Let me preface this by saying Elden Ring (From Soft) is my favorite video game of all time. By a hair. My second favorite? Dark Souls III, also by FromSoft. In fact, I’ve gone back and forth several times as to which game is actually my favorite. I finally landed on Elden Ring, but that doesn’t mean it won’t veer back to DS III.
I want to talk about a bigger issue with this game–and it’s an issue that happens in many of the From games. That issue is that a large portion or all of the second half is not good. Let me explain. In doing so, I’ll be spoiling some of the second half of the game, including a major area. I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but I need to talk about specifics.
*SPOILERS*
About a hundred hours into the game (I’m slow), I made it to the halfway point. Of course, I didn’t know it was halfway, and I thought it was more like two-thirds of the way there. Honestly, it should have been because the next area was my least favorite in the whole game. Hm. I can talk about it without naming it, I guess. It’s a meaningful area in the game as it’s talked about before I even reach it. An NPC talks about it, and it’s mentioned in at least one item.
This area is easily the worst in the game. Not even a later optional area that is harder and more frustrating is as bad as this area. Someone noted that there is not one single new enemy in this rather vast area, and they’re right. All the enemies are from earlier in the game, although some of them might be reskinned. And, yes, one type of enemy is from this area, but one shows up much earlier in a gaol as the boss of that jail. Yes, he’s much easier then, but it’s the same enemy.
This area (and the optional area that branches off from it) are the snowy areas, which makes me sad because I love snow. But why is it usually a bad sign in a game? Because devs love to make visibility limited or nonexistent in said area. It happened in Dark Souls II in what is almost universally agreed upon as the worst area in the game–and it’s in the last DLC. It happened in this game and this area as well. There’s a section where the wind is constantly blowing and you can’t see anything. It’s the only area of the game I don’t know at all becuase I was constantly hooning it through that area. It’s not fun. It’s not cute. It’s not exciting. It just…is. It feels, dare I say it, cheap.
I’ve been playing Elden Ring (FromSoft) again with one of the two new classes (Idus Knight), the one that was billed as the flexible build class. Not that exactly, but that’s how I thought of it in my mind. I wanted to do a dexish build, but I ended up basically reverting to my faith-based character. I kept my reverse-blade knife this whole time (about a third of the way into the game–well closer to half), but I think it’s reached the end of its usefulness. I’ve been mostly using miracles, anyway, as is my wont.
Have you heard the good news of my favorite utility miracle, the Lightning Spear? It takes relatively little FP (Focus Points), is quick to throw (though you can charge it if you want), and it works well on most enemies. I have it in my first slot on all my characters (if I have the Faith to use it–which is 17. That’s relatively low. Idus Knight starts with 11 Faith, so it’s not hard to get to 17.
There’s a great basic miracle called Flame Cleanse Me that alleviates scarlet rot buildup (very important) and poison buildup. What I didn’t know until I looked it up just now was that it also alleviates frostbite buildup. Also, I only learned recently that it does 15 fire damage to yourself when you cast it. That’s negligent, though, and well worth it. I always get this incantation–always. It helps so much with certain areas *cough cough* Caelid, arguably the worst area in the game *cough cough*.
That’s not what I want to write about though. Before I continue, I will be spoiling optional areas, optional NPC quests, and other things related to both.
*SPOILER*
Let’s talk Ranni’s questline. More to the point, the area you access late into her questline. I want to talk about it because there’s a rise in it that is so damn annoying to get into. Rises are where sorcerors keep their best spells and memory stones. Memory stones are spell slots, essentially. Which, by the way, is so much better than leveling up attunement for slots. In Dark Souls III, it took an increasing amount of souls to get a level, and you needed certain amounts of levels to get another attunement slot. I usually had five slots because they cost so damn much. In Elden Ring, you get 10 spell slots by the end of the game (and a talisman that gives you an extra two). That’s double the slots without using any runes. Well, you have to buy at least one of the memory slots (and you start with two). And, of course, you have to increase your Mind in order to get more FP. Each spell/incantation costs FP to cast as does summoning most of your spirit ashes.
Ahem. Back to the rise. Chelona’s Rise. In order to get it, you have to ‘kill’ three wise beasts. It’s three giant ghost turtles. One is right next to the rise. Another is far away and you’ll never find it on your own (though there are turtles leading up to it, as there are to all three turtles). The third…ughhhhhh. This is the one that irritates me. It’s in the air next to a spirit spring (a stream of air that Torrent, your spirit steed, jumps into and shoots straight up in the air), and you’re supposed to jump up and hit it on the way down. It’s supposed to be pretty automatic.
Theodore Sturgeon was a sci-fi writer who had his first sci-fi fiction story published in 1939. In the early fifties, he first stated what eventually became Sturgeon’s Law. Tired of being told that 90% of sci-fi was crud, he retorted that it was true of all genres, but it was only sci-fi that specifically got called out for being crud. He pointed out that when people talked about mysteries, they mentioned the elite writers (which is funny because when I got into reading mysteries in the nineties/aughts, it was definitely considered lesser than literary fiction and lumped in with sci-fi).
It’s been adapted into “90% of everything is crap”, whereas I say, “90% of everything is shit”. In addition, I’ve upped it to 99%, although I will generously concede that it might be closer to 95%. The point is that true art is a very small percent and everything else is shit.
I would point out that there is even more effluvia these days simply because it’s so easy to put things on the internet. That makes me hold firm to my idea that 99% of everything is shit. In fact, I would probably up it to 99.9%. Just because anyone can, it doesn’t mean that anyone should.
It’s daunting to even find anything remotely consumable on any given subject. I’m not talking art, by the way; I’m just looknig for good content. So, the top 10%–not five or less. I put “autistic” in YouTube, and the first fifty or so videos are by white men and women. In fact, one of them is one of the videos I saw by a white man talking about masking for autistic woman–and did not have a female guest in his video. He thought wearing a wig and talking in a higher voice would be enough. Which….yeah. That’s not it, my dude.
There’s a lot of videos on autistic people with ADHD, which I’m pretty sure is not me. The Asian woman I’ve mentioned in a previous post (the last post? Not sure. Time. What even is it?) is not in the first fifty or so videos. I put Asian American in the search box, and the Asian American woman I mentioned is the second hit. And there are many videos with the gender pretty split between the two binary genders.
I found one person who was queer, nonbinary trans, autistic, and Korean American. I am including one of their videos below because in it, they talk about representation in media, intersecitonality, and the hope that one day, they will have plentty of mediocre media that reflects themselves to choose from.
I’ve made that joke, by the way. That the day when I can be a mediocre person of color and not be called a detriment to my race or other signifier.
When I was getting my masters in Writing & Consciousness (do not ask. I don’t want to talk about it), my advisor and I had a fight over one of my stories. Oh, that was my project for the program. We had to write…I don’t exactly remember what, but it was something like 50-100 pages of short stories, all around a theme.
Every time I manage to get eight hours and only waking up once, I’m astounded at how great I feel the next day. Well, great depends on me not being too sleep-deprived to begin with–which isn’t guaranteed. In fact, I would say that I’m usually sleep-deprived*, and it’s not getting any better.
It’s so frustrating because on the surface, it seems like it would be so easy. Just fucking go to bed at a reasonable time. How hard is that? And because my sleep is so off, I could definitely ease into it by going to bed one hour earlier every night. Or if I can’t do that, then one hour later to do the cycle the other way around.
I could take a bath/shower an hour before bed. (No scented anything, though. Because ughhhhhh I’m allergic to everything.) Warm herbal tea; warm milk; warm anything before bed. Exercise, reading, and more. None of it has worked. I’ve even napped before sleeping (not recommended. It just makes me madder at myself because if I’m endlessly nodding off, then I should just go the fuck to bed).
It’s so frustrating. I’ll nod off for ten minutes while watching a video. I’ll rewind to the point where I had nodded off to watch it again. And I’ll promptly doze off again. This will happen four or five times in a row before I finally stay awake. Why don’t I just sleep the first time I nod off? If I could stagger off to bed (couch) before falling asleep, then I could actually sleep for a good long time.
This, apparently, is part of being autistic–having difficulties with sleep, I mean. Another one that I find frustrating is the inability to read tone very well. I have a bleak/dark/sarcastic sense of humor, and I have a hard time reading a dry sense of humar. And tone in words. And with different countries having different senses of humor, I can’t always read tone correctly. My brother has a very dry sense of humor, and while I know thim well enough to get maybe 75% of his jokes, there are times when I’m completely at sea.
I think I need a therapist. No, there’s no think about it, but I’m too overwhelmed to find what I need. Ideally, it would be someone who was genderqueer, Asian, areligious, to name a few. When I tried to find a therapist via an online therapy website, once I put in everything I’d like in a therapist (what they specialized in, I mean) and found nothing. Not o single therapist fit what I was looknig for.
When I looked it up on Google, I found one decent hit. And then promptly sat on it for months (maybe a year by now?).
The things I consider negatives are things I don’t talk about.
Side note: it’s interesting to me that if I firmly believe in something, I don’t argue about it. Take, for example, abortion. I have been pro-choice since I could fully understand what being pro-choice meant. I started out as pro-choice for thee but not for me because I was nominally Christian. I say nominally because I never really believed in it, but I was raised fundie Evangelical.
Different side note: I don’t understand why people put so much investment in things that don’t matter. Such as height. And why being tall is a good thing for men, but a bad thing for women*? I’m rewatching a Stray Kids episode in which they are getting their yearly checkups, including measuring their heights. In addition to being totally chaotic (as they always are), they are freaking out over it because they are collectively the shortest male group in Kpop (or at least are treated as such).
The way people are fixated on their heights and use it as a way tto put them down is, while not surprising, very discouraging. I mean, who the fuck cares? It’s the same as calling someone fat, especially women (in America. Apparently, it’s an equal opportunity insult in Korea). It’s an easy way to deflat ean ego.
I still don’t know why it’s so important–height, I mean. It’s something your’e born with, and there’s not much you can do about it. I’m sure you can stretch yourself out a couple of inches, but why? To what purpose? Same with weight and looks, but that’s not the point of this post.
When I say I’m getting my freak on, I mean in my daily non-sexytimes life. I’m not getting any, sadly, and I’m not in a place to do something about it. Maybe I’ll make it goal for next year–just to get laid, I mean. I’m not looking for a relationship, and I don’t really want to date. I miss sex–that’s about it.
See, I’m not a good partner. It’s funny how people get uncomfortable when I say it–just likpeople were uncomfortable when I’ve said that I would not be a good mother. Or that I was fat. The last one is particularly humorous to me because of how deeply embeded in American’s collective psyche it is that ‘fat’ is a deep insult. “You’re not fat; you’re just fluffy.” No, I’m fat. F-A-T.
I think this is part of my neurodivergence, but it’s also me working hard to accept parts of myself that I used to hate. I loathed my body until my medical crisis for several reasons*. Sometime in my early thirties, I made my peace with being fat–though I did not like it. It wasn’t until my medical crisis that I fully embraced my body.
Up until that point , I thought of it as a vessel for my brain. I felt separated from it, though I will say that Taiji helped me integrate my brain and body to a certain extent.
Back to me being honest about myself. It’s amusing and bemusing to me when people think I’m saying something negative about myself when I’m not. I am fat. I would not have been a good mother. I am currently not a good partner. Well, I can’t say 100% as to the last because I have not dated anyone in a decade and a half, but I’m just assuming I haven’t made enough progress in that arena to be a good partner.
See, here are the problems. One, I alternate between clingy and emotionally distant on a fairly regular basis. I want to be close to someone until we are actually close, and then I want my space. I really like being alone, but there’s some deep programming in me that kicks in when I’m around someone I’m dating.
I don’t want to focus completely on the other person, but that’s the way my brain works. At the same time, I can comfortably date two (or more?) people simultaneously. I am happy when my partner is happy, including if they find love with others. However, I get jealous if I don’t get enough attention myself. And insecure. Like, no amount of love is enough. I try to keep it under control, but sometimes, it seeps out. It’s my anxiety, and it’s difficult to keep a grip on it.
It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to keep my anxieties at bay. That’s up to me. Many times, it’s a struggle that I allow to consume me. I try not to let it out. It’s not the best way to deal with it, but it’s not the worst, either.
The thing is that it’s tricky to figure out which weirdo parts of me that are different that I actually like and don’t. I’ve spent so much of my life being reactive and defensive, it’s hard to know what’s real to me and what isn’t. I’ve had to bat down rigid gender stereotypes from my mother since I was seven. It might have been before that, too, but I don’t remember much before that age.
Actually, I don’t remember much of myy childhood at all. What I do remember is me feeling left out, severely depressed, and thighly restricted in what I was allowed to say, think, and feel. Oh, and being my mother’s emotional support person. That started when I was eleven, and it continues to today. She calls me her therapist, and she’s only half-joking, if even that. Whenever she calls, my heart sinks. (I initially wrote ‘stinks’, which is apt, too.) I have to steal myself because I know it’s going to be a trial.
My mother has strong ideas of what is right and proper (even if she doesn’t follow them herself. And, of course, she has excuses for why it’s different for her). She’s convinced that I’m a contrarian for negative reasons. Then again, she attributes most of what other people do that she doesn’t like to malice rather than just a difference of opinion. She has such a narrow point of view, it’s nearly impossible to talk to her about anything.
On the other hand, she’s easily swayed by really definitive voices–especially male ones. It’s a direct contrast of opposing traits, and while I can be symppathetic to her because I am a mass of contradictions myself, at least I’m aware of it. My mother? Not so much.
When we were talking about my brother being autistic, she mentioned that she wondered if she was as well. At first, I dismissed it as her wanting once again to co-opt other people’s issues as her own (if I have a cold, she had one that was worse. If I have trouble sleeping, it’s nothing compared to her sleep problems. I want to stress that it’s not deliberate on her side, but it’s inevitable), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had many of the hallmarks for autism–the female version.
She does not empathize easily with other people (which took me a long time to realize because she’s a psychologist); she’s very rigid in what she thinks is wrong and right; she is not good in crowds; she can’t do small talk; she does not like to be touched. Now, it’s difficult to untangled some of this from being Taiwanese, which is part of the problem. Also, the hyperfixation is something she does, too, and the difficulty of detaching from said obsession once she’s latched her teeth on it.
One pleasant memory I have is when the two of us used to watch sports together. Football, tennis, baseball, and basketball. Oh, and several Olympic events. It’s funny because my brother and my father had no interest in watching sports, so this was strictly the female (at the time, I identified as a woman) members of the family enjoynig a traditionally manly hobby.
More later.
*One being that I live in a society that hates fat people, especially people with female-coded bodies. Two being my mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and endlessly nagged me about being fat until I finally put my foot down thirty years later.
The issue I have with “We’re the same under our skin” is the same problem I had with the melting pot theory of diversity–I like my differences. Well, for the most part. I spent most of my childhood hating myself and everything that I thought was wrong with me. Telling me we were all the same at that point just felt like a sick joke. Not only did I not believe anyone who said that meaningless bullshit, it just made me feel worse about myself.
I remember going to school in a daze, not knowing what the fuck I was doing or supposed to do. I got teased and bullied almost on the daily, and I was utterly miserable. I got teased for being fat, for being Asian, and for having a weird name.
I hated my life with all my heart. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in to make me a boy overnight. An adult once told me she liked my black hair, and I remembered thinking, “Why would anyone like black hair? It’s so ugly.” When I was a teenager, another woman told me to enjoy myself because those were the best years of my life. I thought to myself, “If these are the best years of my life, then then I might as well kill myself.”
Next up was the tossed salad* theory of cultural diversity. In this one, the idea wsa that we weren’t trying to melt into the American pot, but that we would all add something distinctive to the American salad before tossing it vigrously.
I thought this was better than the melting pot idea because it at least acknowledged the differences that other cultures have. Yet, it still wasn’t great because ‘American’ was still considered the base. And tossing the–er, mixing the salad kept the unequal feel to the different cultures.
Look, I know it sounds contradictory or that I am finding all the nits to pick (which, admittedly, true). But neither was good enough. I’m not being a jerk about it because it was in its nascent stages back then (DEI, I mean). It’s not great now, either, but I don’t want to talk about that because it’ll ma ke me really sad/mad.
Side note: We were talking about Depeche Mode in the Discord I’m in. One of the guys reminded me of the song, Blasphemous Rumours, which I adore. I have included it below. it’s one of my five favorite songs by Depeche Mode, a group I quite enjoyed in my youth.
One thing that is guaranteed to make me flinch is someone saying that we are all the same inside/underneath our skin.It’s the same as when I was a kid, the mentality around diversity was that America was a melting pot. That was supposed to mean that we took something from everyone’s culture and mixed it together in a perfect blend. That was the idea, anyway.
What really happneed was that immigrants were forced heavily compelled to give up what made them special and become something amorphously known as ‘American’. My parents were immigrants. They are Taiwanese. Asian cultures are known for assimilating to the culture around them and not sticking out at all. At least, it was like that back when my parents immigrated to America to go to grad school.
That meant that on the outside at least, when we were in public, we had to out-American American people. It was complicated in my family, though. My parents stuck to the Taiwanese church to meet their social needs, which meant that within the church and when we did church/Tawinese community-related activities, but outside of that, they tried to be as American as apple pie.
That only exacerbated my sense of alienation, quite frankly. I was being bullied for being a fat Asian girl in the seventies and eighties, and it only added to how much I hated myself from the emotional dysfunction at home. I have mentioned that by age seven, I was severely depressed and did not want to be alive.
Saying we’re all the same under it all is–let me put it this way. People used to think that, “I’m colorblind” was the best thing to be when it came to race. Because we’re all a part of the human race! Ugh. You know what that said to me even if I could not articulate it at the time? “I’m so uncomfortable with the topic of race, I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist.” It’s the same with people using man as the default. “Man means anyone.” No, it literally does not.
Look. I know words change and evolve, but they still mean something.
I strongly object to “we’re all the same underneath our skin/inside” not because it’s not true but because it’s a cop-out, just as “I don’t see color” was. In an ideal world, yes, people would not be judged negatively based solely on their race, but we don’t live in that world. We’re not even close to living in that world. In fact, we’re going backwards at an alarming rate when it comes to celebrating diversity.
So, pardon me if I laugh sardonically at the idea that all we need to do is state that we’re the same under our skin, and everything will be groovy! It’s toxic positivity, gaslighting, and quite frankly, offensive to hear that.
Let’s talk more about traditions and why they should be cast aside. Or at the very least, they should be examined thoroughly. In the last post, I talked about how I was an anarchist at heart, but also a pagmatist. I know that I’m not going to change the world, I know I’m barely a blip. I’m five years into my rebirth (well, starting my sixth), and I really don’t have anything to show for it.
That’s not fair to me, actually. I have taught myself a few weapon forms and started a whole new martial art. Bagua. I think I started learning it last year? Maybe at the end…hold on. Damn. I started learning it at the beginning of 2024. That’s further back than I thought. Has it really been that long?!
At any rate, one of my goals for this year was to teach myself a new weapons form, and I’ve done that. It’s the Bagua Knives Form; it took longer than I thought it would. Or rather, I made it take longer than it should have. That’s on me. I dragged my feet on teaching it to myself in part because I was rejiggering my practice in general.
I’ll be honest. I was feeling burned out. I was learning more and more forms–which is a good thing, mind, but a bit overwhelming. I know over ten, I think? Taiji Solo Long Form (right side and most of the left side); Sword Form (right and left side); Saber Form (right and left side); Cane Form (right and left side); Double Saber Form; Fan Form; Double Fan Form; Cane Form (right and left side); Cane Form with saber (right and left side); and now, Bagua Knives Form. Oh, wait. Plus the 13 Dancing WuLi Sword Form. That’s eleven forms.
Eleven forms total. Some left and right side both, but some only on the right side. I was trying to do all of them every week, and it was so tiring. I was spending up to two hours a day on my practice, and I was starting to feel depleted by it. I took a week or two just to do what I wanted rather than stick to my strict schedule. Then another week.Then another. I realized that I was burnt out, and I had to do something different.
I was doing the stretches/warmups every day. I was doing the Taiji Long Form every day as well as the Swimming Dragon Form (the hands only form for Bagua) as well. Then, I did one or two weapon forms if I felt like it. It felt really good to do it that way, and I wanted to retain that spirit when I went back to my schedule. I did not want to go back to the strict regime I had done previously, but I was worried about letting things slide too much. I wanted to make sure that I did every form at least once a month, so my friend, A, suggested that I have a mixture of planned and not planned.
It seems so obvious, but I had not thought of it. My compromise was to do the warmups every day (that took about half an hour) plus the two hands-only forms, too. Then, I would do as many weapon forms as I felt like, which usually ended up as two to three. That’s similar to what I was doing before, but it felt much more freeing to make the decision every day.
It’s so much more refreshing now. I don’t feel like I HAVE to do anything, which, ironically makes me feel like I want to do more. It was a great suggestion, to be honest, because I’m split on needing a schedule. On the one hand, I love schedules, plans, and doing the same thing at roughly the same time every day. On the other hand, I get bored. Then, I want to do something completely different. In this case, the compromise eased my mind and allowed me to have fun.
I want to talk more about societal norms and how I just do not understand them. I mentioned in my previous post that my mother got really upset when I told her I was bi. She said, “What’s next, animals?” Which makes absolutely no sense, but that’s how she is. It’s not just her, however. It used to be a fairly common response to being told someone was queer. Again, no idea why straights’ brains go straight to animals, but I think it says more about them than it does about queer people.
In a similar vein, when talking about not wearing a bra/not shaving your legs/not wearing pantyhose (depending on what point in time we’re talking about), there are so many women that are shocked and horrified. Some even say something like, “What next, no pants in the workplace?” I mean, come on. That is not a good -faith argument, but that’s because there’s isn’t one. A good-faith argument, I mean. For wearing a bra.
Side note: It’s always funny to me when people say a hill isn’t worth dying on. Sometimes, they’re right, but sometimes, I want to point out (and someone did in the bra post) that if it’s not a big deal/a hill to die on, then the flip should be true as well. In other words, if it’s so not a big deal, then it shouldn’t be a big deal not to not wear a bra, either.
Also, at some point, I’m sure women were saying that being able to wear pants was not a hill worth dying on. And not having to wear pantyhose. And not being able to work outside the home. Changes are incremental for the most part, and they take many people constantly sticking their necks out and making a fuss. It’s not like it went seamlessly (ha!) from women having to wear pantyhose to being allowed to wear pants. There had to be a lot of pushback because traditions do not go gentle into the night.
More to the point, why do people care about things that don’t affect them one whit? I’m not being disingenuous when I say that I don’t get freaked out by jiggling boobs–even if they are not covered. Don’t get me wrong. I love boobs. Who doesn’t? As my late gay fake-husband used to say, “Everyone loves boobs!” He used to call my boobs his pillows, which was hilarious to me.
I knew this country was puritanical, but not to that extent. If someone has their boobs covered up, who cares if there’s a slight jiggle? I mean, not to be rude about it, but plenty of men have boob jiggle (and their nipples can be seen through their shirts. Maybe not the whole nipples, but at least the point. And the argument that we view men’s nipples and women’s nipples diferently holds no water because that’s the fucking point! It’s sexism, plain and simple.