I know I should spend more time with Final Fantasy XVI, but no one I know is saying anything interesting about it. Where did all the Final Fantasy people go? Are they not playing this game?

So, with an eerie wall of silence surrounding FFXVI, I continue to play Elden Ring simply out of curiosity to see how far I'll get this time.

Having successfully drained the swamp of Liurnia (through murder), King Spinach has now ventured into the wilds of Caelid, a continent-sized area that's technically optional. The theme of Caelid is "mushroom hell." And not a fun mushroom hell, but like: What if there was a beautiful forest, and then the beautiful forest got nuked, and all the irradiated organic remains were covered in horrible fungus, and also everything is on fire. The ambient background music of this region consists low-pitched hell chords and literal human screams.

One of the things I like about Caelid are the giant murder crows perched around the piles of burning bodies. I guess they're waiting for the corpses to get crispy? Anyway, if you get anywhere near them, the crows will swoop down and attack you. Even for the mighty King Spinach, being noticed by a crow is almost certain death, as these crows are extremely large and extremely social. When one of them is chowing down on you, it will call others to come join the party. At least someone's having a good time in Caelid.

The design of the giant crows is really interesting. On one hand, they're a thoughtful exploration of what a contemporary dinosaur might look like. On the other hand, there's a deliberate jankiness to them that reminds me of the puppets in the 1984 movie adaptation of The Neverending Story. If King Spinach had actual stealth skills, I'd love the study the giant crows, because the way they move is super creepy.

As things stand, though, the only thing I've been able to study is the artistry of the plaque on the birds' rotting teeth as they devour King Spinach. Did I mention the giant crows have horrible sharp teeth? Because of course they do.

This past weekend, I was trying to play through the fifth dungeon in Tears of the Kingdom, the Construct Factory. This dungeon is not great, and I don't want to talk about it! Suffice it to say that the dungeon was so shitty that my husband was like, How much does it cost to buy a PlayStation 5.

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If you're wondering what it's like to be chased by a giant monstrous hand-spider across the misty courtyard of a ruined castle in a PlayStation 5 game on a huge Ultra HD television, allow me to assure you that it's fantastic. This is the American Dream.

Me, learning that there is an entire cottage industry of Mohg Lord of Blood + Bernie Sanders memes:

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Me, learning that there is an entire Japanese cottage industry of White Mask Varré + Mohg reaction memes:

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It's good to know that I'm not alone in how amused I am by this walking garbage can of a trash character and his comically delusional blood-husband.

I decided to cancel class yesterday so I could finish the White Mask Varré story. I regret nothing.

Like Elden Ring itself, I think this story is very good, and I would recommend it to no one.

I will now alienate everyone I know by posting it online.


...As an aside, I learned from the Dark Souls podcast that Lady Tanith of the Volcano Manor is named after Tanith Lee, a fantasy writer who was extremely prolific during the 1980s. I managed to get a copy of her short fiction collection Dreams of Dark and Light from the Princeton library, and wow. Those monsters do be fucking.

It looks like I have found my niche. It's always nice when a story goes well, and I'm enjoying myself so much that I want to cancel class so I can keep writing into the afternoon. I won't do this, because I'm a professional, but it sure would be lovely to spend the day working on this story.

What I'm writing is the dysfunctional romance of White Mask Varré, the first NPC you meet in Elden Ring, and the lord he serves, the demigod Mohg. Mohg is basically Satan, and he essentially lives in Horrible Blood Hell. Mohgwyn Palace is very optional and very late-game content, and the only reason you'd go down there is to punish yourself. Still, this area is cool as hell (so to speak), and it's intriguing that Varré's story stretches from the very start of the game to the very end.

The quality of Varré's voice acting shines even in a sea of stars, and he's a rather handsome lad under his mask, as game modders have demonstrated (here). Meanwhile, Mohg is... Well, he sure is (something).

Mohg is incestuously fixated on his childlike half-brother (or perhaps half-sister, what is gender??) Miquella, who is probably going to be the focus of the upcoming DLC, as suggested by the promo graphic (here). Despite this, Varré is clearly in love with Mohg, so much so that he carved the rune of his soul into his forehead.

I'm not saying that any of this is healthy; I just think there's an interesting story here.

Peaches has made his way to Crumbling Farum Azula, which is a temple complex on a floating island.

The island is shaped like a hollow ring, and there is a giant tornado in the middle. I’m not sure whether the island is being held aloft by the tornado or being destroyed by the tornado. Either way, it’s a big and powerful tornado.

There’s an adage in the Soulsborne online community that “FromSoft finds your weakness.” This is mostly about the difficulty of the gameplay, but there’s also a sense that these games will open doors in your mind and let in horrible things that hadn’t previously occurred to you.

And friends, it turns out that I am very afraid of tornados. I did not know this! All things considered, being afraid of tornados seems like a healthy fear to have, but it’s making the Farum Azula level difficult for me. I think I might just have Peaches go straight to the boss and call it a day.

Peaches and his summon clone Peaches 2 defeated Malenia (the infamously difficult hellboss of "let me solo her" renown) on the second try. Peaches 2 ran in with tank armor and a giant sword and staggered her, which gave Peaches plenty of opportunities to blast her with magic from the sidelines.

I feel like Starscourge Radahn was a significantly more difficult fight, but I can definitely understand why everyone is in love with Malenia and wants her to step on their face.

Although I went ahead and took on the boss out of curiosity, I'm still not finished exploring the Haligtree. The level design is so good. It's so fucking good. The environment is filled with perfect and gorgeous details that drive me to tears because everything is just so intensely beautiful. Forget the rest of the game, I live in the Haligtree now.

Peaches has now cleared and completed all of the sidequests and minidungeons in Elden Ring! (I think!!) And it only took him 210 hours.

After this, there are two more legacy dungeons and a gauntlet of final bosses.

I'm not in any hurry to finish Elden Ring. If I do end up beating the game, I think I'm going to go back to Dark Souls. Either that or the new Pokémon game coming out next week, maybe. I really didn't like how Pokémon Legends Arceus applies an "open world" to the Pokémon formula, so we'll see. If you had sat me down ten years ago and told me that the day would come when I preferred Dark Souls to Pokémon, I wouldn't have believed you, but here we are.

Last night Peaches descended to the ruins of a Nameless Eternal City at the roots of the Erdtree, where he discovered the enormous rotting corpse of the (demi?)god Godwyn.

In life, Godwyn was apparently friends (or enemies-to-lovers?) with a dragon named Fortissax. Peaches went into the dream of the soulless corpse (or into the corpse itself? it's really big) to fight Fortissax, who (I guess?) tried to save Godwyn but ended up becoming corrupted in the process.

As you can tell from all the parenthetical questions, I'm not really sure what was going on. Nevertheless, Peaches prevailed! It was all very metal, and now he probably needs a bath.

Tonight, Peaches is going to venture into another underground mausoleum and fight Mohg, Lord of Blood, who is basically Satan. Along the way, he is hopefully going to find and kill White Mask Varré, the first NPC you meet in the game. There are a lot of intriguing theories about Varré, but really he's just a sassy bitch who I think will be interesting to duel. What can I say, murder is fun.

So it turns out that the snowy area of Elden Ring is not optional after all.

Also it sucks. There's nothing really up there on that part of the map, and the theme seems to be "low visibility."

It took Peaches two days to fully explore the region and arrive at the next plot-central battle. I think winning this battle results in burning the big magical golden tree that acts as the sun in The Lands Between. Although I suspect it's probably evil, I'm quite fond of that tree, so Peaches is going to do a few other things first.

I'm very interested in the "Subterranean Shunning‐Grounds" in the sewers below the abandoned royal capital of Leyndell. No one on the internet will give me a straight answer about what order you're supposed to do things in terms of level of difficulty, so maybe the area is extremely hard. But whatever, I really like sewer levels. Give me shadowy tunnels filled with filthy water and creepy monsters and I will be happy.

Anyway, speaking of the snowy area, Peaches straight-up murdered his first NPC. It was Shabriri. Shabriri has a long and complicated story, but the only part of it that matters to me is that he killed another NPC who saved Peaches' ass a few times during some (scripted) invasion battles early in the game. When I saw that Shabriri killed this NPC and possessed his corpse, of course I was upset. That being said, the real reason I attacked him was that there was nothing else to do in the snowy area. On top of that, I think it's amusing for a secretly plot-central supervillain to be randomly killed by a random traveler out of sheer boredom. Fuck that guy.