I have a really complicated relationship with videos like these.

On the one hand, it's an increasingly difficult endeavor to keep things fresh and figure out what slop I can serve some of you guys so I can buy everyone Christmas presents this year.

But on the other hand, it's equally entertaining to revisit a throwaway idea from 18 months ago only to be like, wait, what?

That got how many views? Holy-

So to keep things easy, I've ultimately decided that as long as a video reaches a certain profanity quota, some of you just glue yourselves to the monitor and accept whatever deluge of school cafeteria-grade gunk I can dig out from underneath the gutters and repurpose as content.

So you know what?

I'm gonna rank the gestures, you're completely fine with that, and we can all collectively tell the schedule for this month to go dive under a falling tree.

How does that sound?

What could you possibly be pointing at that's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ important?

Wow, look here, this guy is slightly inconvenienced by the immeasurable existential dread of the big yellow tree in the sky.

How special, you wanna get in ♥♥♥♥♥♥' line?

The gameplay of Elden Ring is sort of built in a way that almost never places anything interesting directly above you.

If you're bringing attention to grand scenery or something, you're just much better off using gestures like warm welcome or triumphant delight.

All this gesture does is make you look like a cartoon character that's about to get hit by a falling piano.

Everything about this gesture just comes up short.

You can only obtain it by beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of Patches, waiting until he surrenders, and then fighting him again and letting him speedbag your testicles off until you're almost dead, and then he'll give you the gesture, which is, it's just pathetic.

And it's one of the only gestures that trick you into thinking it lasts indefinitely, only for your character to stand up again after three seconds and just completely ruin the photo op.

Who repents extremely for three ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seconds?

That is literally antithetical to being extreme.

You ever wanted to look like you could do an incantation but really can't?

Sabotage invasions by fooling your friends into thinking you're charging up a heel and bait them into coming towards you to line them up for some ridiculous AoE.

That would actually, work if the gesture itself gave you some neat particle effects or something, but you're literally just sitting there doing nothing, scratching your ass, paying imaginary respect to a god you don't believe in.

This is the equivalent of filming fitness videos on TikTok with styrofoam weights.

Could have explored a fun opportunity here if it was able to control the AI of your spirit summons so you could orchestrate a sneak attack or something, but after trying it multiple times doing b-roll for the spirit ashes video, I can sadly confirm it does nothing of the sort.

The ♥♥♥♥ am I supposed to be waiting for?

The humiliating death of my troop as a result of no one listening to me?

I guess gestures like this were put in here as a means of wordless shot-calling or something during online interactions, but it just makes you look like the team jackass no one respects.

Unless I can aggro enemies I'm locked onto with this, I'm not interested.

And that probably means I'm going to stay uninterested until the end of time, and I'm completely fine with that.

Such an assorted variety of different bows, curtsies, and generally fancier showings of respect just leaves this particular gesture in an absolutely pointless position.

Why bow when you can bow politely?
Or fancily?
Or reverentially?
Or this one?
Or this one?

Why even use this when the game gives you like 36 other options that can all be used to a much further and more immersive capacity in just about every interaction?

Rest is unfortunately in a very similar spot.

You got sitting sideways, dozing, balled up, spread out, arguably even more resting positions than you do bowing, or greeting of any form.

I literally use all of them in other videos except for this one, and that's completely intentional. Because this gesture gives you nothing.

Digging for any shred of utility in this gesture only leads to me thinking that resting emotes in games are just there to convey to other players that someone is AFK.

But in this game, I legitimately think that might just lead to people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with you for no reason.

A staggeringly mediocre gesture that has all its comical value rooted in the fact that it offsets you by a few inches when performed, which can very easily cause you to fall.

It can very easily lead to an unintentional demise if you're hugging the fringe of a cliffside.

If I was in a better mood, then maybe that would warrant it climbing a few spots up the list just for comedic value.

But, uh, I'm not.
So.
What are you so damn happy for?

Miyazaki coming out of his chamber to tell us all the DLC will actually be a while and we should all just keep ourselves busy?

Keep your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pants on.
There's no joy in this game.

In case you wanted to replace your resting gesture with a slightly enhanced, slightly more involved resting position that you'll pay for in 10 minutes when you stand up and it feels like you're going to die, like someone poured cement in your shoes, then perhaps go with the crossed legs gesture.

There's no story or fanfare behind this gesture whatsoever.

You literally pick it off a piece of debris near Stormhill Shack, next to a stray corpse that couldn't be in a more obviously different pose.

Why does this even need to be here?

When you're done marking the 13 bowing gestures off your to-do list, maybe we can finally talk about adding some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ covenants or something.

Given to you at the very start of the game if you pre-ordered it, may as well come with its own clown shoes and a wig since you still think pre-ordering ♥♥♥♥'s a good idea, but it actually has an interesting side effect.

Killing a boss in co-op with a player who pre-ordered the game also gives you the gesture afterwards, which I think is kinda cool.

It's not completely unobtainable to those who didn't leave themselves open to getting scammed while introducing a nice community element you don't really see too often.

As far as its actual uses?

Well, uh, if you're playing with a friend, they can point forwards and stick their finger through your hole.

That's pretty cool.

On the surface, this is just another gesture, but beyond its thin veil of deception is exactly that, another weight gesture, only slightly more animated.

Put your hands back in your pockets and stop wasting your time, ain't nobody listening to your ass.

There is a remarkably small amount of overlap between things I want to point at and things I want to kill in this game.

This unfortunately limits any of its use to cheeky jokes and multiplayer messages that involve carefully lodging your finger in a Runebear's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like you're hooking up an external hard drive.

And I think for the most part, people are kinda just sick of seeing those.

You can guide newer players around I guess, but that's only assuming trust issues haven't surfaced from the last message they read pointing them off the ocean bank.

I feel like this game fumbled the bag with this one.

Remember in Dark Souls 3 when you obtained this gesture only after a long and dangerous splunking venture into the bowels of Irithyll Dungeon, and it almost felt like the game giving you a nice little applause and celebration that you finally made it here before kicking you back down the broken elevator shaft that was the profaned capital?

It had weight to it.

Here you just receive it after buying prawn from the Blaggard.

There's no buildup, it doesn't feel like a natural resting spot right after conquering some impossible area, and the reinforcement of jumping by giving everyone a specific ground crawling attack means significantly less opportunities to do funny ♥♥♥♥ like this.

I can't really decide if this is a realistic request or not, but actually being able to hold onto whatever's in your hand would do miles of work for this gesture.

They're both cute little animations that could've been really fun to use, but stray very little outside of just being vanilla representations of victory that only look increasingly cursed with the player character's forever deadpan expression.

Actually having the weapon or shield or whatever remain in your hand instead of disappearing behind a magic invisible curtain would give it much more personality, even if it is a bit unrealistic to be shoulder pressing a dragon femur like it's a microphone stand, but I mean triumphant delight does it fine so why not this one?

This gesture is a symbol of human tenacity and determination, an embodied of the mental strength it takes to try hundreds of times to sync up the forearm bump with the buddy combined with the mental destitution of somehow not succeeding even once and then just blaming it on your internet.

I think an extremely small percentage of people actually use this one because the multiplayer experience is filled with so many people sarcastically clapping or pointing at the ground, and maybe my lack of multiplayer experience is why I don't see the appeal.

Maybe I just need to go cry myself to sleep in a bed full of pizza crumbs and failure like the rest of the people in PvP.

Don't forget to comment.

Easily obtainable to the point you barely even have to lift a finger to get it, and the returns are equally underwhelming.

Few and far between are the circumstances where it's even half appropriate to nod in agreement with something as opposed to just doing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing being suggested.

And the most comical use I've found for it so far is when you want to feign intelligent conversations with a friend at the round table.

Did you know the giant crusher weighs more than the entire Carian Knights set?

I didn't.

Did you know you can massively cut electricity costs in your home by tongue-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all your light sockets?

Unlike its half-cousin battle cry counterparts, this gesture actually allows you to remain holding your weapons in your hands.

Shouldn't be a surprise to those familiar with the gesture's past iterations that I'm too lazy to capture footage for, but Dark Souls 3 totally had it.

This is the only positive thing I can think to say about this one.

It's one of those gestures where performing it without the helmet slightly lends to its comical value because your character is permanently stuck with the emotional range of a table lamp without a bulb.

Which I guess can look fine.

Funny in screenshots, but there's little else.

Repurposed from the good ol' proper bow-
♥♥♥♥ it, I guess I'm just gonna capture footage for all of these.

I have like 15 other references in this script to past gestures in Souls games so I'm just gonna capture it, whatever.

Continuing Elden Ring's habit of borrowing from its parent series and changing the names around a little.

It's just a better bow.

Any circumstance in the game that's appropriate to bow can be enhanced to an astronomically small effect using this more dignified bow instead.

It's also very easily missable because you can only get it by approaching Fingermade in Theralina right before the fight with Radahn.

And this usually leads to an instance of the community coveting the gesture due to its low availability, but sadly, and expectedly, this is not one of those instances.

Gowry gives you this upon purchasing Pest Threads and exhausting his dialogue, and after spending about 30 hours being taught the lesson that whatever outer forces are surrounding the Lands Between pissing on everyone's heads might not be worth praying to, this gesture instills no confidence in me.

I can see a case for it being used in the future, but I don't think it's worth it.

I can see a case for it being used as a begging gesture, but in most other cases, Grovel for Mercy tends to work just fine in its place.

Desperate prayer just feels like a helpful reminder of one of the 87 arm bars the outer gods currently have everyone in.

Give Hyetta one of her weird yellow grapes at the Church of Irith and she'll give you this gesture, which surprised me because this is the exact kind of reward that FromSoft would place at the end of an arduous, unnecessarily long quest, hoping its recipients develop an appreciation for it via Stockholm Syndrome.

I tend to slightly prefer this one over the Polite Bow just because the clasping together of the character's hands allow me to further live under the delusion that my character is somewhat capable of expressing something that might one day, God willing, pass as a legitimate emotion.

It's just got a little more personality, and that's something I tend to attach myself to when half the NPCs might as well be quest billboards with hair.

Rapture is Erudition for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

It's a highly expressive gesture that looks decent in wide screenshots of scenic landscapes, but when your character is looking at you as if you're looking at someone else, you're looking at someone else.

If you're looking up at something this dramatically, that usually comes with an insinuation that there's something actually above you, warranting such a reaction.

I tried casting different spells and then timing the gesture with the busiest part of the spell, and the only two I found that sorta made sense was Founding Rain and Crystal Release.

I guess Cosmic Skyfire sorta works with it too, but that's not an actual spell in the game.

That's a sorcery from my 101 Sorceries mod that you can download right now![www.nexusmods.com]

Jesus Christ, mind taking that back inside the barn you were raised in?

I'd give you a proper enemy, but I'd give you a proper enemy.

I'd give you a proper enemy if I had the budget for it, but having my character ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the floor is something I don't think is content that would fly by YouTube standard.

For all the five people clawing at the gate to brute force sumo wrestler builds into the meta, I guess this gesture is for you.

But outside of that incredibly niche crowd, I can imagine almost nobody expressing any interest in this. It's another resting gesture, and that's really all I have to say about it.

It's a wave.

You wave at people.

I don't need to explain this one.

Surely you're not that bereft of human interaction, right?

The curtsy is one of the more feminine options for bows and greetings, and although dignified, it only really makes sense with certain outfits.

It's one of the most easily missed, well, I guess most easily ignored, only because its requirements involve paying attention to a specific game mechanic that a small handful of people have ever given a ♥♥♥♥ about, unless that is you're going for a particular run.

Level a spirit up to +4, and Rodrika will teach you yet another bow gesture as a token of appreciation.

Can you imagine if you level the weapon up to +10 or something, and Hugh just gives you a smithing gesture and leaves his post like, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, here, do it yourself then, ♥♥♥♥♥?

My Thanks refers to a gesture in multiple FromSoft games.

Knightslayer Tzorig gives you the gesture either after your death or after you've killed him, and the gesture was a lot more expressive and involved the player literally taking a knee, facing directly upwards and spreading out your arms.

But unfortunately, people started getting a little too adventurous with this gesture.

When performed under dragons, they got confused and thought it meant something else, resulting in the Firelink Shrine losing a lot of good stuff.

Good soldiers, that day.

Can you believe I get paid to write this ♥♥♥♥?

Now, My Thanks has been downgraded to a simple, yet dignified bowing gesture that's only slightly more embellished than most of the others.

This was around the time where I realized just how creatively starved Elden Ring's gesture lineup really is.

I still don't get the point of this one, but I can't ignore the creativity that I've seen from some PvPers.

I remember having to capture footage for that one PvP video I made a couple months ago, and receiving a military-grade stomping from this one dude with power stance Nagakibas.

And after dying a third time but finally taking a good chunk out of their health, I respawned to see them in the middle of this animation.

Acting like me whiffing three Halberd R1s in a row was indicative of some looming threat that they just couldn't contend with.

So I took out a Nightrider glaive, popped Waves of Darkness, and then ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disconnected.

So I can't really say this gesture is useless.

I've seen a handful of people put it to work, but that handful is exactly one person.

This gesture is in a similar position.

The notion of acting sleepy or dozing cross-legged is a little bit different from what I've seen.

Dozing off like you've been running a 15 hour shift at weenie hut jr while literally in the middle of a coliseum match is a pretty rewarding feat of bad manners to pull off.

But it's a great way to get yourself killed because of how obviously slow the gesture's animation is, and the fear of someone recording it and posting your dumb ass on our instant karma is enough for most people to not even attempt it.

These gestures just make me feel like you're a really angry teacher aggressively trying to teach a magic lesson to an incoming freshman class of Raya Lucaria that all get really impressed for some reason when their professor says the word ♥♥♥♥.

If you want to enthusiastically show emphasis to a specific piece of scenery, the inner and outer order gestures succeed where vanilla tools like point forwards fall short.

Not to mention they make wonderful gestures to use in thumbnails for the purpose of extortion-
uh, showing appreciation to your audience by- by- by making great content for them.

The icon of this gesture is hilariously misleading to anyone who's actually taken the time to equip this and see what it does.

The other two pointing gestures are nothing more than contemptible stand-ins devoid of any semblance of human expression that are constantly preferred over waving, sitting, and literally just doing nothing.

But that fancy little garnish on the downwards point opens the gate for it to become one of the most toxic, overused gestures ever to be established.

And whether or not that's intended to be a compliment is something you'll just have to decide for yourself.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it might be used too much despite there being better options.

Gestures like Bravo and Fingersnap have tons of room for general control.

And honestly, even not in thought to a certain lesser degree.

I'm thinking this is what Tsorig's My Thanks may have been repurposed into.

Okay, so that weird tangent I went on like six paragraphs ago you can just ignore.

Great, captured all that footage for nothing.
This one's decent, I guess.

Maybe not as involved as the former iteration, but I don't really think it needs to be.

The single step forward and wide outstretched arms have a sort of wholesome hug-me-brother energy to it, but you can also use this gesture to demonstrate your enthusiasm for scenic locations like Raya Lucaria, the hill gazing above Altus, and my main man the Volcano Manor.

I don't know, greeting gestures are a dime a dozen.

And this dime being slightly shinier and more emotionally involved than others does a few small favors every now and then, I guess.

It's a fun one to use in some cases, but the fact that I needed to freeze my animation speed to zero just to get a decent enough shot of it is telling of a very important element that this gesture was just not given.

This makes me really bitter, especially knowing

• Erudition,
  
• Fire spur me,
  
• Grovel,
  
• Prayer,
  
• Rapture,
  
• Inner and Outer Order,

and every single resting gesture in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game was given infinite active time that very few of them even take advantage of.

This animation was begging for the same benefit and it just didn't get it.

What, was disguising yourself as a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ statue too effective during invasions or something?

You'd think this gesture would be held back by the same disadvantages of its cousin-in-law, the Curtsy, but that's not really the case.

The spinning animation is equally feminine, lending itself to outfits that are usually busier and have a lot more physics involved in their design, like flowing capes or loose fabric.

But when I see someone in full knight's armor with none of this detail whatsoever pretending to be a runway model, it works so poorly that it flies back around to being good again.

It's got spoiled pretty princess energy that's only enhanced comically when performed by a dude with a shoulder diameter bigger than a fridge.

It's the same as the dual bow, making this gesture a particularly odd case where it was apparently so widely appreciated in a previous iteration that they didn't even use it in any way to make it feel like it needed anything else except a different name.

When I say it's the same, I mean it was literally copy-pasted from Dark Souls 3.

And that, I think, is a good thing for some of these, honestly.

Community favorites deserve the opportunity to make a return in a different game, but it only further legitimizes the questioning of why other gestures like My Thanks and Deep Respect didn't get the same treatment. Like, what was wrong with this?

This gesture was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ perfect shut up, just move on.

Again, I reiterate, borrowing from past games can be a very good thing.

However, context is important, and even though the Vileblood Covenant doesn't exist in whatever universe this is, and this gesture would have an inherently different meaning entirely, I think some people would still feel a little off if the arm placement was perfectly horizontal like in Bloodborne's Deep Respect.

So I think the slight upward tilt of the right arm kind of works in this particular circumstance.

Bringing back a favorite gesture is one thing, but Deep Respect was a covenant-related action, it had background to it.

It'd be like if you brought back Praise the Sun for no reason, like, sure it's a cool, cool gesture, but people would just be confused.

I need help deciding something.

Is Erudition considered a good gesture because of its expression, or do people just consider it good because it's one of the few with actual in-game utility?

Make Contact is regarded as a staple surrounding Bloodborne culture, but take away its interaction with that weird ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ brain down in the Mensis pit and the fact that it actually gives you something good, and, well, what are you left with, exactly?

Just an awkward impersonation of a clock face no one asked for.

I legitimately can't tell if it's a good gesture or not, but I think it's a good gesture.

I think it's a good gesture, because it's one of the few with actual in-game utility.

I definitely can't tell if Erudition suffers from the same problems, but I do know that enough people like this one for them to start plotting my crucifixion if it's ranked anywhere below 15, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

This one's just stupid. It's completely unnecessary, and I love it.

The amount of expression here is just wonderful.

The initial crouching down tricks you into thinking it's just another port from Dark Souls 3, but then it follows up with this golden slam dunk as your character, completely petrified, just tips over like a rock after a strong gust of wind.

It's a resting gesture I can think of no single use for other than just looking at it and appreciating it, and for some gestures, I think that's more than enough.

I'm still trying to decide if I can get behind this one or not, but the more I see the fire prelates do it, the more it sorta just grows on me.

Whether that growth is akin to a beautiful flower or a tumor is yet to be decided, but I'm getting swept up in its glory regardless.

It's weird, it's awkward, but it's bold and heroic at the same time.

It's the same display of confidence as someone's grandma doing the Macarena on a crowded dance floor and everyone just goes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nuts on the premise that her body doesn't evaporate into dust after sneezing.

It's a gesture that demands acknowledgement from every crowd in the weirdest and most unconventional way possible, and I'm completely in love with it.

This is probably one of my favorite showings of respect the game can offer you.

People who fling this out prior to duels are all powerful, unless they get their ass kicked, then that's a little difficult to argue.

But it's hard to find someone in PvP that's actually powerful enough to lead with this gesture.

Most of them just get two-tapped by Bloodborne Ritual, but every now and then you can find a turbo virgin worthy of the Hoslow' legacy.

I don't know why I'm explaining so many PvP scenarios like I'm actually gonna go out and capture footage for them or something.

I'm not waiting 45 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ minutes to find a match in the Colosseum just for me to get two-tapped by Bloodborne Ritual.

Dumb bastards.

Another gesture with in-game utility, but it's simple and clean enough to the point where I don't think a single thing about it could really ever be argued or interpreted as bad.

And even if you don't particularly fancy its existence, it still doesn't waste your time or anything, it's over in like three seconds.

It's nothing incredibly convoluted, you're not taking a knee and flipping off the sun or whatever, you're just snapping your fingers and then resuming normal gameplay.

I also made the incredibly bold claim that it has in-game utility, and there's exactly one single instance where this can be considered accurate.

And that's of course getting Blaidd to jump off his stupid church-shaped scratching post for 5 minutes so you can continue his quest.

There's zero examples of this gesture having any in-game utility anywhere else in the game, so I'm not really sure if in-game utility as a descriptor made 100% in good faith.

Why does this one random gesture have so much emotion and expression behind it?

This isn't normal everyday dejection.
This person's house just caught on fire.

This person is currently watching their entire family being burned alive inside a house fire they caused.

That's what this gesture says to me.

Elon Musk just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this person's mom and foreclosed on their home and forced them to move to another state.

Look at how dramatically your character just throws their head back like whatever they just experienced is somehow traumatic enough to exert a physical force.

I just love everything about this one.

It's one of the most underrated in my opinion.

This is the single BM gesture for anything involving multiplayer interaction.

Pointing downward may have a growing following, but it's always going to be a bigger following than it deserves as long as gestures like this are allowed to exist.

The applause in Dark Souls 3 even pales in comparison.

It's just a milquetoast expressionless robot pretending to be a human that was a little delighted by something.

Sorry, is that a disembodied pair of hands clapping?

I don't see a person in there anywhere.

But the Elden Ring variant has the slight nodding of the head, the subtle recoil backwards as though your buddy just managed to get himself killed in a way that was just that impressive.

This is one of the greatest bad manners gestures I've ever come across in a FromSoft game.

This is the golden standard.

Not to mention it's one of the most easily obtainable gestures in the whole game.

Literally all you have to do is talk to a woman.

You'll be okay, I promise.

Sitting sideways just works for everything, no matter what you're wearing.

The physics on capes can get kind of weird, and longer fabric meshes like those on the confessor and depraved perfumer sets start ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the floor for no reason if you sit in one position for too long.

But that drawback isn't really exclusive to this gesture.

It's no secret that this is one of my favorites knowing how many different videos I've used it in.

And it's one of those gestures where you can just sit in one position for too long, and it's one of those gestures that you just really have no excuse not having.

T-posing after overtly and unmistakably bullying some low-level pisspants into refunding the game is a tale as old as time.

It's the kind of etiquette that keeps the streets going, you know?

Golden Order Totality is as synonymous with getting your ass kicked as a superhero's catchphrase.

If someone kills you and you didn't get T-posed on, it might as well not even count.

You should just respawn in the same player's world and they should get a message just telling them to try again.

And if you kill someone followed by this pose with the gold mask equipped, it should come with the added bonus of wiping the other person's save data.

I feel like I want to run up to whoever's in the middle of this gesture and slap them on the arm and see if they start spinning out of control like a blender with a broken blade assembly.

This is the kind of ♥♥♥♥ I think about off-script.

Yeah, yeah, seriously?

Wow, another gripping plot twist brought to you by the ability to read the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ room.

When would this ever not be the best gesture in the game?

But if you'll entertain me for a second, I don't think it has anything to do with the reasons people tend to choose this gesture over so many others.

The gesture itself conveys a specific stoicism that perfectly complements the player character's forever-frozen RBF.

It exudes a very distinct, carefree attitude that other gestures just aren't able to capture to their fullest capacity.

I've joined sessions and seen people casually leaning against the fog gate of the boss room like they were slightly behind schedule to attend a Final Fantasy cosplay meetup.

I've seen some of you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sneak to the backs of enemies and just lean yourself against them like you were conducting a shady drug deal in the Leyndell sewers.

It's an extremely versatile gesture that's never out of the way to pick up, and its complete vacancy of any proper emotion means it can be used in just about any context.

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