Day Three of flu shot. Well, two-and-a-half, really. I got it around four on Thursday and as I’m writing this, it’s one in the afternoon on Saturday. My teacher has Covid and had to cancel the class today. I was glad because I’m exhausted. My arm is a bit sore, buthere is barely a welt.
It’s the level of fatigue that only happens when I’m sick. I had to curtail my morning Taiji/Bagua routine because I don’t want to push it. It’s frustrating. I had just gotten back to doing everything and now, I have to pare it back again.
Today, I did all the stretching because I had a hunch that class would be canceled. And i did the Fan Form, the Eight Palms (Bagua) with DeerHorn Knives, bot only one way (usually do it both ways), and the Double Saber…I think? Suddenly, I’m not so sure. I did the Sword Hu-li Form (dancing sword form) which is just me moving the sword as I want to. With internal music going.
Now, I just want to sleep. I’m watching the Early Access Retry Elden Ring episode and have ordered Thai. This is my Saturday Ritual. Taiji class, Thai, and Retry. No Taiji class, but the other two still stand. It’s a meaty episode at nearly two-and-a-half hours.
I’ve been doing a run loosely based on Aunty Finchy’s run. I gotta say, it’s been so fucking hard. He’s a dex man, and I am…not. Neither dex nor a man. Plus, he spreads his points all over the place, much to the constertation of a lot of fans. A lot.
I peeked at the Facebook page last night, and, boy, do people have a lot of opinions on what Rory should and should not do. A. Lot. WHich is fine in the, well, everyone has opinions sort of way. But it gets pretty depressing when it’s RORY YOU HAVE TO DO THIS YOU STUPID IDIOT sort of way, which is so many of the comments.
The big ones are the insistence that he not use spirit summons on boss fights, which is silly and honestly just wrong. The boss fights are made to have spirit summons in them and while you can do the boss fights without them, it’s adding unnecessary difficulty.
Secondly, his levels. He tends to level up whatever he wants to do at the time. Or rather, what equipment he just picked up that he wants to use. They affectionately call it the smorgasbuild, and people hate it so much. Or rather, they hate that he only has 20 Vigor. Now, which I understand that it’s low Vigor and that life will be much easier with more Vigor, I am not disputing that at all. However, in my first playthrough, I had 18 Vigor for the first 100+ hours. Again, I’m not saying that’s optimal–it’s not. But my point is that it’s doable. Which so many people confidently stated it’s not. That’s my biggest issue, by the way. Instead of saying what they would like him to do and how it would make things better, there is so much YOU CAN’T PLAY THE GAME LIKE THAT when Rory is clearly playing that way and succeeding.
That’s blowing my mind, by the way. All the people saying he can’t play the game the way he is playing it–when he IS playing it that way? How does tthat even work. No, it’s not optimal. Yes, it’s probably not the way most people would play it. But it’s very consistent with how Rory plays these games.
That also blows my mind, by the way. This is how Rory plays the games. How he plays games in general. He’s all over the place and displays ADHD traits. He has the memory of a goldfish and wants the last thing he sees. When he sees something he likes (such as the turtle shield), he’s into it 100%–until he can’t use it. Then he puts it out of his mind until he randomly remembers it several episodes later.
He is very good at the games, irritatingly so. He papers over many of his flaws with sheer talent. Krupa has said that Rory is better at these games than he is–and I can double down on that. I love the games, but I am terrible at them.
My Tee Finch playthrough has been an experience. I hate dex. I have never done a dex run in any of the games. I’ve tried to do a dex run and it always ends up as something else. I love that he’s using magic in this game, even if it’s only three spells at a time. He refuses to even equip the max amount of spells he can have because it overwhelms him.
I will say, it was very funny in the beginning when they guessed how many episodes the show would be and how many deaths Rory would experience. Gav was the most out there with 157 episodes and over a thousand deaths. Rory was like, “No way I’m going to die that many times!” They were already on 431 deaths at the end of episode 21. Which is maybe two-thirds of the way through the first part of the trilogy. That’s being generous, by the way, saying we’re two-thirds of the way through the first chunk. I don’t know how many episodes it’ll be because they vary from just over an hour to two-and-a-half hours, but it’s definitely going to be over a thousand deaths. It may be over two thousand deaths.
Anyway. I have been doing a pure strength build (well, mostly pure. I put 3 tiny levels into faith), and I’m not sure how much longer I will do it. I’m in the Leyndell Royal Capital, and I’m starting to get bored. And frustrated. I realized that I did not like the second half of the game as much as I did the first because it tipped over into being difficult for the sake of being difficult. That’s not why I play the games, and it’s sad to me that From has started to slide over into that territory.
I’m tired. Gotta go get my Thai and hunker down for the rest of the day.