HELLO FRANDOS. Want some naturally Wendig-scented updates? Organic? Free-range? Bespoke and artisanal? Here goes.
For My Birthday I Demand Proper Paeans In The Form Of Preorders
So we’re clear, I don’t actually demand anything from you for my birthday (*stares uncomfortably*), but were you so inclined, I might suggest that for my birthday, you treat yourself and buy yourself the gift of booooooks.
Currently, B&N is running a pre-order campaign from 4/20 – 4/22 (the latter of which is in fact my bloodsoaked nativity), and that campaign — using the coupon of PREORDER25 — gets you 25% off preordered books.
And, my my my, it sure looks like I have books you can preorder.
What books, you ask?
Well, first up, Dust & Grim is hitting paperback on October 4th, and you will note here that it has a brand new shiny cool cover, by artist George Ermos:
Behold! It is very cool! Look at that very nice blurb!
And then of course, on November 15th, the sequel to Wanderers, Wayward, also arrives. It’s a big motherfucker, that book, over 280,000 words of Weird Post-Apocalyptic American Sci-Fi Horror, so, that’s also an option on the table for your pre-ordering needs.
But you can also preorder these from your local booksellers, and if you’d like a signed/personalized copy, you can nab a copy from Doylestown Bookshop.
In that B&N preorder sale, by the way, you can also seize on a number of excellent upcoming books, including but not limited to: The Fervor, Alma Katsu; Ghost-Eaters, Clay McLeod Chapman; The Pallbearer’s Club, Paul Tremblay; The Devil Takes You Home, Gabino Iglesias; The Clackity, Lora Senf; The Appearing House, Ally Malinenko; Camp Scare, Delilah Dawson; Hide, Kiersten White.
Munchings and Crunchings
The ever-delightful Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Red Scott had me on their podcast, Failure to Adapt, which is a show where hosts and guests pick a book that has been adapted onto the screen, and then they talk about the book and its adaptation. We chose Lloyd Alexander’s Black Cauldron.
It was a blast.
The book is great.
The movie is uhhh.
Not?
Embrace your inner assistant pig-keeper and listen here.
A Hug Is Like Violence Made Of Love
I am told that Mister Bones, the lovable murder-droid from Aftermath, is a playable character in the new LEGO Skywalker Saga game, if this is a thing that intrigues you, my dearest Frandolorian.
The Birds Are Back, Baby
We’re not in full migratory swing here, but already I’ve seen brown thrashers, Eastern towhees, Eastern Phoebes, ruby-crowned kinglets, and more. Photos to come. Also a Carolina wren couple has taken over our watering can, laying eggs in it. I tried to pick it up the other day and one of said wrens flew directly into my face, so now I probably have some kind of rare WREN FLU. You’re welcome. This is why you should keep wearing masks everywhere because I might sneeze weird WREN GERMS onto you and accidentally end the world.
*Accepts the mic from Chuck.* Thank you, Chuck! *clears throat awkwardly* Hey, everybody! Can y’all hear me? Yes? Okay — here we go:
The Pixel Project, a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women nonprofit, has been running our Read For Pixels program since September 2014 when Chuck himself, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, and nine other award-winning bestselling SFF and YA authors answered our call-to-action to help us reach out to their readers and fandoms about violence against women (VAW) and raise funds to keep our anti-VAW work alive.
That inaugural Read For Pixels livestream author interview series and fundraiser was a smashing success and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history. Over 180 authors, 16 campaigns, and almost nine years later, we are continuing to build what is probably the world’s largest repository of recorded livestream interviews and panels with authors speaking out about VAW. These are easily accessible on our YouTube channel to parents, teachers, kids, readers, writers, and fandoms worldwide who can either watch the videos to learn more about VAW while fanning over their favorite authors or use the videos to start conversations about VAW in their communities. Authors and publishers have also helped us raise approximately $10,000 per year by providing exclusive goodies as giveaways for readers, fans, and book collectors who donate to support our work.
You’re probably thinking: “Awesome! I’ll go check it out. So why the guest post on Chuck’s blog?”
The short answer: 2022.
The long answer: If we thought 2021 was bad, 2022 basically said hold my [insert your cuss word of choice here] beer.
Like many small nonprofits, this year we are not just dealing with the fallout from the pandemic, but also global inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Women’s organizations have experienced decades of scarce funding for the overall women’s rights movement and women’s human rights are often one of the first casualties in turbulent times such as these. So, with our current Read For Pixels fundraiser moving at the pace of a hobbit wading through the malodorous mud pits of Mordor (it’s been over a month and we’re stuck at $2,787, which is only 55% of the way to our modest $5,000 goal), you can imagine our growing alarm. While we are 100% volunteer-staffed, we need to ensure that we can keep our campaigns, programs, and services running, especially now, when rates of VAW have been spiking so badly the UN calls it “the shadow pandemic”.
Chuck noticed our predicament and, being the mensch that he is, kindly offered to boost the signal for our fundraiser.
So here I am, as Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2022 rolls on, presenting five reasons why you should consider donating to our fundraiser to help get us to our $5,000 finish line by our extended deadline of April 30th 2022:
Reason to Donate #1: Treat yourself while supporting accessible information for victims and survivors of VAW
From signed first editions to goodie bundles to flash fiction/poetry written especially for the donor, we have something for every donation level. (Though, alas, no goodies from Chuck are available during this fundraiser because this is our International Women’s Day fundraiser powered exclusively by women writers.)
Reason to Donate #2: Treat yourself while supporting resources for educating the world about VAW
We have a stellar line-up of acclaimed authors who have donated critique bundles for WIPs (works-in-progress), including Adiba Jaigirdar (Contemporary YA Romance), Amanda Bouchet (Fantasy Romance and Space Opera), Jeffe Kennedy (SFF, Romance, and Women’s Fiction), and Pintip Dunn (YA Romance). Some have a video chat bundled in; others allow for up to five questions from the donor about the critique; still others offer to look at a query letter draft in addition to your WIP.
Reason to Donate #3: Treat yourself while supporting digital platforms for people to speak up about VAW
It’s good to talk… and even better to talk with your favorite author in the name of supporting a good cause. For this fundraiser, Jeffe Kennedy (Fantasy and Romance), Meg Gardiner (Crime/Thriller), Roseanne A. Brown (YA Fantasy), and Sue Ann Jaffarian (Mystery/Crime) are all happy to spend some quality 1-to-1 time on a video chat with donors to natter about everything from books and writing, to RV life, furbabies, and geeky hobbies.
While you’re chatting away, our Giving The Devil His Due blog tour this April is chock-a-block with book bloggers using our first charity anthology to speak up about VAW during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We are also working on our Fathers For Pixels program which provides dads worldwide with platforms (blog interviews, panel sessions etc) for sharing their ideas with other dads about raising kids and engaging with their peers and communities about sexism, misogyny, and VAW.
Reason to Donate #4: Treat a friend while supporting signal boosts for anti-VAW activists and advocates worldwide
Do you have a friend or family member with a birthday coming up? Do you see a Read For Pixels goodie offered by their favorite author available on our fundraising page? Donate to snag that unique treat and delight them.
Bonus: You’ll have an interesting story to tell them about where the gift came from. It might even be a great opener for chatting with them about VAW.
Meanwhile, your donation will support our Inspirational Interviews series which has been running for a decade and counting. This blog series shines a spotlight on anti-VAW advocates, activists, and organizations worldwide with a focus on how they are changing the world for women and girls as well as their ideas about what people can do to help stop VAW in their communities and countries.
Reason to Donate #5: Treat yourself because you support the right of women and girls to live a life without VAW
So donate to our fundraiser because you believe in supporting efforts to prevent, stop, and end VAW. Whether you can give us $5 or $500 to help us reach our $5,000 goal, every cent counts.
(And when you donate to us, please also consider donating either cash or supplies to your local women’s shelter or rape crisis center. Like us, they need all the help they can get.)
It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.
Interested in checking out our Read For Pixels fundraiser and making a donation to help keep our work alive? Go here
***
Regina Yau is the founder and president of The Pixel Project, a virtual volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organization on a mission to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. A Rhodes Scholar with a double Masters in Women’s Studies and Chinese Studies, she has a lifelong commitment to fighting for women’s rights. In addition to running The Pixel Project, Regina also teaches English to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, writes stories about cheeky little fox spirits and terrorist chickens, and bakes far too many carb-and-sugar-loaded goodies
Once again I return from the digital void to grant you a scattered, smothered, covered, chunked pile of steaming news food. It’s like a newsletter, if you subscribe, and if you don’t, then it’s just a regular old blog post. Magic.
Off Roadin’
So, if you missed it, and I don’t know how you would have given how often I hollered about it, I went out on a mini-book-tour with amazing author friends Kevin Hearne and Delilah Dawson. It was a goddamn delight. If you came out to see us, thank you for doing so. If you didn’t come out to see us, I totally understand and will apply only the gentlest of mystic curses to you and your home. If you find that there’s a piece of furniture on which you stub your toes a lot, that’s probably my fault, but really, isn’t it your fault?
Anyway! We bopped from NYC to Westerly, RI to Framingham, MA, and we got to see fans and readers, plus we got to hang with authorial cohorts like Marko Kloos and Elizabeth Bear and Julie Hutchings, plus wonderful publishing pals like Lauren Panepinto. Plus we got to hang with our friends at Del Rey? And we met a beluga whale. We did not steal it to ride it around, even though we definitely should have. Alas.
It was great, but also, weird? This was our first larger exposure to the “post-pandemic,” and I put that in quotes because hey, as it turns out, there’s still a pandemic even if we choose to ignore it! NYC had pretty solid mask uptake in places, even outside, though that faded a bit once we left the city. There was something mildly rapture-like about heading into the PRH offices, and seeing calendars on the wall last left at February 2020, and seeing galleys from that same year, a place frozen in time. And also meeting people who, like us, really hadn’t been outside of their caves in two years. It was good, and it was necessary, and it felt invigorating in an essential way. Numbers were low, we took our shot, and it paid off. Plus, we sold books. Which is always nice.
Hopefully this summer or fall I’ll get back out on the road again. Stay tuned!
Speaking Of Selling Books
Now that The Book of Accidents is out in paperback, looking over the numbers from that week it sure looks like people came out to support it, so thank you for that. At a rough estimate, the paperback release of TBOA was 4-5 times what we sold for the paperback of Wanderers, and the latter is a book whose sales were routinely pretty solid, even through the pandemic. Not that sales are a metric of a book’s quality, to be clear, but they certainly are a metric of its success in the market — so, thanks for making both books a success.
Reminder that if you missed our tour and you still want signed, personalized copies of The Book of Accidents (or really any of my books), then click on over to Doylestown Bookshop. They can help facilitate and ship the books to you.
The Words Continue Until Morale Improves
I figure I’m due some updates to you, too, about the other books I have in progress, so here’s what’s up with that:
Wayward is now done with copy-edits, and moves onto page proofs. It’s now officially a slightly bigger book than the first book, by about 5000 words, I think. Like Wanderers, it is authoritatively designated an Official Bison Bludgeoner. But please do not bludgeon any bisons with it. The title is symbolic, not instructive. You can preorder Wayward here. It’s out November this year.
I got edits back on my New Writing Book, and that probably deserves a bit of its own story: so, I pitched a book that was essentially a sequel to Damn Fine Story. It was more genre-focused, meant to drill down into how genre affects narrative. But with Writer’s Digest going away for a minute before getting bought by PRH, and with the pandemic, the book’s future was in question — and then I also felt like, hey, I don’t know if I even have the interest in writing that particular book right now. Never mind the fact that I don’t want to launch internecine genre battles on Twitter, I also just felt like my heart wasn’t in it. But there was a different book I had in mind, so I pitched something else to replace it: a book based off my gentle writing advice threads on Twitter and here at the blog. So I wrote that book, and that’s now the book that should one day exist. I suspect it’ll just be called Gentle Writing Advice? We shall see.
I’m currently writing my new apple horror book, which uhhh, is a horror book involving apples? Yeah. It’s a thing. (I think of it as a vampire novel without any actual vampires in it.) It was once called The Orchard, it may now be called The Apple of Harrow, or it may land on a third title, but I’m like, 30-40k into it, and I’m digging it so far, so I’m hoping y’all will dig it, too. That should be out… ennnh, roughly fall 2023? Good Lord Willing and the Covid Don’t Rise, that is.
Folks have asked about a sequel to Dust & Grim and as yet, there’s no news there — we pitched sequels, and are waiting to hear back. More as I know it.
I miiiiiight have some fresh tasty comic work coming out in the next year.
I have film and TV news that I can’t share, because such is the way.
Ta-da.
Petrified Oranges
Please, if you love excellent things, watch Our Flag Means Death. A deeply earnest, weird, wonderful, empathetic, murderous, pirate-based rom-com.
And Now, Photos
Photos from the trip, below!
Wait One More Thing
Kevin made me partake in something called either a New York System Wiener or a Rhode Island Hot Wiener, the former of which sounds like a thing an artificial intelligence made up, the latter just, y’know, porn.
It is a kind of chili dog unique-ish to Rhode Island — a red hot on a toasty bun covered in yellow mustard, a kind of meaty treacle adjacent to chili (which may or may not be made of beef heart) and raw onions. They were horrible and delicious, as many things of their ilk are. (Spam, f’rex. I love Spam. It’s horrible.)
The hot dogs haunted me for the rest of the day, first as a kind of volcanic heartburn, and later as, uhh, well let’s just go with, “if my bowels were haunted by oniony meat-ghosts.”
The time has come! The paperback of The Book of Accidents has taken flight and landed on your doorstep like a wooden owl come to life. May contain: a missing serial killer, a haunted coal mine, an interstitial amusement park, an eerie felsenmeer, a soot-caked spellbook, generational trauma, art as magic, empathy as a weapon or weakness, and the power and problem of emotional seawalls.
It is nominated for the Stoker Award this year. It was a national bestseller. And I’m very proud of it. I don’t think we’re really supposed to say that, but it feels good and healthy to say, so goddamnit, here we are.
It’s a book that, as I’ve noted, means quite a lot to me. I’ve tried writing it throughout my life a number of times, and it was only now, with the me that is me at present and not the me of the past, that it made sense and became a proper story. The iterations before were odd, off, not done baking. This one, I think, did what I wanted it to do. And I hope it has, or will, for you, too.
You of course have ways to procure!
Tomorrow I’ll be at The Strand with Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson, and you can order a signed/personalized copy through there, and pick it up or have it shipped. Order here. Or you can also ask for a signed/personalized copy through my local, Doylestown Bookshop. Note that Kevin and Delilah and I will also be in Westerly, RI (United Theater with Savoy Books!) on Thursday, and Framingham, MA (B&N!) on Friday. In-person! For real! Holy crap!
You can of course also check out the book in other places:
Hey! It’s one of those posts where I unceremoniously shower you in various, unconnected updates, which rain down upon you like glitter and blood. I mean, just glitter. Did I say blood? Ha ha. Hah. Aahhh. Ahem.
Der Eldenringen
I continue to play this game that doesn’t know I’m alive. It’s like the world in that it is a place that exists that I exist inside, but it doesn’t know I exist inside it, for it is a cold and uncaring place with little situational awareness or empathy.
My playthrough at this point has me finally, at like, level 40-something, feeling vaguely powerful. I can walk up to most mobs and wipe the rancid ruined earth with their asses. My strategy became: gallop around the world at top-speed collecting every smithing stone, golden seed, and sacred tear I could fucking find, and juice my gear to their limits. I found a Twinblade, which was a good weapon to bisect chumps with. I also learned the attack move which is called “hop around like an executioner rabbit,” or “like Mario on bloodlust and cocaine,” which is how I mostly engage with enemies. I just jump at them, shrieking, cleaving them in twain. And it mostly works. I do like that no matter how powerful you are, if you don’t pay attention, even a low-ranking mob of dickheads will put you in an early grave.
Apparently I’m also supposed to be… crafting things? I have not been. Uh?
I don’t find the game… difficult, exactly, not in the traditional sense, not in the way it was sold. I just find it distant and disinterested. As I said in my earlier post, it’s not there to help you out. Mostly it shrugs at you and says, “Good luck,” but it says it in a way where it definitely doesn’t mean it. (Here, I recommend Swapna Krishna’s very good Wired piece, ELDEN RING ISN’T MADE FOR ALL GAMERS. I WISH IT WERE.)
I think where the game is going to lose me — though it hasn’t yet, not quite — is that it so relies on you to engage with it on your terms (which is good!) that at a certain point it loses narrative urgency. There’s a threadbare narrative blanketing over what is ostensibly a merciless grind. There isn’t a story so much as there’s “worldbuilding,” and the worldbuilding is mostly a thing to be unearthed actively rather than a thing that matters very much at all. So, I don’t find a great deal of urgency to continue. There’s no mystery to solve, no plot hook to answer, no great revenge, no personal stakes. My motivation is thinning. It was, initially, exploration, but I’ve explored a great deal and at a certain point — you know, I get it. Everything is ruined, everything wants to kill you, I’m something called a Tarnished, blah blah blah be the Elden Lord, as if I want to do that.
I did kill a few bosses, though, which was fun.
Anyway, people ask me why I’m still playing, and I remind them that it’s still friendlier than Twitter.
The Real World Is Bad, Too
It’s getting fucking scary out there. There is a deep, and successful authoritarian push into all corners of this country — attacking everything from abortion rights to the existence of trans and gay kids (and adults) to the very acknowledgment of slavery and the Holocaust. It is a grossly revisionist take on people and history, attempting to erase them instead of reckon with a changing world. It’s bad news. And we’re letting it happen because we aren’t voting. I know, there’s a problematic push to “vote harder,” and I get it, and agree. Just the same, our school board locally is transphobic, antisemitic, and all-around fucking awful, and they’re making some horrific entreaties — they were against masks, they’re for banning books, they’re against trans kids in sports (and in existence, it seems), and the reason they get to do what they do is because not enough people came out to vote in the smaller elections, like the ones that help us decide our fucking school board compositions.
So, I dunno. We gotta stand up for everyone, stand against the erasure, hold back the tide of once-creeping-but-now-sprinting fascism. It isn’t just Texas and Florida, it’s everywhere. Donate to Trans Lifelife, to Trevor Project, to Audre Lorde Project, to Transgender Law Center, to Southern Poverty Law Center, to Planned Parenthood, to the ACLU (national and local). And vote. I don’t know what to tell you. I know it sucks that our choices ain’t great, but if we don’t get up and get out to work against the malefactors, they’re going to win. It’s already hard enough given how voting rights have been chewed apart. So we only get to help others if we show up in numbers big enough to bury their efforts.
Oh Yeah And Ukraine
OH RIGHT, then there’s that war going on. Fucking hell. On my mother’s side, we’re pretty Eastern-Europe-flavored — Lithuanian and Ukrainian. We still have family there. Not family I know, to be clear, but related humans. So, I dunno. Donate to IRC, Doctors Without Borders, to World Central Kitchen. It breaks my heart seeing what’s happening over there. And I try not to engage in the cruel thrill of seeing Ukranian victories happen, because intellectually I recognize that death in war is death, and it’s brutal and bloody and shouldn’t be championed, but I also… can’t help but giving a little fist-pump when they take down a Russian warship or some shit like that. I dunno. We’re complicated creatures. War is horrible, but I’m just glad Ukraine isn’t going quietly.
Anyway.
Hey, could the world calm down a little bit? Please? Like, a little? No? Okay.
Wayward’s Gone Wayward
So, did I mention yet that if you were hoping to get your hands on Wayward in August that you were now going to maybe be a teeny-tiny bit disappointed?
Oops!
Sorry? Wayward is now coming out on November 15th.
Why is that, exactly?
Well, the reason is actually a good one — the publisher believes in it, thinks it’s really good, and is moving it to a competitive season, aka, oooh, the holidays. This is of course terrifying to me, because, holy shit, I’m a little fish swimming in deep waters, or so it feels. But I believe in the book. I think it’s actually maybe not terrible? We shall see. I hope you all like it. Obviously, the coolest thing you could do is pre-ordering it — which you can do from your preferred BOOKMONGER, whoever that may be. But I’ll note here that you’ll be able to get signed, personalized copies from Doylestown Bookshop. You can also preorder from Bookshop.org or find an indie at Indiebound.
Speaking of Signed Copies
Reminder that I’ll be on tour next week with Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson, because we someone managed to con, er, convince our publisher to give us a reason to hang out together in person. NYC, Rhode Island, and Boston-area. More details here. But I also remind you that if you want signed/personalized copies of our books but can’t be there in-person, you are free to order from those stores and we will sign the books and they will send ’em right to you.
Huzzah.
Just a reminder that I’ll be out there in support of The Book of Accidents, out next week in glorious three-dimensional paperback. Order a signed copy from:
Meanwhile, work continues apace! Wayward is in copy-edits, and I’ll have that done in a couple weeks. Meanwhile I continue to write this new book — my horror novel about, well, apples? Was originally called The Orchard, but I’m not feeling that title. Presently, at least in the draft, it’s called The Apple of Harrow, but that may change. Though I love the title quite a lot.
Elden Ring is a terrible, ugly, weird, unpleasant, wonderful, sublime, addictive game, and I am not very good at it and I love it.
If you need a capsule review from me, that’s it.
Let’s rewind:
My PS5 died on me in the middle of playing Horizon Forbidden West. This was a very good game and I loved it a lot, and I was literally in the middle of tweeting how I loved it a whole lot when the console shit the bed and bricked itself. I have heard stories of HFW bricking other consoles, some fixable, some not, though I assume it’s less the game and more that the console has some problems. My problem with those problems is, I’m just out of fucking warranty, which means Sony is like, “lol, pay us $199 to fix it, you dickhead,” and so now I’m very salty at them because they have little interest in supporting the console. (I’m paying it, of course, because I am just that dickhead. But I shouldn’t have to. I’m going to yell at my credit card company to see if they can help me, but who knows.)
I’d been hearing how fucking hard this game was, and I am the farthest thing these days from a GIT GUD gamer. I maybe could’ve been once, but my video game reflexes have turned to sponge cake, and the best I can do is button-mash wildly until a goal is achieved. I have withered.
As such, I committed, ha ha, I will never play this very mean game.
But all these people were like NO NO IT’S GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL and I was like, ha ha, not today, Satan, but I was bored and it did look pretty and some friends convinced me to try it on Xbox. So, apparently yes, today, Satan.
So, as a person very new to the Souls-like games, let me share with you my experience and my tips for this game, none of which will be revelatory or interesting to actual gamers, who are free to log off now and go do something better with their time.
My first realization with this game is it doesn’t hate you, it doesn’t love you, it actually doesn’t care about you at all. Meaning, it exists separate from you and your interests in it, or your interactions with it.
What I mean is this: it’s going to tell you almost nothing about how to play it. What clues it gives are tantalizingly spare. You are a baby in this world. You don’t know shit and your parents are gone and the only elder you have is Elden Ring, and Elden Ring doesn’t have time to show you how to walk or eat, you shitty fucking baby. Elden Ring has things to do, and hand-holding your way through its ugly-beautiful world and its Byzantine rules is not anywhere on that list.
I’ve been playing for… I dunno, fifteen, twenty hours at least, and I still don’t know what the fuck is actually going on. Not in the story. Not in the stats. Not with half the items. Here is what I do in the game, and this constitutes a tip in the sense that I am alerting to you that this play-style works and can actually be quite rewarding:
I began life as the Prisoner, who enters the game with what I believe is some kind of IRON BEDPAN SUBMERSIBLE helmet on their head. This character is ugly because I could not not create a hideously ugly character, a character who looks like some grungy dirt-farmer stitched from naughahyde. (Here I note this article: Elden Ring’s character creator fails Black players.) I have a stick that shoots slow magic swords at people. I have an estoc thrusting blade.
I run around. Aimlessly.
I kill the things I am able to kill, I run from the things I am unable to kill, at least in theory. Just as often, I am killed by fucking rats, or I manage to kill some pumpkin-headed hell-boss without thinking. You can count on no outcome.
I collect shit everywhere I go. I have zero idea what this shit actually is, or does, for the most part. YOU HAVE COLLECTED A FOUL EMBERSEED. YOU HAVE (1) GNARLED CRAB PHALLUS. YOU PICK UP THE CORRUPTED SHARDSCROLL OF BEARSCAT ACADEMY. I try to learn what these things do, and that only becomes more inscrutable. THE SHARDSCROLL MUST BE TURNED INTO THE BLIND KLEPTOCRAT ON THE RUINS OF DREAD JAPERY AND THEN FROM HIM YOU CAN BUY VENOMOUS TAINTFLOWERS WHICH ARE USED TO UPGRADE THE ASTROLOGER’S METEOR CODPIECE. I decide I don’t know what any of this means, so I continue on.
I get on my horse. I love my horse.
I ride to the furthest flung locales of the map.
I fight. I win. I fight. I die. I go back and recollect my runes. I die again recollecting my runes but at least I recollected them, so I can grab them again without dying the next time. Witness me.
I am killing zombie coal-miners and a giant fucking hell bear falls on my head.
I enter a cave and rats chase me into a chamber with a chest but then the floor collapses and this time, I fall onto a fucking hell bear’s head.
When I fight, I have the grace and aplomb of one of those magical dung beetles you have to kill in the game. I watch some videos and other players are elegantly side-stepping monstrous boss attacks. Meanwhile, I’m over here somersaulting into the wall like a mule-kicked fourth-grader; trapped there, I am given a broadsword colonic and hurriedly guzzle potions so I don’t expire three seconds into the fight. I swing a variety of bladed instruments and I run around and it feels like I’m trying to do parkour with a dump truck.
I find scenes of staggering beauty and brain-curdling ruin.
I love my spirit wolves.
I have killed almost no bosses. The ones I have killed are probably mini-bosses. I tried to kill Margit or Magrit a few times, and I got him about halfway down and haven’t gone back. I will. But I don’t have to yet. I’ve gotten distracted and am happy about the distraction. There are no real side missions, so I make my own, and my side missions are nearly always: “I dunno, let’s ride that way, and see what’s in that ruined tower.”
Everything is ruined and in ruins. The world is ruined. The enemies are ruined. You are ruined. You use runes found in ruins. It’s a thing.
The enemy AI is boldfacedly plain. Sometimes a dude will talk ten feet and turn around and walk back the other ten feet. They’re not even on looping paths like in Horizon, they’re just… set pieces, wobbling about.
Sometimes bosses randomly happen to you. You run into a clearing and next thing you know, you’re fighting some dude made of wolves and roots and his guts are hanging out and he beats you with his own whirling bowels and his name is like, BORGRAL THE MISBEGOTTEN, PRINCE OF WOLFROOT, KEEPER OF THE SACRED BOWELS. (There’s probably a story there, but the game won’t tell it to you.) You die fighting him, choked by coils of sentient intestine.
I’ve begun really putting my juice into magic, because magic seems like, well, magic. Instead of running up and bluntly headbutting wolves, I can sit back at a distance and pick them off. Most fights seem inelegant up close, which probably mirrors how real fights actually go — two dudes in metal suits clonking each other with more metal. Each fight seems to be its own little puzzle box, and if you want the runes inside that box, you must figure out how to open it.
You can do this, too. You don’t have to GIT GUD or even BE GUD ALREADY, you can just enter the game and fumble around like a dipshit and die a lot and get a tiny bit better every session and learn one small thing here and there, and you find eventually without even realizing it that you’re not dying as often. And that maybe you understand something today you didn’t yesterday. And just as you come to understand something, just as you know which direction the pain is coming from and you know to block it, the game sweeps your leg like Johnny Fucking Lawrence and you fall to the mat again.
Yet despite all this I am surprisingly zen about it all. I expected to hate it. I expected to throw my controller against the wall and break it into a thousand shards. Maybe because I can tell the game doesn’t think about me at all and never ever will, so I don’t have any investment in whether or not it pleases me. Maybe it’s because at this moment in time, in history, I’m not looking for the comfort of Animal Crossing but the soul-flensing punishment of a game whose kink is killing me over and over and over again. Maybe I’m angry enough at the world around me that in that anger, Elden Ring is a game that still looks like peace, like escape. I don’t know why any of this works. I should on paper hate the game, and the game just doesn’t give a fuck whether I like it or not. It’s not going to show me the way. It’s not going to explain itself. Like life, it is boldly unfuckwithable. I play it. I die. I don’t mind. It is what it is. It’s a terrible game. It’s brilliant. I don’t recommend it. Except when I do.
