Shadow Of The Erdtree - Blog Posts

Before the shadow of the erdtree trailer, I was firmly in my guilty gear era, but now the only thing I can think about is elden ring. Fromsoft brain rot is real.

Anyway, I really like this ranni fanart:)

“Indeed, I am the witch Ranni.

I stole a fragment of the Rune of Death, and used it to forge the godslaying black knives through fearsome rite.

I did it all.”

Happy anniversary to Elden Ring 😌 ✨️

I think I might be just a little bit obsessed with this fella.

Love the art

fun little thing for the dlc trailer :)

Just watched the Shadow of the Erdtree's trailer, and I have so many thoughts. The main thing I wanna mention is that I loooove Messmer's design so much.

It's so good.

And he has a little friend too!

Ahhhhhh what could this mean?? I'm so hype

THE PLOT THICKENS

Uh oh i “accidentally” made Messmer a twink

Uh oh, another blorbo with mommy issues and depression but isn’t that bad of a guy (ignore the genocide they (the hornsent) were putting people in jars its ok) despite him saying “raaa im bad hate me >:(“

Here's my love, abandoned.

“Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one left to heal”

I got to Shaman Village last night 😬💔

Elden Ring, my reading on Marika

Having finished the DLC, I am thinking of this scene. The scene from Ranni's ending, where she replaces Marika as a Goddess and Marika vanishes, finally passing away.

And one of the biggest twists in the game, alongside one of the major unsolved mysteries in the story is the reveal that Marika herself shattered the Elden Ring for some purpose, with the most sympathetic reading being that this was the only way she had to escape from the control of The Greater Will and recover her freedom.

The DLC expands on Marika, giving us an origin for her.

That is, of the horrors her people suffered at the hands of the Hornsent, the same people she would command Messmer to wage War upon them and commit what seems to have been a brutal genocide.

Now, my personal reading is that, after what happened to her people, Marika did a metaphorical deal with the devil. Either The Elden Beast or Metyr arrived to The Lands Between near Marika's village, and she accepted to be a Goddess and a servant of The Greater Will in exchange for her vengeance. and to be perfectly fair to Marika, this was the closest to Justice her people would ever get.

Now, Count Ymir suggests Marika was influenced by flawed advice from Metyr, the Mother of Two-Fingers, who lost contact with The Greater Will. But he also believes the moons are just the closest celestial object to our planet, so he is full of Shit. Because that doesn't yet explain The Elden Beast.

In any case, Marika made that deal and became a Goddess and she got her vengeance. And she fulfilled her duty as accorded, Conquering and expanding and forcing everyone to bow to The Greater Will. Who knows what she felt during this time. If she lusted for power as her empire grew, or if she was horrified and felt trapped by learning what becoming a goddess meant.

Because everything about Marika is always specifically filtered through someone else. Even the closest we get, her very words spoken by her, are filtered through Melina.

The second closest we get is Marika's village, where we see the things she left behind, Specific actions she and she alone did for nobody else but the memory of her village. and I say this because This:

is the closest we ever, ever get to meeting Marika. a broken face of someone who has long stopped being human, he don't see her eyes, we don't hear her voice. Yet you know what I see here?

Marika's Tired. So, so, so, so... Tired.

Was that it? that at the very end, Marika simply grew tired? was she, in her last moments, thinking back and remembering The Grandmother by the tree, and wishing she could be there for one final slumber?

And so maybe, regardless of what The Age of Stars means, on whether it is the "good ending" or not, this is the ending Marika wanted. For someone, any of her children, to hopefully succeed her and let her rest at last.

And what we see is that in the last moments of the Shaman whose entire home village was cruelly massacred (and who delivered blood upon blood onto those responsible and unto the innocent, and whose entire life was now defined to the service of some greater power), she is being cuddled in the arms of her step-daughter (of whom she may be Ranni's biological father), a moment of peace and warm before the end of a long road.

Maybe one of the things the DLC was meant to show us wasn't why Marika did what she did. It was to show us that it was time for Marika to go back home at last

"To our home, bathed in rays of gold"

Is this a spoiler? It's kinda a spolier... anyway...

WHY IT IS SO ACCURATE, TAYLOR, WHY???

ELDEN RING: Animated Ode to Miquella

Comments are awesome😂😂😂

A story collab: @whitecatarts did the story, story boarding, and color, and I did the editing, typesetting, and lineart.

Reads right to left. Tw: blood and gore