One Detail I Really Like About Shadow Of The Erdtree's Final Boss Is That You Can Tell He's Not Fully

Miquella the kind when you ask him why there's an Albinauric torture chamber in castle sol.

Screw Marika's motivations. I want to know what the fuck is up with Melina and Ranni. Why do they seem like 2 halves of the same whole?

Why are they so similar design wise? Why are they both "burned and bodiless"? Why are they the only characters that know torrent on a first name basis? Why do they both share the same closed eye aesthetic? Why do their faces complete eachother if you overlap them? Why do these two, seemingly completely unrelated characters have so much in common? What the fuck is going on?!

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Semi side rant incoming but what if those eye markings that Melina and Ranni have are markings of an Empyrean? I mean, other than Ranni have we ever actually seen the full, undamaged face of an Empyrean before? By the time we see Malenia, Marika and even to a certain extent Ranni’s own face they’re all damaged to the point where any marking would be long gone (and we just straight up never see Miquella’s face) and we conveniently also never see a proper painting or depiction of any of the Empyreans faces ever throughout the game. Sure there’s a couple statues here and there but I’d believe that tattoo/mark details would be left out of that sort of stuff.

I've had a bit of a mixed opinion on the newest doctor who stuff for a while now, and for most of that time I've really struggled to pin point what exactly it is that's been missing. The writing isn't bad (for the most part), the actors are great, the settings are interesting and overall its felt like a very needed breath of fresh air for the show... but there is something missing, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

The aliens are gone.

No seriously, look back on all of 15's episodes from both the current season and the last and count how many of them include some sort of alien civilisation or society. Not just a singular monstrous alien that acts as an antagonist but an actual collective. There are very few. And no, aliens that are visually indistinguishable from regular humans do not count.

from what I can tell, there are three. Just three. Three alien species across an entire season and a half of doctor who.

There's the slugs from dot and bubble, the birdmen in Rouge and the singular Silurian in joy to the world.

And from those three all of them act as antagonistic forces.

Just as a quick comparison, the first season of new who, which came out in 2005 and had a significantly smaller budget had at least 6.

Sorry, wait, did I say first season? My mistake what I meant was first two episodes.

Where have they all gone? The universe of Doctor Who used to be teeming with so many different reoccurring and one off alien races that all interacted and coexisted. They weren't just throwaway villains, they were living, breathing creatures.

It used to be so rich with so much diverse life. The living plastic, The Slitheen, Daleks, Adipose, Sontaran's, The Catkind, The Ood, Silurians, The Silence, The Atraxi, The Racnoss, The family of blood, The mighty Jagrafess, The Reapers, The Judoon, The Hath, The Ice warriors, The vashta nerada, The Sycorax, The tree people, The Zygon.

But now the best they can do is regular humans and sometimes the odd robot or two. It's kind of depressing when you really look at it. The universe of doctor who has lost its magic, the life that was once abundant wherever the doctor landed is now sparse and non-existent. We don't visit alien civilisations anymore, we don't even encounter aliens anymore.

I don't think a game has ever made me feel as physically ill as elden ring did when I found out about how Miquella was using Mohg. 

I always had a sneaking suspicion that Mohg's obsession with Miquella had something to do with his charming ability, but never really had much more than a hunch to go off of.

Finding out that that hunch was not only correct, but also how much deeper the rabbit hole went made me feel genuinely sick. He didn’t just charm Mohg, he somehow used him to gain access to the land of shadow, abandoned him and then stole his still warm corpse to desecrate into an entirely different form to house the soul of the consort he actually wanted.

Mohg doesn’t even get a footnote in his little “thank you” speech at the gate of divinity. To him, we were more impactful in his plans coming to fruition for inadvertently delivering Radahn’s soul to him than the person who got him into the land of shadow in the first place. The person who died to become the vessel of his king consort.

I don't know why this part of the game specifically had me feeling so disgusted, it's not really something I can explain. There's just something about this character that was put on such a high pedestal by the world around him, and who has received unconditional love throughout his entire life, weaponizing that very same love against someone that probably struggled with it for most of his life and used it to manipulate, take advantage of and isolate him.

And then when one of his knights comes looking for justice, for the freedom of his master, Miquella just charms him too, burying his memories of his devotion to his lord and stealing him for his own followers.

He stripped Mohg of absolutely everything and used him for his own gain until the very end and beyond. For me, Miquella’s age of compassion died the moment he decided doing that was acceptable.

It always annoys me when people say that the Jurassic Park movies are ‘proof that bringing extinct species back is a bad idea’ or that the message in the movies is that a dinosaur zoo is impossible to safely run, because the parks in those movies literally never fail because of the dinosaurs. They fail because of corporate greed and general incompetence.

The original Jurassic park? Failed because of security malfunctions, sabotage and general lack of knowledge on the living specimens due to incompetent levels of research before they were introduced to their enclosures and guests.

Jurassic world? They had it in the bag. They’d created a profitable and incredibly safe system that had very few structural weak points and even less incidents involving guests being harmed by the dinosaurs. That was of course until they decided they wanted more money and fame and genetically spliced a superweapon dinosaur that could outsmart and overpower everything else on the island. Which obviously led to a security breach because they didn’t even do the bare minimum of research or even tell the people watching it WHAT IT WAS SPLICED WITH TO BEGIN WITH!

And then we have all the times where dinosaurs were released in rural areas and caused insane amounts of damage and death, which once again, only happened because greedy, underprepared and incompetent business men brought the dinosaurs to those locations without any sort of plan.

Considering the vast majority of the fandom calls Ranni a spoilt, selfish little princess for not wanting to play nice with the god and order that destroyed her home and drove her mother insane, it really doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that many would also not see what’s wrong with how the other races in the lands between are treated.

It seems like anyone who tries to break the status quo in the lands between is often painted out to be a villain in the fandom's eyes, unless they do it in a purely pacifistic way. Including the tarnished themselves. 

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Side note but this is also why I feel like any ending that reninstates the golden order as it was (including goldmasks ending) are some of the worst in the game. The persecution of many of the other races in the lands between aren’t going to stop if the golden order is put back in power. The golden order at its core was about trying to brute force control and "order" into the world by assimilating everyone else into it.

It kind of shocks me how people in the Souls fandom do not see Albinaurics as real people. Or even the Misbegotten rebelling in the Castle Morne as something they had to do.

I think something that makes this scenario even more painful is that the explosion was caused by a bullet hitting a container of shadows own energy/power. I can't imagine how that must have made him feel.

OK I've seen some people be worried so I do wanna clarify something about Sonic Movie 3:

they DO make it clear that the military was trying to kill Maria

the change from it being a direct shot to an explosion was probably to keep the rating low, but they WERE pointing guns at that 12yo

walters said "those are children" and the soldier responded "we have our orders"

they WERE killing that 12yo whether it was via bullet or boom

just bc the bullet missed doesnt mean it wasnt aimed for her and shadow

it was clear that the military killed maria.

shadow never mentioned this to sonic tho which i think he should've bc it's gonna be a jolt for sonic in movie like 7 when shadow's like "did i never mention the military executed my sister" and sonic's like "they did WHAT"

After a copious amount of time looking into the topic, cross referencing interpretations and reading item descriptions I think I've finally solidified my stance on the nature of the whole "Radagon is Marika" twist.

As far as I'm aware, it seems that Radagon and Marika used to be the same individual before being split apart for some reason. Enia says how all the demigods are direct descendants of Marika, which would only really be possible if Radagon was a part of Marika from the beginning. Even while split apart he would still be Marika to a certain extent. This goes even further with the fact that Radagon gifted Rennala with a great rune when he was leaving to become elden lord, which is something he'd only have access to if he was part of Marika.

The story doesn't work if they used to be two separate people who somehow became one, which was what I originally believed to be the case. It only works if they were the same and got split at some point.

The thing I'm puzzled on however is when were they split apart and why? And when and how did they remerge into one being with two minds?

I'm also curious about how Radagon, despite being Marika wasn't a god himself.

The line "Thou'rt yet to become me. Thou'rt yet to become a god" has stumped me for the longest time, and continues to do so because it seems to imply the idea that the two aren't the same individual split into two... But everything else does seem to imply that.

Is it a Millicent/Malenia situation? Where part of Marika was shed and became its own person? If so then why?

At this point I'm sort of at a loss and would love to hear the opinions, so what do you guys think?

Thinking about how despite all the suffering Leonard has gone through, he never abandoned Radahn. He never left or stopped carrying him around. And even after all of this time he’s still just as willing to fight by his master's side as he was during the shattering. Leonard isn’t some poor old steed forced to carry a giant, and I think his actions in the fight paint a very particular picture. The first opportunity he gets in our fight he fucking charges at us, the two move so harmoniously that it’s sometimes hard to remember that they’re two separate entities. I wouldn’t be surprised if he enjoyed combat just as much as Radahn tbh.

Thinking about how despite being driven mad by the scarlet rot and long since having lost his mind, Radahn never stopped using his gravity magic to make himself lighter for his steed. How he’s gone so far that he’s cannibalised both his enemies and allies but never laid a finger on Leonard. How despite being a hulking mindless beast, the frail creature eternally beneath him doesn’t seem to have any injuries. He’s definitely exhausted and starving but he’s doing surprisingly well for himself for a steed that has seen multiple Radahn festivals and the battle of Aionia, especially when compared to how many injuries Radahn himself has.

The two of them were inseparable until the very end.

It’s all good, I’m happy to answer them!

Marika very much does seem to be incredibly distant with her family (even her golden child Godwyn) which is rather interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was hardly present, which would also explain why no one caught on to her and Radagon being the same person.

Radagon seems to be more connected with his children (at least in the past) but the only other connection I remember being explicitly mentioned other than Miquella is Radahn, who despite heavily looking up to Godfrey, still wore the red hair he inherited from his father with great pride.

Rykard and Ranni however seem to be mama’s boys/girls respectively so Radagon breaking Renalla’s heart and leaving abruptly very likely struck a wedge in their relationship with him, which is probably why he’s hardly mentioned in their history’s.

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As far as I’m aware the wandering mausoleums house some of the demigods slain in the night of the black knives. The beings inside are described as “soulless” in a few places, which makes me think they were other victims targeted during the assassination, but due to not dying at the same time as Ranni, were lucky enough to just fully die.

They also seem to be somewhat possessed by a great deal of spirits, as they have glowing face shaped rocks littering their bodies, which makes me believe they’ve been animated through restless souls residing in them. Bells in elden ring are also pretty synonymous with raising the dead (spirit tuning bells specifically) so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something to do with it too.

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The Nox are incredibly interesting. They seem to be one of the first civilisations that caught on to the finger’s corruption and forged the finger slayer blade in order to rebel, but unfortunately they were found out and literally buried beneath the lands between as punishment before they could ever use it (which would have been extra awful for them as much like the modern day Carians, they too used to worship and chart the night sky). The only remnants of their society left on the surface are a handful of ruins and the town of Selia in caelid. Which funnily enough Radahn is very closely tied too.

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As for your final question, unfortunately it’s anyone’s guess. I can’t say for certain how Marika and the Nox connect. However I do think it’s likely that the Nox and Carians have some sort of inherent link due to their similar cultures regarding the night sky and moons, how Radahn was so protective of Selia and how Ranni uses the Nox’s finger slayer blade to slay her fingers and bring forth the “age of night” that the Nox are said to be waiting for.

I don’t think I ‘hate’ a single Elden Ring character. Each and every one is designed so compellingly, their stories are so varied, their interactions while sparse are the type to carry magnitudes of meaning.

Example:

For the longest time I did not realize that the scene we stroll into at Castle Morne is a slave rebellion. The misbegotten are treated as chattel. My first go around I assumed “ah yes, monster attack castle, understand”

It wasn’t until I watched a random lore video that only referenced it that I got it. I went back and read the descriptions of stuff and I’ll be damned.

There’s a lot of little tidbits hidden here and there that flip entire perspectives on their heads. Preaching to the choir on this point.

Even the characters that I generally dislike/disregard (dung-eater, (hot take) Varre, selvus) I still find fascinating. One of the cool parts about the game is you can just kill the character you don’t like. If you’re doing a run and you want to get a little roleplay in, sometimes murder freak be murdering.

Personally, I’m not on twitter, instagram (used to be), deviant art (do people still use that), or anywhere else ((I Do have a blue sky but I think I’m too dim to use it just yet)) . I’d love to be in a space where people talk more about lore or art things! I haven’t the foggiest clue where to go though. When I hear people say “everyone hates on xyz character” or “this fandom is so nuts” or whatever I am genuinely confused. I’m only seeing a portion of the stuff here, and so far it’s been more than pleasant! Big ups to the people on here, so far you’ve all been very kind 😊

So I guess, could I ask anybody to fill me in? Or where to go to get filled in?

In the meantime I want you to know I’ve started working on a pair of drawings centered around Malenia and Miquella - ooooo be so tragic oooooo