Mark Twain

Sometimes I wonder what it is with me and long pieces of media. I claim to prefer shorter, denser and more focused pieces, but somehow I seem to end up playing 100+-hour RPGs and reading 1000+-page books.

 

The latest whale I've landed is Mark Twain, the recent-ish biography from Ron Chernow. I've been a fan of Chernow's since I read his majestic Alexander Hamilton biography way back in 2004 - I still have a signed copy from when I saw him at a Rainy Day Books event in Kansas City. Since then I've read most of his older and all of his newer books. What's kind of funny is that Hamilton is the only subject I was highly interested in prior to reading the book. For everyone else, I've thought of the subject as somewhat boring and only picked up the book because it was written by Chernow. In every case I've come away fascinated by the subject and with a much deeper appreciation for their role in history.

Mark Twain has mostly continued that trend. Looking back, I read a fair amount of Twain in elementary school: I'm pretty sure I read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and probably a few short stories. I don't think I've read anything from him from high school on, though. This was somewhat crystallized in college, where my American Literature professor (who I eventually chose as my advisor) admitted that he disliked Twain's writing, I think because of his frequent use of dialect in prose. The professor skipped over Twain entirely, and instead we read the much more obscure (but very good) novel "The Damnation of Theron Ware".

So, overall I've been aware of Twain's stature as a giant in American literature and one of our most recognizable and influential writers, but I think I've absorbed that criticism of him not being a very good or enjoyable writer, so I've never felt particularly interested in returning to those books or exploring other things he's written. He mostly existed in my mind as a caricature popping up in Gilded Age settings, chomping on a cigar and dispensing witty aphorisms.

Which, in some ways, is pretty close to the truth! This book was filled with quippy quotes from Twain, things he wrote or said to others. Early on in the book those quips tended to leave me cold: I could tell that they were meant to be humorous but they didn't hit me as amusing. That changed, though, and the book as a whole ended up feeling really funny entirely due to all the Twain-isms woven into it, nestling between the frequent darkness of his life. I'm not sure if I appreciated those quotes more because I got more familiar with and in tune with his voice, or if it's just because he actually got funnier as he got older.

Over the years I've gotten the vague impression that Twain had a dark and pessimistic outlook, and that's definitely true. Some of that seems to be due to his nature, and some due to his upbringing, but a lot of it is probably due to the trajectory of his life, which is kind of a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. His parents were originally fairly well-to-do and owned slaves, but they were downwardly mobile throughout his life, frequently moving in search of better work and opportunities, eventually selling off all their slaves.

Samuel Clemens eventually strikes out west, gets some local fame as a humorous newspaper writer, parlays that into some national fame, gets funding to take tours to exotic locales and write about it. He falls in love with Livy, an heiress to a large coal-mining fortune, and they marry and have several children. From a relatively early point in his life, then, he has a pretty perfect situation: a career as a widely beloved and influential author, living in a luxurious mansion attended by servants, raising three charming daughters.

And he isn't content: Twain isn't happy to just be rich, he has to be the richest. So he keeps investing in hare-brained schemes, falling for swindles, doubling down on sunk costs. Worst of all, he throws his wife's money into the pit as well, not merely frittering away his own earnings but hocking her inheritance. The decline is a gradual process, with Twain always convinced that he's on the brink of a massive business success that will catapult him into the highest ranks of wealth. They can continue to float their extravagant lifestyle for several years, but eventually he has to admit that his bets won't pay off and declares bankruptcy. This is a hugely humbling experience for them - especially his poor wife, who grew up in luxury and would have easily stayed there if not for Twain's spending of her fortune.

While you can see why Twain was so well liked, with his sparkling wit and adventurous spirit and deep insight, he also comes off extremely poorly in many ways. The most striking for me was his inability to admit fault: any time something bad happened, he always found someone to blame and heaped all of his scorn on them. When he made a bad investment, he couldn't admit that he was bad at business: he must have been deceived by someone else, or failed by a partner, or customers were too stupid to recognize the superiority of his offering. As Chernow observes, this adds a flavor of Greek tragedy to his life: he was always the cause of his own downfall, due to his inability to learn from his mistakes and admit that he wasn't as good a businessman as he thought he was.

Family tragedies continued to pile up as the years went on. I won't unpack all of it in this post, but the situation with his two surviving daughters felt particularly poignant. Clara was ambitious, and chafed at living under Twain's shadow: she wanted her own independent identity as a musical artist, to make her own mark. (Though, she did depend almost entirely on Twain for financial support, and frequently used her status as his daughter to drum up publicity for her performances, only to then scold reporters for asking her about Twain.) While she wanted independence, Twain would show up and embarrass her, driving her further away. On the other hand, Jean, his youngest, suffered from epileptic seizures. He sent her off to a series of asylums and camps and group living homes. She badly wanted to be with Twain and spend more time with him, but he was uncomfortable witnessing her illness and deliberately avoided her as much as he could. Very late in life they finally reconciled and he regretted their time apart - but, again, he never blamed himself for this, instead villainizing others who he had appointed as her caregivers.

So, given all that, it's very unsurprising that his views darkened even more as he grew older. Much like how Hamilton seemed to come unhinged and increasingly erratic after Washington died, Twain spiraled into greater controversy after Livy died: both of them had lost trusted, reserved, thoughtful people who could temper their worst impulses. Where he had always poked fun at authority and questioned conformity, he came to believe that life itself was inherently terrible and meaningless and filled with suffering. And yet, he said so in very funny ways! People are interesting.

I found Twain's views very interesting. They did evolve over time: most strikingly, as a boy in rural Missouri he absorbed his family and social class's values, in particular generally being pro-Union but also anti-abolition, and he even briefly served in a Confederate-aligned battalion. From early life experience, though, he gained a profoundly deep empathy towards black people, came to abhor slavery in all of its forms, and would eventually emerge as a full-throated supporter of Reconstruction. In general his attitudes for the time seemed to be progressive and iconoclastic: he fervently supported universal suffrage for women, when that was considered a "crazy" idea, and he was deeply skeptical of not just organized religion but religious faith broadly. And yet, in some ways he was extremely parochial and conservative, reflecting the Victorian values of his time. He was very squeamish about sex, both personally and in his writing. He and Livy were aghast when, say, Clara (as a woman in her twenties) would visit men without a chaperone, or wear a striking hat in the incorrect function. He chided Jean whenever her letters seemed insufficiently happy. Overall it's really hard to categorize Twain. Politically he identified strongly with the "Mugwump" movement, which grew out of the Republican party but would support reform-minded Democrats over corrupt machine Republicans. Sometimes it seems like he was being ornery for its own sake, but it also seems like he did have consistent values, even if it's difficult to map those values onto our current landscape.

Some minor criticisms: Chernow constantly places "[sic]" after misspellings in quotes, which are very frequent, and I found this annoying and thought it broke up the flow. I don't recall that being an issue with his earlier books, but I can't remember if he didn't do that or if those subjects were just better spellers. I would have been fine with all misspellings being preserved as-is without comment, or obvious ones being silently corrected, but it doesn't add much to my experience for each individual misspelled word to be pointed out separately.

The book as a whole seemed to be less well edited than his earlier ones. There are quite a few places where he'll make an observation, and then make that exact same observation a page or two later. That would be helpful if he was recalling things discussed many chapters ago, but it just felt like a waste of time as done here.

I've now read six of these large (often thousand-plus pages in hardcover) biographies, and it's interesting to see Chernow's repeated interests throughout his subjects. They often broadly examine racial justice through their eyes, the treatment of African-Americans in particular, and usually some sidebar on the subjects' attitudes towards Jewish people. Twain comes off really well here, significantly evolving from his received racist attitudes and becoming a full-throated defender of racial equality. Twain's aims in this area seem great, though the execution doesn't always land well by modern standards. "Huckleberry Finn" does a great job at portraying the slave Jim as a real human being, and accurately portrays the speech patterns of the black and white characters in the book, but that same language makes it almost impossible to teach in schools before college level today. Twain also strongly opposed anti-semitism, both and home and abroad, throughout his life, culminating in him warmly welcoming a Jewish man to marry his daughter. But while singing the praises of Jewish people he could end up perpetuating stereotypes, like claiming that they were all above average intelligence and never fought in battles.

I enjoyed seeing "crossovers" with Chernow's other biographies. The biggest one is definitely Grant, where we see a strong and evolving relationship. By the end of the Civil War, Twain was a strong supporter of the Republican party, but he loathed the corruption swirling around Grant's administration. But he consistently admired Grant's military leadership, and after meeting him in person several times Twain came to deeply revere Grant's personal character. Twain praised Grant in many public settings, and eventually convinced him to publish his autobiography with Twain's new publishing company.

I don't recall any direct references to Washington or Hamilton, but I was intrigued to see Twain spending time in Bermuda at the Hamilton Hotel in the company of a Schuyler - I am very curious if there is any relation.  Rockefeller isn't directly mentioned, but his fellow Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers becomes a major and extremely beneficial figure later in Twain's life. J. P. Morgan himself is only very briefly mentioned, but the Morgan family is noted for their presence at some of the high-society New York City functions Twain enjoyed performing at.

Twain's path as a man who worked in humor while delving into politics, social issues and occasional psychological turmoil feels striking, and at the same time familiar. I realized while reading this biography that you can see the sort of court-jester / truth-speaker / insightful-comedian as a recurring archetype in American letters. It might have started in an embryonic form with Ben Franklin, with his witty sayings and trenchant calls for revolution. Twain defined and dominated the form during the Victorian Era. In the twentieth century, the names that immediately come to my mind are James Thurber and Dave Barry, though now that I'm writing this The Onion and Jon Stewart certainly qualify as well.

Overall I enjoyed reading Mark Twain, though I think it's on the bottom half of my personal ranking of Chernow books. I was going to rank them all here, but I realize now that there's still one major biography I'm missing: The Warburgs, which seems like a good companion to The House of Morgan, as well as a collection of essays called The Death of the Banker. That gives me some good mid-term reading, and I'll return eventually with that final list! 

Yes On 40, No On 41 And 42

I'm putting up this voting record post slightly later than usual for me. For the first time in the decade-plus I've been voting by mail in California, I did not receive my mailed ballot. More concerningly, it sounds like nobody else on my street did, either. It's weird! We aren't sure if there was a mixup at the post office, or if someone removed ballots from mailboxes or what. Fortunately it was quick and easy for me to request a new ballot, and I still got it in plenty of time to vote early, but still. Weird.

 

As I'm sure is the case for many voters, for high-profile races I've known for a while how I plan to vote, particularly so for our Top Two November elections with winnowed state and federal candidates. But for lower-profile races and measures, I need to do some additional research to decide. For me this often involves looking to trusted sources for endorsements: a combination of mainstream media outlets, established politicians I admire, political groups that share my values, etc.

This year I found a fantastic resource for this: bayballot.com. This open-source and non-partisan site lists every single item on the ballot and, for each race and measure, gives a high-level summary of the total number of endorsements for and against the item. You can drill down into each one to see exactly what groups/outlets/etc. supported or opposed it, along with brief snippets explaining their reasons and links to the original editorial/endorsement. I found this to be incredibly valuable: I could quickly see where there was universal consensus, where all of "my guys" agreed with something, and where there were split opinions, and then go off and read those third-party analyses. What once required a half-dozen open browser tabs has become a lot smoother and more comprehensive. You can even select or unselect which of the 100+ registered sources to feed into the site, such as hiding labor union endorsements if you are anti-union, or only selecting Republican or Democratic county parties.

I do have to say that, for the 20+ years I've been voting in California, the single best indicator for me is the Howard Jarvis Tax Foundation: 100% of the time, whenever they make a recommendation, I will always pick the opposite.

Anyways, here is how I voted! 

Governor: Xavier Becerra

Lt. Governor: Fiona Ma

Secretary of State: Shirley M. Weber

Controller: Malia M. Cohen

Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis

Attorney General: Rob Bonta! :-D

Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen

I wish there were more legitimately interesting top-two races in November. My reasoning from the primary still holds. 

State Board of Equalization 2nd District: Sally J. Lieber

US Representative 12th Congressional District: Lateefah Simon

State Assembly 18th District: Mia Bonta

Like A Million Justices: "Yes" for all 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Richard Barrera

Peralta Community College District Trustee, Area 5: Cindi Reiss

AC Transit District Director, Ward 3: Adriana Valencia

Proposition 1 - Housing Bonds: No

Proposition 2 - Increase Rainy Day Fund: Yes

Proposition 3 - Maintain extra high-income tax for schools and health care: Yes

Proposition 4 - Repeal prohibition against publicly funded elections: Yes

Proposition 5 - Change recall elections: Yes

Proposition 37 - Loans for new home buyers: No

Proposition 38 - Medical research bonds: No

Proposition 39 - Voter ID requirement: No

Proposition 40 - Billionaire Tax: YES

Proposition 41 - Sneakily undo Prop 40: NO

Proposition 42 - Sneakily undo Prop 40: NO

Proposition 43 - Require 2/3 approval for local taxes: NO

Proposition 44 - Requires community health clinics to spend 90% of revenue on program services: No

Proposition 45 - Reform CEQA: No

This was one I had to do a fair amount of reading on. CEQA is a well-intentioned but antiquated law that currently is mostly used by wealthy landowners to block new housing, bike lanes, mass transit and other beneficial projects. I was initially inclined to vote "Yes" on this as it seems to streamline some CEQA approvals by limiting the review time. After some more reading, though, I landed on "No". The state legislature recently made some low-profile amendments to the law that already improve CEQA for new housing construction and transit. This proposition specifically excludes High Speed Rail from expedited CEQA reviews, so the likely impact would be less review for e.g. freeway widening projects, without helping the issues that have been most harmed by CEQA.

Measure RTM - Fund transit: Yes

Measure EE - Amend Oakland city governance: Yes

Measure FF - Close loophole on transfer taxes: Yes

Mayor: Barbara Lee 1st, none others ranked

City Council District 2: Charlene Wang 1st, Nate Adams 2nd

I was a little torn on this. Charlene Wang has been in office for less than a full term, and seems to be doing well so far. I do really admire the work the East Bay DSA is doing, and generally believe that districts which can support openly socialist candidates should elect them. I ended up voting for Wang, but it would be exciting if Adams wins.

City Auditor: Michael C. Houston

School Director District 2: Jennifer Brouhard 1st, Arielle Fleisher 2nd

That's it! I was going to drop off my ballot in a drop box, but that felt Inconvenient, so I just dropped it in the mail today. Hopefully it has a more successful journey back than it did to me!

A Cold, Dark, And Very Gentle Place

Phew! I have finally finished Dark Souls 3. I probably should have squeezed an intermediate update in there - my first post was at about 20 hours in to the game, with much of the time spent getting acclimated to the setting and gameplay. I've wrapped up the game, including the DLC at just a bit over 70 hours. It's been a long journey! I think part of why I didn't report in during the interim is because of how amazingly opaque the story is. I can't really say "This is what's happening, and what it means, and how I feel about it!" because I don't really understand what is happening or why, and all I feel is a combination of curiosity and dread.

 

I might focus on the mechanics for a bit up top, then gesture vaguely towards the story in spoilertown.

 

 

As I mentioned previously, I fell in love with the Claymore, and I continued to use it for pretty much the entire rest of the game. It isn't necessarily the "best" weapon, but that's a subjective category anyways, and I think people end up being drawn to particular weapons based on how they feel. The Claymore feels just perfect: I always 2-handed it, which gives a great amount of range; I can "poke" an enemy with an R2 attack, with a surprisingly large range, or give a quick slash with an R1, which has a wide arc that can hit multiple enemies.

 

 

I never invested time into learning how to properly block with a shield, and just carrying a shield doesn't do anything, so two-handing the claymore was all upside for me. A really nice benefit of this for greatswords in particular is that when you two-hand them, you gain so-called "hyperarmor" during your attacks. This protects you from getting interrupted if an enemy lands a blow on you while you're in the middle of your swing or thrust. Flipping the same concept around, a fast slash can sometimes stagger an enemy if you can hit them while they're winding up their own swing. After many hours playing the game, I got a great sense of distance and speed, and could time a powerful charged R2 to "poke" an enemy as soon as they got into range, usually before they get close enough to attack me.

 

 

Later in the game I started trying out backstabs. They are really fun! This started becoming viable after I lightly trawled the wiki and learned about the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring, which was a game-changer for me. It silences your footsteps, so enemies only become aware of you when you are in their field of vision, making it possible to sneakily sneak up on them. When in position, a single tap of R1 will initiate the backstab, inflicting massive damage and sending the enemy tumbling to the ground. Best of all, you're completely invincible during the entire maneuver, making it safe even if other enemies are nearby. Second best of all, it takes a couple of seconds for backstabbed enemies to regain their feet. If you feel like cheesing (and I usually do!), you can sprint away and hide behind a wall or something, leaving a perplexed enemy just standing there, and vulnerable to future backstabs. One very minor frustration is that not every enemy is vulnerable to backstabbing, and it isn't always obvious who will or won't be; in general, humanoid enemies can be backstabbed and non-humanoid ones cannot, but unsurprisingly given the unsettling art style of this world there are an awful lot of enemies who look ambiguously humanoid. But if an enemy can't be backstabbed, a fully charged R2 attack is also highly effective.

 

 

While I'm two-handed during combat, I do carry a talisman in my off-hand. I had originally planned to play as a Faith/Priest type but I gave up when I wasn't able to beat the first boss in the game. A "Priest" only starts with a Heal spell and a (non-damaging) Force kinetic blast. From wiki research, I've since learned that you don't get access to damaging "Miracles" until very late in the game, so I think a pure Priest would probably only make sense for a New Game Plus type of run.

 

 

But magic still has great utility as a minor, secondary investment. I eventually got enough Atunement for 2 spell slots. I rotated through a few spells over the course of the game. Homeward is a great get-out-of-jail-free card that will warp you back to a Bonfire, which is terrific for long explorations, since you don't need to preserve your Estus to stay safe. The Homeward Bone item does the same thing as the Homeward spell, and I probably should have just used those instead since I had a bit stockpile, but psychologically I'm more inclined to use the replenishable resource over the limited one. Late in the game you get access to a permanent-use equivalent of the homeward bone, freeing up that spell slot for me.

 

 

Also early in the game I used Regeneration, which gives a slow and steadily ticking healing effect, letting you preserve Estus at the cost of some FP. Here too, later in the game I found a ring that gives a constant small regen effect, although later in the game I ditched the ring as well; standing around and waiting for it to tick up my health pool isn't very fun, and I'd rather explore and progress in the meantime, even if it means more bonfire visits.

 

 

Caressing Tears is a stituationally fantastic spell. It instantly eliminates a bunch of nasty status effects like Poison and Bleed; a single cast of this (cheap) spell can outweigh multiple healing Estus flasks and keep you moving forward without waiting for your debuff gauge to expire.

 

 

At the end of the game, the two spells I usually had loaded were Blessed Weapon and Deep Protection. Blessed Weapon boosts your weapon damage (I think by 10%?), gives a ticking healing regen, and prevents skeletons from resurrecting, although by the time I found this spell I was past all the skeleton-heavy areas. Deep Protection is an all-purpose spell that gives additional attack power, elemental resistance, defense and stamina regeneration. I would typically pop both of those right before stepping through a fog wall, or Blessed Weapon if I found a challenging enemy in the landscape.

 

 

Along the way, I also dipped into some Pyromancy spells. These typically require Intelligence in addition to Faith, but the overall requirement level is much lower than Sorcery, and you can get a lot of bang for your buck for a minimal investment. To support this crossover, the catalyst I carried was usually the White Hair Talisman, which can cast both schools of spells. So I usually two-hand my sword, then if I see a battle coming up I will one-hand it to make the talisman accessible, cast one or both spells, then two-hand again and charge on in.

 

 

Of the pyromancies I used, Flash Sweat gives a major boost to Fire resistance, which helps a ton when facing off against dragons or when in a hellish cavern filled with lava. Profuse Sweat gives a decent boost to a broader range of resistances, and is a good all-purpose buff if you aren't sure what you're facing. Carthus Flame Arc adds fire to your weapon, giving it extra attack power; I found this quite a bit earlier than Blessed Weapon, and the Flame Arc also lasts quite a bit longer.

 

 

I never cast any Sorcery spells in this game, but perusing the shops, I was a bit surprised at just how many utility spells are in there; in my memory from Elden Ring, sorcery was almost entirely focused on dealing damage, where it seems more versatile in this game. Spook is a spell that completely negates fall damage and makes you silent. Chameleon is another spell that transforms you into an object from the environment. A lot of these spells have fairly low requirements, so I think it would be valid to carry a second catalyst in your left hand, at the cost of some extra weight and more competition for atunement slots.

 

 

For stats, here is a snapshot from near the end of the game. As noted earlier, I focused early on in boosting my Vigor and Vitality, with enough Endurance to wear the equipment I wanted. I had enough Atunement for two slots and enough Faith and Intelligence for the spells I wanted to cast. I mostly focused on Strength up to 35 (40 with the Knight Ring), also boosting Dex to be able to wield bows and a few swords, then switched to boosting Dex as well. My plan was to eventually switch from a Heavy Gem to a Refined Gem; I think that above a certain level you get better returns from evenly leveled Strength and Dex on a weapon that scales with both of those compared to maximizing a single stat with a single-scaling weapon. But by the end of the game, my Heavy was still outperforming a Refined, so I eventually used a Pale Tongue with Rosaria to reallocate my stats, putting surplus Dex back into Strength and Vigor. (I actually did this twice - the first time I took my Dex too low and didn't realize for a while that my damage had cratered because I could no longer properly wield my Claymore.) 

 

 

In terms of combat: against weaker enemies, I usually engaged them at a medium distance, attacking before they could get too close. For stronger enemies, I would usually try to get up in their face, roll past them when they try to attack, land a few hits against their backside, and repeat. Of course, each enemy type has their own different style of movement, attack, aggressiveness, danger and so on, so each encounter is a little different. After a few battles, dealing with them would basically become muscle memory.

 

 

Throughout the whole game, I continued to be amazed by the level design. I just low how contiguous everything is: Lothric Castle and environs is this huge, weighty space that you physically move through, without teleporting or warping. It feels really thrilling to pop outside and realize that you're getting a fresh perspective on a site that you've seen many times before.

 

While amazing, the design is also pretty dark and very gross! I felt mesmerized by the game and kept wanting to play it, but it also felt very macabre for many stretches. There's a gross area filled with bugs and slime. A surfeit of poison swamps. All sorts of gross creatures that ooze, suck, evert, rupture and scream. Flightless bird-like enemies that are hostile but sound so pathetic that it's hard not to feel sorry for them.

 

 

I was glad that there aren't quite as many infinitely-respawning skeletons as in Elden Ring. Here they're mostly confined to a single area, and you can pretty easily run through them once you have the map figured out.

Once the game opened up, around the Road of Sacrifice area, I almost never felt stuck on something for too long. If an area felt hard, I had another zone I could work through for a while, leveling up and eventually coming back. I imagine that, like in Elden Ring, the hardness probably comes down to build: some things that were challenging for me as a melee fighting might have been a lot easier for a ranged sorcerer, and vice versa. There were a handful of times where I whipped out a bow and arrows to plink away at bad guys from a safe distance. It takes forever (at least with my DEX) so it isn't something I do often, but it is good to have multiple tools in your box.

MEGA SPOILERS

Like in Elden Ring, I'm amazed at all of the secrets that people were able to find. One of the biggest is the Dragon gesture. If you use it on a cliff near Ithryll Dungeon, you will enter a trance and be teleported to a totally new, huge zone with multiple bosses and significant treasure. I usually find out about these types of secrets via a wiki, but this is also an area where I think the multiplayer aspect of the series works really well, thanks to the messages left between worlds. I'd played Elden Ring entirely offline, which protected me against PC invasions but also hid all messages. (For better and for worse. In Dark Souls 3 there are a few "try finger but hole" missives among the gems.) I came to really appreciate the system of messages. You do need to keep an eye open for trolls, but most of the time they're pointing the way towards something easily missible and letting you play through, instead of needing to come back later after consulting an out-of-game guide.

 

 

Actual invasions were annoying but not terrible. I always died but usually acquitted myself decently, and it wasn't too punishing. I think I had a total of maybe four invasions throughout the game, the first two before I understood how the mechanic worked. After that I was very mindful of being Embered and would zoop back to Firelink Shrine and spend down my big souls after a boss fight, and then usually try to take on another boss or other major thread while I was still Embered instead of my typical deliberate exploration. 

 

Story-wise, I was really bummed by the Pilgrim / Anril plotline. I don't think I would have figured out how to avoid the "spouse" outcome without looking at a wiki, and by the time I did that it was too late to change the path I was on. It is a kind of interesting variation from Elden Ring, where a similarly dark plot line requires you to do a lot of very obscure and easy-to-miss things.

 

 

It is interesting how language seems to get corrupted in this game. When Yoel and Yuria call you "Lord" it sounds like a very positive and good thing, and it isn't until much later that you get a sense for how sinister it is. "Spouse" sounds joyful and loving, while what happens here is anything but. (But still coming with the sense of tying together and committing.) Even "Humanity" seems to have a dark sheen to it. While not 100% reliable, it is striking how many of your allies look haggard, dark and furtive, while many of your greatest foes look beautiful and even angelic.

 

 

Possibly the hardest boss fight for me was Lothric the Two Princes. I died a ton to him, even when bringing along both NPC summons. (Despite not being a sorcerer, I bought all of Orbeck's scrolls just so I could bring him along.) Very soon after that comes the final battle against the Soul of Cinder, and I beat them on my very first try (albeit also with NPC summons). I did kind of like that though, it reminds me of a JRPG where the final boss's third phase is usually weaker than the second.

 

 

I did get the edition with both DLC. I poked my head into Ariendel as soon as it became available from the Chapel, and quickly got mauled by wolves, but I periodically returned as I progressed through the main game and gradually got further into that. After beating that, I was planning to also go through The Ringed City before beating the main game, but I saw some online posts suggesting that story-wise it can work a bit better to beat the base game before the DLC, as the very end of the DLC acts as kind of a capstone to the entire Dark Souls trilogy. I did that, and I think narratively it works decently well, though I could see going either way. With the main game you do get a nice cinematic and rolling credits, and continuing the game (without New Game Plus) does mean that the world state you're experiencing is out of step with what happens in the ending. But it's also true that the ending to The Ringed City puts a nice wrapper around everything, and also provides a hint at some continuation of things, perhaps not in this universe but in one being painted into being.

 

 

I can't claim to have 100% beaten the game. I knew that the Nameless King and Darkeater Midir are notoriously hard fights that even seasoned players can bounce off of, so I never really even tried either one. I was surprised by just how hard Slave Knight Gael proved to be for me. Typically after a few deaths I have a good sense for a boss's movements and can reliably get into the final phase, and with enough Embered attempts I'll eventually be able to squeeze out a win. But that just wasn't true with Gael, I probably died to him a good twenty times or more. I finally gave up and did something I've never done before: asked for help.

 

 

In addition to messages and PVP invasions, Dark Souls also allows for friendly summonings, where some players can offer their services and others can accept them. Gael's boss fight doesn't have any NPC summons available but it does have a bonfire antechamber. I embered up and lingered around for a minute or so until I saw a summon sign glow. I summoned Marcus, we bowed to each other, and jumped in. The fight immediately felt a lot better - we were both sword-wielders and could take turns drawing aggros, attacking from behind, evading and healing. I had some Rotten Pine Resin that I applied to my sword for a bit of bonus damage. We made it to the final phase, where I got a bit too greedy - I'd only lasted a few seconds there in my solo attempts and wasn't familiar enough with the lightning-exploding-ground mechanic. In retrospect I probably should have just hung back and let Marcus handle it; as it was I bled out when Gael had just a sliver left.

 

I quit, and calmed down, then fired it up again. This time I saw two summon signs, and I greedily plucked both of them. I forget now who they were, one was s sorcerer-looking guy with a shrunken head and a crown, the other an agile knight. We jumped into the fray. This was an exhilarating fight. The difference between three people and two people wasn't as big as the difference between two people and a solo, but it did still help to have more bodies. This time around the fight felt a lot more mobile, and I'm not exactly sure why, but I felt like I spent a lot of time sprinting towards Gael and getting in leaping attacks, unlike my previous dodge-roll-evade-attack loop.

 

 

I was slightly more familiar with the lightning storm phase this time around, and also more cautious, so I was careful to stay out of the AOE and maneuver the long way around. Whenever I started to get dinged too much I switched to evading entirely until I lost aggro and could heal back up - I'm sure that my allies wanted to win the fight as well. After Gael got down to a sliver it took us a good minute or so to actually put him down for good, but we eventually did it! I bowed to my saviors, and jumped for joy, and they faded into the mist. 

 

 

Thinking about it more, I increasingly like the unusual but thoughtful way Dark Souls handles multiplayer. I can imagine someone playing who has beaten the game, possibly multiple times, and is feeling a bit bored, and would love to replay a fun and exciting boss fight, and get a unique and rare item as a reward for doing so. And of course people like me who need an extra hand would be grateful to receive one.

 

 

I'd previously peeked at the wiki so I knew what (little) was left to do: picking up another Titanite Slab, some ashes, and a final bit of cryptic, intriguing dialogue from the painting girl above the Chapel of Ariendel. I'd been wondering for a while what her "cold, dark and very gentle place" referred to. "Cold" immediately makes me think of Ariendel, but it isn't particularly dark, and it definitely isn't gentle. The world as a whole becomes dark, and probably cold, if you let the First Flame extinguish, so maybe she is hoping for that ending to the game; I wouldn't think of it as "gentle" but maybe it is. But I really like the idea that this is an entirely different world that she is painting into existence, possibly some future From Software game.

 

 

And, this just now occurred to me, but it's interesting that the girl is herself inside the Painted World, making this a second-order act of creation. This sort of thing always makes me really interested, evoking Neal Stephenson's Anathem with The Wick, possibly also Expedition 33 and other worlds-within-worlds. Of course, there is zero reason to believe that the "main" Dark Souls game itself is the "prime" reality - in fact, we know it isn't, because it's a work of fiction that we're playing within our own world. Anyways! Fun to think about!

END SPOILERS

So, yeah! A few years ago I wouldn't have imagined I'd even try playing a Dark Souls, and look at me now, I beat one (with a little help from my friends)! Right now I'm feeling like I'll probably stop here, I don't feel super-compelled to dip back into the earlier Dark Souls or other spinoffs like Sekiro or Bloodborne. But who knows, after Elden Ring I also thought I was done, so I still might get the itch at some point.

 

 

All in all, Dark Souls 3 was exactly what I thought it would be: a visually amazing and original world, with incredibly good-feeling and very difficult combat, tied together with one of the most opaque stories I've encountered in a lifetime of reading and playing very opaque stories. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to everyone, but I will also note that as someone who doesn't think of himself as a player of hard action games, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. 

Enkindled

I'm shocked to find myself playing a Dark Souls game. I've thought of them as games for Serious Hard Core Gamers, who love dying a lot and have a masochistic determination to play the hardest games possible. Several years ago I entered into this world through Elden Ring, which is from the same developer and shares many characteristics but isn't technically a Souls game. I ended up really loving it a lot, so much so that I decided to step back in time and try one of the preceding games. From some light online research, it sounded like Dark Souls 3 (stylized as Dark Souls III) is the most accessible of the main series. Amazingly, despite being 10 years old now it still sells at full price and only rarely goes on sale, so I kept it on my Steam Watchlist for nearly a year before a sale finally popped up. And then, after playing Esoteric Ebb, I started it!

 

I'm currently about 20 hours into the game, my sense is that I'm well less than halfway through, perhaps a third or even a quarter. I've defeated a few bosses, including one of the Mega Bosses that seem closely tied to the main storyline of the game. I wanted to write this post to share my impressions so far.

 

 

Coming at it from someone who previously only played Elden Ring, there are a lot more similarities than I expected. The "Souls" mechanic is identical, the attributes are identical, the defenses are identical, the overall loadout (weapons, ammunition, spells, armor, rings, tools) are identical, the combat is basically identical. It even extends to the setting and appearance and monsters. The first time I saw some froggy enemies, I immediately thought "Oh no, those guys are dangerous!" It took a little while for me to remember why - as in Elden Ring, they do Death damage, which can instantly kill your character. Blue-eyed skeletons have the same endless resurrection mechanic. Elevators work the same, and can have the same sorts of secrets. And on and on. I think that if you just saw a brief 1-minute clip of either game, you probably wouldn't be able to tell which was which.

 

 

The biggest difference so far between the two is the open-worldedness of Elden Ring versus the massive but ultimately constrained environment of Dark Souls. I think that I finally understand why the large boss zones of Elden Ring are called "Legacy Dungeons": they are "Legacy" in that they feel like Souls areas. Basically, if you were to take all the Legacy Dungeons in Elden Ring and smush them edge-to-edge, you would end up with something like the Dark Souls 3 map. You lose the big landscape separating those areas, as well as most of the hidden little dungeons and settlements and things. Along with those, you also lose the horse for traversing those large open areas.

 

 

One thing I loved about Elden Ring is its non-linearity. There's very little direction in where to go after the tutorial dungeon. In a lot of games like, say, Divinity: Original Sin, enemy difficulty acts as a soft set of guiderails, urging you to follow a certain progression. In Elden Ring, though, it's very feasible to get on your horse and then just Ride Really Fast past the scary landscape monsters and get to where you want to be. And even most of the game's big bosses are skippable: you need to defeat a certain number of them to beat the game, but if one is giving you trouble, you can just leave and go do something else for a while and come back when you're stronger, or never come back at all.

 

 

Dark Souls 3 is much more linear, although it becomes less so over time. It's particularly striking when you fight your first boss, Iudex. I think I died to him a good 30 or more times. In Elden Ring,  you similarly fight a tutorial boss, but are kind of expected to die to him and just pop out on the other side to continue the story. In Dark Souls 3, though, you must continue to throw yourself at him until you eventually Git Gud. Unlike the rest of the game, there isn't even the option of grinding for Souls and leveling up your skills and equipment: those mechanics aren't unlocked until after you get past that first boss. It's hard! I do respect the developers for doing that; in particular, you'll hit that boss while within the Steam Refund window, and can have a serious talk with yourself about whether you'll actually enjoy playing this type of game before you've sunk too many hours into it.

 

 

Once you're past that first boss, the game progresses mostly linearly for a while, but it doesn't feel like it's on rails. There's a lot to explore in each area, some side quests, some stuff that you need to come back to later after you've found a key or talked to an NPC. This also opens up the possibility of grinding out more Souls to make your character stronger. As in Elden Ring, any time you rest at a Bonfire all non-boss enemies respawn, so if you want you can keep plowing through them again and again. I never specifically did this to grind, but I did periodically revisit earlier areas to look for more hidden items and stuff, which ends up having the same effect.

 

Going forward, it seems like some but not all bosses are skippable. In particular, you can progress past the end of the second major zone without defeating the boss there; as far as I can tell, you do need to kill the major boss at the end of the third zone to progress into the fourth. But once you're in the third zone, multiple progression paths open up. I think that at least one of these is from a DLC I bought with the game, but the others feel like part of the base game. I'm enjoying reaching this part of the game, as it cuts down on the "stuck" feelings. If I'm bouncing off something too many times, I can put more effort into chatting with friendlies back at Firelink Shrine, or poke my head into another area for a while. The early part of a later zone can well be easier than the later part of an earlier zone. And of course all this depends on what build you're running.

 

 

Speaking of which: that's another major change for me in this game. In Elden Ring I played as a Sorcerer: I relied heavily on magic from my staff. I'm taking a very different approach in this game. I originally wanted to do a Faith build and started as a Cleric; this was fine for the tutorial area, but after enough deaths against the first boss I decided it wasn't for me. Based on some later online reading, it sounds like Faith-focused builds can be fun in New Game Plus, but the key weapons and spells for Faith builds don't become available until closer to the end of the game. I started again from scratch and this time rolled a Knight, which is a fairly balanced class but leans more towards Strength and Vitality, and also has a really nice set of starting armor (which I'm still rocking all these hours later). The boss was still really hard, but I was eventually able to beat him with my sword.

 

 

When leveling up, I prioritized Vigor early to increase my maximum HP, enough Vitality to carry my load (wearing a few rings) at 70% or less, and pushed a lot into Endurance to increase Stamina. As in Elden Ring, I find Stamina incredibly powerful: if you can just keep mashing Attack enough and are staggering your opponent with each hit, you can stun-lock and kill them provided your Stamina outlasts their Health. I've been adding just enough Strength to wield the equipment I want: in particular, a Claymore that I found relatively early on and have since fallen in love with. I put a Raw Infused Gem on the Claymore since my stats are still fairly low, and instead am upgrading that Claymore as much as I can.

 

 

Once I reached a comfortable level around my stats, I started dipping a bit into Faith. I don't know how much I'd invest in that area, but I'd been jealous of the Miracles in Elden Ring and have long wanted to experience them for myself. So far it's been very useful. In particular, one Miracle will clear any status afflictions, which is incredibly useful in an area where you need to navigate a poison swamp. I'm looking forward to future Miracles to augment my weapon strength and/or defenses. Overall I have a vague idea of becoming a sort of Paladin, primarily a martial warrior but also with divine magic to buff myself.

 

 

I've just recently started to put a few points into Dexterity as well. From what I can read online, this is usually called a "Quality" build in the community: basically, a warrior who equally distributes between Strength and Dexterity rather than fully committing to one. This opens up the widest variety of weapons to use, which in turn increases the likelihood that you'll be able to exploit an enemy's weakness against a particular damage type. Several weapons also scale their damage against both Strength and Dexterity, so for everyday weapons you continue to increase in damage when leveling up either stat.

 

 

Luck and Intelligence will likely be my dump stats, though I might put a handful into Intelligence since there are a few spells that use that along with Faith. I haven't yet put anything into Attunement, I probably will eventually but I'm not sure yet how much I'll need. I'm kind of imagining that I'll just buff myself outside of fog gates, and I think most beneficial spells last around a minute, so I'm unlikely to need to repeatedly cast between bonfires if I'm mostly relying on my sword for damage.

 

 

While the game systems are mostly identical to Elden Ring, my gameplay experience is significantly different. As a Sorcerer, I felt like the game was mostly about resource management. I had a certain amount of FP, which I could replenish a certain number of times with my flasks before beating the next boss or reaching the next bonfire; that FP translates into magical damage against enemies, making it a numbers game of having enough FP and Stamina to nuke them down before they can whack me to death. Playing as a melee martial build now is totally different. I don't really need to worry about resources at all; or, rather, the one resource I have is Health, which again I can refill with Flasks. The game is much more active now, with me focusing on dodging enemy attacks, looking for openings, striking and withdrawing or driving in for the kill. I'm getting to learn most monsters' attack patterns pretty well now, whereas for my Sorcerer build that mostly only applied for bosses. I'm glad that I had some grounding in this game series before playing as a melee character, this would have been much more challenging as my first experience but as it is I'm having a blast.

 

 

This is where I would typically drop in some notes about the story and my progress so far, but... as usual for the series, the plot is extremely opaque. Which is part of what I love about it: it's very subdued, ambiguous, taciturn, with rare fragments of dialogue that take on extra weight because of how rare they are. The game also assumes that your character already knows everything and so never bothers to define, like, what Unkindled means or who the Hollows are or any of the other terms thrown around. As with Elden Ring, I'm mostly avoiding any walkthroughs or guides; I think there has been one or two times when I've looked something up when I haven't been able to progress. I've started keeping a slight eye on the Side Quests part of the wiki; it looks like I've already accidentally failed a couple of them, which is fine.

 

 

That's it for now! I feel like I have a good amount of momentum on this game and will probably continue cruising along for some time. I'll probably have one more post here when I'm all wrapped up, but might do something in the interim if the journey is looking longer than I currently expect. 

Tax Planning

I recently picked up a new personal finance book through a new-to-me channel: a recommendation from a coworker. In a company meeting there were some announcements about changes to our 401(k) plan, and afterwards we got to chatting about our own strategies around retirement savings. I was delighted to hear that she is familiar with the Bogleheads - I think this is the first time I've met someone in real life who is also familiar with that community! Though, to be fair, I don't ever initiate conversations about Bogleheads in particular or finance in general, so there could very well be More Of Us around.

 

She described a book she was making her way through, Tax Planning To and Through Early Retirement. I've been aware of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) for some time; when I first heard about it, the movement was strongly associated with "Mr. Money Mustache" and an ethos of extreme frugality. Early retirement isn't really compelling to me; I'm lucky enough to have a job in software development that pays pretty well and that I enjoy doing; if I were to retire, I'd probably keep on developing software just for fun, so as long as I can keep getting paid for it I'll probably keep doing that. But the FI part of FIRE is attractive to me. I associate financial independence with security, confidence, opportunity and flexibility. Moving closer to that goal has been beneficial to my overall well-being and happiness.

Anyways, this book is primarily aimed at the RE part of FIRE, so I'm personally not exactly in the target audience, but I still found it very useful. Even early retirees eventually become regular retirees, so we all end up at the same place eventually. And it's helpful to have a unique focus to a finance book: in this case, it's almost entirely about taxes, and doesn't waste time on other topics like budgeting, investments and so on. 

Like most personal finance books I read these days, I didn't get a whole lot of brand-new information from this book, but I did get a lot of reinforcement about best practices, as well as a deeper understanding of why things work. And I did learn a few things that were actually brand-new to me. One specific topic that I was researching just a couple of years ago is how RMDs work when you have multiple retirement accounts. The authors explain it very clearly in this book. RMD rules are actually different depending on the type of the account. For traditional IRAs, all IRAs are pooled across all accounts (even from multiple custodians) when determining how much RMD is required and how it is taken. So, if you have three IRAs, you can satisfy your RMD by withdrawing from all three accounts, or withdrawing the total required amount from a single IRA. But the rules are different for defined contribution plans like 401ks and 403bs. For those, each account has its own separate RMD requirement. So if you have three 401ks, you need to take a separate RMD from each one of them; if you take a larger amount from a single 401k, it doesn't satisfy the need to withdraw from others. This situation is further reinforcement for the general recommendation that on retirement workers should generally consolidate all of their 401ks and 403bs into an IRA.

One of the central points of this book is what they call The Compelling Three: ideally, employees should generally try to maximize their traditional deductible 401k (or 403b, etc.) contributions, and also build up a Roth IRA and a taxable brokerage account, prior to retirement. That's what I've ended up doing, and reading this was very validating and reassuring. They get into the details of why and how this is helpful. The upshot is that it lets you shape your taxable income in retirement. In some years, you might want more taxable income, to fill up the lowest income tax brackets or avoid Medicaid eligibility. To achieve that income, you want to withdraw from a tax-deferred account. In other years, you might want to get more income for life expenses but want to keep taxable income low to retain eligibility for ACA credits or other benefits. In those cases, drawing from a Roth would be good. And if your income is low, you can sell appreciated stocks in a taxable brokerage and pay 0% long-term capital gains, which in turn could be used to fund a Roth.

Years ago, my 401k started offering a Roth option. I was undecided on whether to do it, so for a while I was splitting contributions 50-50 between the Roth 401k and the regular pre-tax deductible 401k. After about a year or so I switched back to having it all be pre-tax traditional contributions. The authors of this book strongly agree, and I really like the simplicity of their message: "Pay tax when you pay less tax." Essentially, during our working years, we're usually in higher tax brackets, and every dollar we can deduct is deducted from the highest marginal tax bracket (like 24%). In retirement, though, we're starting from an income of $0, and every dollar we withdraw from our tax-deferred accounts goes against the lowest marginal tax brackets (like 10%, 12%, etc.). Saving 24% on tax today is far better than saving 12% on tax decades from now.

They directly address a lot of the concerns other people have. One common question is what will happen to tax rates in the future, and a widespread assumption that they will go up as the US struggles with an increasing federal debt. They have a very data-focused way of looking at this. First they describe the unlikelihood that future tax increases would fall on seniors, given what a politically powerful bloc they are, and they show how seniors have received increasingly favorable treatment over the last 30+ years even as our debt has continued to climb. But they also say, "Well, what would happen if tax rates did go up 50%?" They create hypothetical scenarios as a sort of pressure-tested extreme outcome, and show that even in these extremely unlikely cases the person who made traditional contributions during their working years would come out ahead over someone who contributed to the Roth 401k.

Another concern is the so-called "Widow's Tax Trap." This is the scenario where one spouse dies; the surviving spouse's expenses will likely drop somewhat but not by half, but they will start to file as a single instead of married and thus may be elevated to a higher tax bracket. Here too, they run the numbers and show that while it is a disadvantage, it isn't nearly as bad as people fear. Even with this "penalty" the widow is still almost always better off than she would have been contributing to a Roth 401k; and, they point out, that isn't even considering the larger context, which is that this couple likely already had decades of highly advantageous tax rates, and the surviving spouse will often only have a few years of single filing. They eventually land on a scenario where the widow does end up in a worse position: but, they emphasize, this scenario required the 80-year-old widow to have $20 million in wealth. As they say, she is rich! Her lived experience doesn't suffer from needing to pay 32% tax instead of 24% tax on the last $10,000 of her income.

As the authors say from the start, they wanted to avoid any kind of fear-mongering in this book. Many books and articles about retirement seek to alarm people and make them feel like they'll fail if they don't do specific things. The authors do have recommendations, but they continually show how even sub-optimal strategies still have decent outcomes. As they keep pointing out, this is because our progressive tax system is actually very generous to retirees, and has become even more so over the years.

As I read more about finance, I start to recognize that sometimes two authors are describing the same concept or phenomenon through opposite perspectives: they seem like two different things, but are really two sides of the same coin. One of the first times I recognized this was reading William Bernstein after Thomas Piketty. Essentially, Piketty writes "Increasing the rate of return on capital results in further concentration of wealth among current owners of capital [derogatory]", while Bernstein writes "Increasing the rate of return on capital results in further concentration of wealth among current owners of capital [complimentary]". In this new book, the authors repeatedly state that they prefer to hold US equities in a taxable brokerage account, primarily due to the current low dividend yield of stocks. Which makes sense, but... the current low dividend yield of stocks is basically the same phenomenon as a historically elevated P/E ratio. Most of my reading has focused on this as a negative: eventually, there will need to be a return to the long-term historic mean, which predicts a significant fall from today's high asset prices. But these authors see the current situation as a positive: you can hold a large store of wealth without being forced to accept a large amount of taxable ordinary income.

All in all, I would probably place this book solidly in the second tier of recommended reading for personal finance. It's most helpful for someone who already has clear goals in mind and a basic grasp of the fundamentals. It's nicely focused on a particular topic, taxation, that is important but not the end-all-be-all of a retirement journey. The knowledge it shares isn't esoteric: at the heart, it's just urging most people to save as much as they can in their employer's 401k or similar plan, and supplement that with a Roth IRA and a taxable brokerage. But their focus lets them dive into the details, showing with numbers and tables why and how things work the way that they do. This is the sort of book that would help someone transform that goal into an actionable game plan. All in all, a valuable option to have!