Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: life-saving

Martial arts saved my and gives me life

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I am studiously ignoring waves ot the world around me, well, everything. Glances at news and shudders in rage, disgust, sadness, and anger. There is only so much I as an individual can do, and I am just done. I have never been a super partriot because that’s just not my style, and now, I’m really disdainful of America. Not just the president, but also the people who voted for him or did not vote at all. I am feeling fury like none other, not even the first time he was president.

That’s not the point of this post, though. If I start on that, I. Will. Never. Stop. And nobody wants that–not even me. Instead, I want to talk about something that makes me feel good–Taiji. And Bagua. I will note that my teacher had said about a month before the election (after Biden dropped out, whenever that was) that there was no way Harris was going to win. I thought she was being unnecssarily pessimistic, but as I told her in our private lesson (Thursday), she was spot on. She said she hated being right, and I agreed–but it was stil impressive.

Anyway. My goal in martial arts in this year was gonig to be learning new forms or teaching myself the left side of forms I already knew. I started by teaching myself the left side of the Fan Form, but then realized about halfway through that I wassn’t fudging some of the movements in the right side of the form. Like, badly.

Side note: We all do this in Taiji–fudging movements we don’t know. Why? Because it gets worse and worse over time if you don’t correct it. Now that I’ve been looking at videos of my teacher (and her teacher) doing different forms, I can see where I’ve gotten sloppy. I’m big on watching the videos now, especially since my memory suuuuuuucks. I can watch it and then immediately forget what I just saw. In fact, I can watch a clip three or four times in a row and still have to watch it once more.

I’m very happy with how I’m cleaning up my forms. I still have a few things to iron out with the Cane Form (my least-favorite form), but I’m feeling pretty good about the Fan Form (fast becoming one of my favorite forms). I’m still marveling at how much of the Fan Form I had fucked up the first time around. it’s a lot, by the way. I fucked up a lot. I’m not too hard on myself about it, though, because I was just recovering from my medical crisis so I’m astounded that I remembered any of it at all.


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What Elden Ring means to me

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I love FromSoft games, but they don’t love me. Ian and I have a long-standing discussion about whether the games are meant for people like me or not. He thinks they are whereas I think they are not. He believes the struggle is the purpose and people who can beat bosses in one go are not going to get the full experience.

I see his point. There is nothing quite like struggling for hours against a boss and then finally beating that boss. I have never felt as exhilarated as I did when I beat Isshin, the Sword Saint of Sekiro. Normally, I swear and curse loudly as I beat a boss. With him, I set down the controller and had a little cry. I felt a sense of awe that I had done it, and I knew I would never feel it again.

Sadly, I knew i would never beat him again, either. Sekiro is so fucking hard. People keep saying once you click with the combat, it’s the easiest of the games. I never clicked with it because I was physically unable to deflect at the proper time. My reflexes are shit. I tried and tried and tried to get it right. I could not. My niece’s husband said, “I didn’t realize you could play the game without learning to deflect.” My response, “Oh, you can, but it’s not fun at all.”

I don’t think normies understand that I physically cannot do the deflect. Or rather, I can do it roughly 50% of the time and not on purpose. That meant I had to chip away at the health of every enemy instead of doing the deflects. I’m justifiably proud of myself for never parrying in any of the From games, but I would have if I could for that one.

It’s frustrating that people dismiss my experience with the game because they think it’s just a matter of ‘git gud’. “It’s a rhythm game!” Yeah, well, I suck at those, too. I love the game, Night in the Woods. It’s probably my favorite indie game of all time.  But I will never get the plat, and it’s in part because there is a rhythm game in it that you have to perfect, which I’ll never do.

Elden Ring was my anticipated game of 2022. I was hyped back when it was first announced–I think it was in 2019. Then, the pandemic happened. All hell broke loose. There was no more mention of Elden Ring. on Reddit, there was a really sweet thing where people made up their own areas of Elden Ring and made up enemies, weapons, etc. It was sustenance during a time when I doubted that Elden Ring would actually be released.


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