staple of the Niohs since the first game, and I have fucked it up every time. After you attack (X for light and Y for heavy), you hit RB to regain your ki (energy/stamina/blue bar). I can’t do it; I just cannot. I get it right maybe one out of every five tries–which is my usual rate when it comes to parrying as well. Anything rhythm/reflex based is just not good for me.

One thing that I like about the series is that you level up a weapon by using it through familiarity. Right now, I’m trying out different samurai weapons to see which class I like. I don’t like the hammer class because it’s waaaaaay too slow and heavy, but I do like spinning around in circles. I have not found an axe yet, which is usually my main. I like the odachi class quite a bit.

However. I much prefer the ninja style. Like vastly prefer. Like, I have to force myself to use the samurai style because I just don’t like it. It feels clumsy and artificially difficult to me.

I like the ninja style, especially because it comes with an array of ninjutsu. Those are the magicks in the game, which is my jam. I could never really make the magicks work for me, though. I mean, it was useful to have healing tickets, purifying tickets, defensive tickets, and more, but the offensive magicks just never felt that good. I’m fully aware that it might be a me problem, but I played a third of the first game; I should have had gotten some powerful maigcks.

Although, it’s quite possible I could have unlocked something powerful and just missed it. See, that’s another thing about the Niohs; the trees are just too massive. And there are so many of them. Each weapon class has its own skills, for example. Plus the basic skills you can get. I have exclamation points for all the weapon classes because I get tired at the thought of clicking through each one.

Side note: One of my evergreen complaints about the Niohs is just how much junk there is in the games. The loot drop is ridiculous and honestly, quite demotivating. At least I figured out you could flip on the option of automatically picking up the loot.


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A Quick Look at the demo of Nioh 3 (Team NINJA), part three

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Let’s talk more about the Nioh 3 (Team NINJA) demo. Why the hell not? I’ve explored more, and I have to say a few things. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked a lot about the demo. Good and bad things, but mostly, what annoyed the fuck out of me. I’m going to continue with that today because it’s still annoying me.

I can’t get over that the default for the item pickup is not automatic. Why are you like this, Team NINJA?! Why the fuck would someone want to have to manually pick up each item from the ground,, especially when there are so many of them, arther than just walk over them to pick them up?

Also, you can’t put two important functions on the same button. You just canot. I mean, if you’re using them in different situations like one in combat and one out of it, then it’s ok. But if they are both used in combat, then you simply cannot put them both on the same button! I don’t know how that isn’t dev design 101.

In this case, it’s RT. It’s the button you hit to switch from samuari style to ninja style (sword fighting to stealth). However, it’s also the button you press to hdo a burst-counter/counter-burst.  The burst is when an enemy/boss does a bright red flash, and if you counter the attack, you do massive damage.

Except, it’s way tooo easy to switch fighting styles as you’re trying to do the counter-burst. I did it so many times, and it was aggravating. The internet informed me that there was an option that allowed you to make it so that you only had to tap the RT to do the counter-Thburst. Which, fine, great. That differentiates between the two, but it means that you have to press the RT for longer in order to switch styles. Itas so fucking exasperating. Just put it on a different button, damn it. They use so many of the buttons that maybe they don’t have one to spare, but still. It’s really annoying.

Today, I was in a new area. I was wandering around and really loving my bow. But, I was running out of ammo, which I hate. Usually you can pick up plenty as you go, but you have to have guys who are using bows in order to get arrow drops.

I neared what I thought was probably a boss arena, and I said, “Nope.” I just was not up for doing it. I have only faced the tutorial boss, and he whipped my ass over and over again. And over again. I knew he wasn’t supposed to be that hard. I knew he was supposed to be teaching me how to play the game, but I certainly wasn’t getting it. Even though I could see what I was supposed to be doing, I could not do it in time.


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A Quick Look at the demo of Nioh 3 (Team NINJA), part two

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Let’s talk more about the Nioh 3 (Team NINJA) demo, which I hear is very generous. Before we get into it, here was my first post about the demo. Now, let’s go with part two, and I want to start out with a shoutout to Team NINJA. One thing I  have always appreciated in their games is that they have fantastic ranged weapons. Bows, Rifles, and hand canons. They are powerful, accurate, and not *too* hard to aim. Sometimes the arrows are sparse, but you can usually pick them up around the battlegrounds. Today, I had to clear a camp, and I headshot several of the enemies in it. It felt good; it felt powerful; and it felt…not like cheating because I firmly believe if it’s in the game, it’s not cheating. It felt like easy mode, though. It definitely felt like that. I didn’t feel bad about it, however, as the game is rough enough for me as it is.

I have to say, this is one area in which FromSoft is stubbornly bad. I am not a game dev, obviously, but how the fuck can their bows still be this horrible a decade and a half after they first released Demon’s Souls?! If anything, it’s gotten worse given that the bows in the first game (or at least the holy arrows) were supposedly decent. The only thing that I use the bows for in the From games is to draw one enemy awayf from the others. I do not know why they are so terrible and remain so terrible. I can only conclude that it’s because they simply don’t care about bows. I mean, they’ve had plenty of time to improve them and just haven’t.

I feel like a badass when I’m using a bow, rifle, or canon in a Nioh game. It’s a viable option in those games rather than a hindrance or a joke.

Also, now that I was reminded how the burst-counter actually worked, I managed to pull it off once. The timing is a bit more generous than in the last game, but it’s still fiddly for me. I tended to slide around the enemy more often than actually counter it. that’s because I have the habit of dodging around in a circle as I’m fighting. The best way to beat a Dark Souls boss is to circle around it and hit dat ass. So now, when I play one of these kinds of games, I tend to circle around the enemy.

Avoiding being hit is fine, but I wish I could get more burst-counters in. The trouble is that it’s two buttons–RT + B. You have to hit the RT first and then B. And, in my mind, B is only the dodge/roll button. I think there was another game that put a certain kind of block on B–it was FromSoft! In Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon, if I remember correctly. THey had two block buttons, and B was one of them.


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A Quick Look at the demo of Nioh 3 (Team NINJA)

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Let’s talk about the Nioh 3 (Team NINJA) demo. I installed it and gave it a try. I didn’t actually spend that much time in the custom creator because it wasn’t as vast as the ones in the past. And, to be honest, I went  into it thinking that I would never buy it, so why bother? I chose Body B with long hair and a big chest, and that was good enough for me. But before I get into it, here was the post I wrote yesterday about the Niohs and my complicated feelings about them.

The tutorial was much like the other games. Choose a weapon and practice with it. Then, go through a light tutorial that covers about one-hundredth of what you’ll need to know by the end of the game. I chose my old favorite, the odachi, and kept it moving.

Still in the tutorial area, I came across a scene in which I met Hattori Hanzo–by the way, why the fuck is he so insanely hot in this game? Anyway, he tells you of another way–the way of the ninja. So now I had to choose a second weapon that was more tricksy than strength. I tried them out and finally chose the double hatchets. They’re new to this game (I think?), and I’m an axe person since I first started as a pyromancer in the original Dark Souls.

There was ninja stuff in the other games, but this is the first time they had it in a completely separate style (if I’m not mistaken). You have to hit RT while you’re in combat to switch to that style.

In the samurai style (first style), they still have the ki pulse which I just cannot get the hang of. After you attack (light hit X, heavy hit Y), you press RB to get a huge chunk of your ki (stamina) back. This has been in all of their Niohs, and I still cannot do it consistently.

Another important part of combat is the burst that the enemiy/boss does. It’s a big burst of red and very visible. Except, I just don’t have the ability to react to it in time. Well, what I seemed to have forgotten about in this demo is that you have to do RT and then B in order to counter it. After doing it properly the first time (and getting the counter), I promptly forgot that you had to hit B with the RT. Which, as you can probably guess, makes a ton of difference.

I did not realize this until I was talking to Ian (he’s playing Nioh 2 right now), and he mentioned it was RT+B, and I was like, “Wait, what? B? Huh?” Well, that would make a huge difference. Since this was after I finished playing the game for the day, I don’t know if it’ll make a big difference or not. Meaning, if I can get the timing or not. I did hit the first one with ease, and it seemed like it had a more generous timing. Will I play more of the  demo to find out if it’s true?

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