Until Elden Ring, I avoided Soulslikes. Their punishing difficulty and rigid boundaries frustrated me immensely: I hit a wall in Dark Souls: Remastered and gave up, barely touched Bloodborne, and avoided Sekiro like it was a poison swamp. In the real world, I have mostly avoided the ire of homophobes and misogynists in the games industry, writing an article that temporarily shakes them up before fading into relative obscurity once Reddit refreshes. But now, I am willingly subjecting myself to arduous adventure, running headfirst into a proverbial wall just to shake it off, back up, and run into it again. Outside of the Lands Between and the Shadow Realm, I have spent nearly four months as the subject of a near-endless harassment campaign. It feels, at times, like logging on for a day of work is akin to walking through a boss door over and over again.

Before I even make that connection between my real world and FromSoft's game world, I subconsciously attack Shadow of the Erdtree with dogged determination, as if besting a boss would bleed into my every day and imbue me with a higher tier of self-confidence. Much like how it feels to receive near-endless hate comments from anonymous accounts or angry middle-aged men, I face Shadow of the Erdtree entirely alone—no multiplayer summons would work for me in early access, a feature I relied on in the base game. So I faced it solo and, after almost 20 hours, came out, as Rennala says, born anew.