Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: new attitude

New phone, who dis?

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In the last post, I was talking about Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. They are twins, but Miquella never really grew up or something? I’m not entirely sure because FromSoft lore is very dense and opaque. I haven’t watched many lore vids, but I will at some point. I do know that…

*SPOILERS*

Marika and Radagon are the same person. But Radagon is also the consort of Marika. They have the twins, Malenia and Miquella. Because they were one person, their children were cursed. Or something. Marika was also married to Godfrey and had three children, Godwin, and the twins, Mohg, Lord of Blood, and Morgott, the Omen King. Morgott is the actual form of Margit, the Fell Omen, who is an early boss. Optional, but most people will face him as the first boss.

Fun fact: George R. R. Martin was brought in to write the lore of the worlds. Many of the characters have names that start with G, R, and M. Make of that what you will. It’s hard to tell what is under his influence in the game, but it’s not unreasonable to wonder why invite him in to do what Miyazaki is brilliant in?

Anyway. The finding out that Radagon is Marika is supposed to be upsetting and a shock. But, honestly, I just nodded and accepted it because why the hell not? It’s no more unrealistic than any of the other lore in the FromSoft games. That’s similar to when people say that you know you’re not supposed to fight the Tree Sentinel at the beginning of the game because he’s so hard. You don’t have anything to judge it against so you just accept that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

It’s like with the first game. After you fight the Asylum Demon, you get dropped off at Firelink Shrine. There are three ways you can go. One is the graveyard with hard-as-nails skellies. Another is down to New Londo Ruins with ghosts you cannot attack*. The third is the right way to go with Hollows who are manageable.

From fans argue that it’s the genius of Miyazaki on display because the first two ways are demonstrably too hard. The third way is hard, but not impossible. But, and this is something you forget over time, you have nothing to judge it against when it’s your first time playing. I’ve gone into this at length several times, even in the last post, but it bears repeating. This game is marketing as being extra-hard. That’s their whole schtick! The complete version with DLC is called the Prepare to Die Edition. What do people  who’ve never played the game know about it? It’s fucking hard! So, yeah, going up against skellies who can kill you in one hit or bleed you out before you can do chip damage to them? Sure, why not? Ghosts you can’t touch without a certain item, which is never explained to you? Why wouldn’t you think you weren’t supposed to run through the area?

It’s all obvious once you’ve played the game, but when you have no barometer for what is reasonable and what isn’t, well, you’re going to just assume that you’re supposed to die a million times and not just a thousand. Everyone forgets how difficult it was the first time through. That’s normal and human.


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2022 musings and rants

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I don’t do holidays in general and especially not New Year’s. I did resolutions for a few years, but then realized that I was just setting myself up to fail. I don’t do well with goals. Erm. That’s not entirely true. I do well with some goals. Such as when I tried to lose weight in my twenties. I did TOO well and slipped into anorexia/bulimia. That’s one of my issues–I do things too hard, turning a positive into a negative.

This is one of my issues with NY resolutions–making them way too big. Losing a hundred pounds, getting into a serious relationship, writing a best-selling novel, etc. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big, but there’s also nothing wrong with being realistic. In fact, when I set my goals too high, I lose all motivation and stop doing the thing altogether.

I suffer from depression and anxiety, which plays into my lack of motivation. I can have all the plans in the world, but actually executing them is another story. If I have a detailed plan, then I’m most likely to follow through. That’s what happened when I went to San Francisco for a year for grad school, when I got my cats, and, yes, both the times I went on a diet (that turned into an eating disorder or two). The first example is the prime one as I agonized over it for months. I had lived in Minnesota all my life and mostly on my own. Going to San Francisco and living with housemates was such a different thing for me–and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I brought it up in therapy several times , worrying endlessly over every little thing. I have to say that having my mother around for three months was hard in part because she vocalized the constant anxiety I have rattling around in my head. I’ve learned to keep it inside because no one needs to hear that, but my mother has never learned that lesson. If anything, she’s gotten worse in her old age–I think it’s because she’s around my father all the time and feels she has to justify everything to him.

Anyway, back to going to San Francisco for a year. Here’s a thing you have to know about me. I hate everything. Hear me out. The way my brain works, I can see a million things wrong with any given thing. I come by it honestly, but it’s also part of my DNA. K and  I used to joke about how different our families are. When she was having marital issues, her mom said she would be fine with her husband or with him. I commented that if I were in the same situation, my mom would point out why I was fucked either way. There are good and bad things about each of these mentalities, but it’s frustrating to always see everything that could possibly go wrong.


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New year; new me; who dis?

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Happy 2022, y’all! Man, 2021 was a weird year. Wild and wooly, I’ve called it. It started out terrible with the pandemic still raging on. Then, vaccines! That brought some hope. I got fully vaxxed and cautiously opened up my life a bit. I went from being a hermit, not going anywhere but the pharmacy once a month to going twice to Cubs within a few weeks. Hey, I wasn’t going crazy, but I did feel a sense of optimism. That was in May/June. Then, September 3rd happened.

My life will forever be split into before September 3rd and after it. It’s funny because that’s my parents’ anniversary. Probably not a good association for them now. My brother called them on September 3rd at night, which would be September 4th their time. I know he said to them something like, “Minna is in the hospital and it’s very serious.” I’m sure he told them everything that happened to me in a bald fashion because that’s the way he operates. When I came to, he told me everything, including the fact that I should have died. And the fact that I should have brain damage, not to mention difficulty walking and talking.

My favorite story is when my brother told me that he was talking to two social workers about my situation. They were asking how he was doing because that’s their job. He looked at them and said fine. They probed a bit more and he said bluntly, “If she dies, she dies. I can’t do anything about it.” I burst out laughing because I could imagine the look of horror on their faces. My brother is probably on the spectrum, though he’s never been diagnosed, and his way of dealing with emotions is to–not. It’s not that he doesn’t feel things; he does. It’s just that he feels them differently and expresses them differently than most people do.

My brother shows he cares by doing things. He’s always been like that. One time, it was like fifty below zero with windchill and I got a flat tire because a nail punctured it on the way to work. I called my brother after work and he promptly drove to my workplace and changed my tire. Another time, I was at my Taiji demo in twenty below weather. My car wouldn’t start and I called my brother to come do something about it. He managed to make my car start, thankfully. He’s my go-to guy when I need something fixed mechanically or electronically. In return, I listen to his problems and give him suggestions after hours of griping. He’s my fix-it guy and I’m this therapist. It works for us!


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A new year and a new attitude

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2021 sucked and I cannot see the backend of it soon enough. Now, to be fair, I came back from the dead twice–which is a good thing. The fact that I’m going to see 2022 is a plus in and of itself. I made this observation soon after exiting the hospital. Before my medical trauma, I was hyped for Elden Ring by FromSoft. The second trailer was released three months before I went into the hospital and I was planning how I was going to play it. See, when I play a FromSoft game, I play it on my own for the first playthrough. I try to beat all the bosses by myself, only summoning if I’m desperate. I have all sorts of rules for how I play these games and I was wondering how feasible it would be for an open  world game. I thought maybe I would have two games on the go–one solo and one for co-op. I still wanted to beat all the bosses on my own for the first playthrough.

Then, I had my medical trauma and ended up in the hospital, knocking at death’s door. I defied death and with my new lease on life, I had a different view on many things as well. One of them was Elden Ring. It may seem silly to be fixated on a game, but it’s the one popular culture thing that really gets me going. I’ll buy any game FromSoft makes (except VR games, of course) and I’ll pre-order them to boot. Which reminds me, I still haven’t pre-ordered Elden Ring because I haven’t decided which edition I want.

The thing is, once I remembered Elden Ring existed (which was a day or two after I woke up in the hospital), none of my strategizing mattered. I was just extremely happy to have the chance to play the game. That was it. I didn’t care about how I was going to play it; I was just grateful that I would get to play it. That feeling has held and intensified since watching footage from the closed network test. I couldn’t participate because I don’t have a console, unfortunately. Well, I do have a PS4, but I hate playing on it. I watched Eurogamer and Oxboxtra play it, drinking it in, and PlayStation Access, too. The closed network test was a hefty chunk of the game, too. Games journalists put in anywhere from ten to seventy hours in the pre-public stress test. And it was estimated that it was maybe 1/16th of the game? Something like that.

The hype for this is unreal. FromSoft’s last game, Sekiro, was released in 2019. It had very positive media acclaim (it won the GOTY from the biggest award show, Geoff Keighley’s baby), but it was a divisive game within the community. Personally, it’s my least-favorite of the FromSoft games. I think it’s a brilliant game and I love that it showcases feudal Japan. Sekiro himself is a hottie and an interesting protagonist, but the game itself was so grueling. I’ve said for many years that there’s a ceiling to FromSoft games and that I was getting closer and closer to it. I love the games, but I’m not any good at them. The way I beat the games is by over-leveling and grinding to the point of oblivion. And, if I really needed it, I summoned for bosses I simply could not beat solo. The problem with Sekiro was that there was no leveling and there was no co-op. It was not an RPG and the only way to level up was to beat certain mini-bosses who gave you prayer beads. When you got four of them, then you could increase your strength and health bar some indeterminate amount. The final boss was above my paygrade–and I was just lucky to beat him. If took me six or seven hours and thirty-five or so real attempts and I probably could not beat him again. I have not faced him a second time ,which should tell you how I feel about the game.


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