jasminedeserveslove

[jasminedeserveslove]

Some Morgott through the years concept art (yes the Great Rune does make them bigger)

[jasminedeserveslove]

do you understand? do you see

[jasminedeserveslove]

if i was alive in medieval times you know id be up in that cloister obsessing over my ornate manuscript project……

[jasminedeserveslove]

omens everywhere for those with eyes to see

[jasminedeserveslove]

I am so with you on this, Ansbach

[jasminedeserveslove]

mongrel intruder!

*flame sounds/snake hissing*

you're listening to

102.3

impaler FM

*impaling sound and screaming*

where we play nothing but chants for the erdtree *chant noise* and hyms of the true order of gold *blessing sound*

blessings upon mine mother Marika *angelic singing*

this shan't be thine tarnished's station

*imagine dragons starts playing*

[jasminedeserveslove]

Dude it is SO FUN and EXCITING to see a reoccurring reader. If you've commented a handful of times on an author's work, I guarantee that they recognize you. You can't imagine how many times I've excitedly informed my friends "the person with the funny cat image commented!" "- anon is back!!!!" and the friends've recognized who I was talking about because I talk about my commenters so often LOL. We love you all!!!

[jasminedeserveslove]

A very fast and blurry portrait of mimic veil Mohg who goes by leat suspicious name - Morwyn, King`s advison and, apperently, a brother.

plus some thoughts behind his "design", i needed at leat something so he would remind Mohg and hair was only thing i could use. I thought making him ginger would be funny considering the fact not much people (if not all of the people) doesnt know about marika-radagon thing.

[jasminedeserveslove]

by OrekiGenya

[jasminedeserveslove]

I’m gonna be truly honest guys, I think the Elden Ring DLC is utterly beautiful and emotional. It’s not the best Soulsborne DLC but I can’t even complain when the base game was already so grand and majestic.

There are just too many parts in this DLC that are full of classic Souls sorrow and beauty. Finding St. Trina and hearing her plead with us to save Miquella, after he left her behind, his LOVE, the physical embodiment of his love, and how that parallels Marika leaving her village behind — the village that harbored the innocent girl she once was? These acts being done in the pursuit of godhood and us being able to save Miquella from Marika’s fate?

All of that had me in shambles. I also can’t stop thinking about how Mohg was so deeply enchanted compared to the rest of Miquella’s followers, and how that’s likely because he was so deprived of love that the enchantment was like ambrosia to him. He saw this golden, long-haired being that suspiciously resembled Marika herself and collapsed in worship and reverence. That’s twisted and sad.

I’m a rose-tinted-glasses-wearing Soulsborne fangirl, I’ll admit it. I see references to the older games and lose my mind. I’m overcome by nostalgia. Even the disappointment people have with Radahn being in the final boss reminds me of how people thought Gael was underwhelming or were shocked at seeing Vendrick, the supposedly grand king, as an empty husk. Same with slug Allant. They’re all so damn underwhelming, but thematically relevant.

I do think those bosses were foreshadowed and built up much better though. They were more emotive and heart-breaking as characters too. But that feeling of hollowness when you realize who you’re fighting at the end of the world is somehow nostalgic, and ultimately, I do basically see Miquella as the true final boss. Radahn is just his knight.

Besides that, I felt like what was missing from the main game was the lore behind Marika’s motivations and it being delivered to us so suddenly was perfect. Discovering her origins alongside Miquella’s ending was the juxtaposition I didn’t totally expect, but that I was unknowingly craving. We got proof that they both were different than what we expected. Marika was just a girl once. Miquella was that sweet child we praised once. But pain and desperation drove them to do terrible things.

To me that’s a message about how the pursuit of power (godhood), even if backed by good or sympathetic motivations, is a road to grief and horror. To transcend the bonds of humankind’s anguished cycle within a broken world means you must shed your own humanity — and that very choice is what perpetuates the cycle itself. To attempt to break the curse is to nurture it.

This message is the heart of Soulsborne, isn’t it?

[jasminedeserveslove]

Elden Ring, Rejection of Authority, and Transcendentalism

Elden Ring rejects authority as a final solution to the ills of the world, and then offers a message of transcendental hope that such lowly creatures as ourselves might be able to effect real change.

Elden Ring's world is locked into a seemingly endless cycle of violence. No one—not the humanoids, nor the many demigods and gods—has been able to come up with a solution that would establish an everlasting peace.

Count Ymir points out one of the roots of the cycle, which repeats in character after character. He tells us that the Golden Order's system as a whole is rooted in evil, unhinged from the start. Marika and the Fingers—the "mothers" of the system—birthed it malformed from the very beginning:

I fear that you have borne witness to the whole of it. The Conceits - the hypocrisy - of the world built upon the Erdtree. The follies of men. Their bitter suffering. Is there no hope for redemption? The answer, sadly, is clear. There never was any hope. They were each of them defective. Unhinged, from the start. Marika herself. And the fingers that guided her. And this is what troubles me. No matter our efforts if the roots are rotten, then we have little recourse.

Ymir also laments a similar situation with his son, in which he takes the blame for his son's malformation:

Forgive me, I failed to birth you whole, I failed to be your mother. For now, my dear, sleep soundly.

In both cases, we see him blaming the parent for the malformation of their children.

Ymir says separately that without a "true mother", how are we to flourish?

We all need a mother, do we not? A new mother, a true mother, who will not give birth to further malady.

So using these dialogue together, we can see that he believes that children can only flourish with good guidance from a mother figure, and that conversely children (and systems) birthed of a rotten mother will only continue to do harm when their creators set them up to be harmful from the start.

We see the same theme repeat with Metyr, daughter of the Greater Will. She is abandoned and left without its guidance, according to the Staff of the Great Beyond:

The Mother received signs from the Greater Will from the beyond of the microcosm. Despite being broken and abandoned, she kept waiting for another message to come.

We know that 1) the Fingers she birthed were rotten from the start (from the first block quote) and 2) Ymir's supposes that all of us are left floundering without a parent's guidance. We can then surmise that Metyr waiting on guidance from the Greater Will and never receiving it—while simultaneously refusing to change course and seek guidance within herself or another source—led to this malformation of her children. She kept doing the same thing she'd been doing since last hearing from the Greater Will, and that refusal to change course in the absence of guidance was her downfall.

We see this same cycle of abandonment and refusal to change course repeat with Messmer. An NPC spirit's dialogue begs Marika to come collect her abandoned child, presumably Messmer, to put an end to the violence he is doing—as if his violence might be ended by intervention from an authority he respects. But originally set on his genocidal course by his mother (see his armor set clothing tags), Messmer refuses to change course even after being abandoned, as he tells us:

My purpose standeth unchanged

and then proceeds to beat the ever-loving daylight out of us so that he can go back to spearing Hornsent. It's important to ask, "Why? Why must your purpose stand unchanged?" After all, he could simply end the genocide himself, disbanding the military forces that so respect him. But it's his refusal to do anything but act on the last command he received from his preferred authority figure—his mother—that ensures that his cycle of violence will continue.

So if all of the authority figures are truly rotten in Elden Ring, and those who rely on them end up making grave and violent mistakes, where then are we to turn?

The Mending Rune of Perfect Order might give us a clue:

A rune of transcendental ideology which will attempt to perfect the Golden Order. The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men. That is the fly in the ointment.

The Rune reminds us not to worship gods—or any authority figures—for they are just as fallible as the men who blindly follow them. It explicitly warns us against relying solely on guidance from authority to decide on what we think the right course is.

And so if we cannot rely on authority, where then do we turn?

I think the gameplay gives us two answers. After all, the only ones who can make actual change within the game world are 1) ourselves, and 2) our community, should we choose to summon other players for help. So instead of worshipping any authority figure, hoping that they will simply tell us what to do, we are forced to make decisions with our own and our community's input alone.

Elden Ring challenges you to think critically about what you and your community think is truly right and effective in any given situation. In this way, Elden Ring gives us a thoroughly transcendental message of hope, that such lowly creatures as ourselves and our community might remake the world to be better.

[jasminedeserveslove]

Okay so I've let the DLC stew for a little while and now I think I'm fully ready to express my feelings on it. Be prepared for spoilers for SotE and a little bit of spoilers for my fic.

All in all, I really love the DLC.

Hot take, I know.

Seriously though, I think it's completely worth the hype. I enjoyed every second of exploration and getting my ass kicked (I still haven't defeated the final boss and it's eating me alive). I couldn't ask for anything more. Characters from the base game were rounded out a little bit more. Hell, I'm SO happy about the tidbits of lore we got for Marika, plus the HUGE revelation that Melina was one of her kids. Rennala got a badass sister! We have more lore about omen (hornsent, I suppose) and why exactly they're seen as so terrible in Erdtree culture. And the finger mother thing? I love her! There's so much lore to dive into, and I can't wait to do so in RBRB.

Speaking of my fic, I am SO pleased that I stopped where I was in the story and waited for the DLC to come out. After a little bit of editing and a couple more chapters, I'll be at its doorstep, and I have SO MUCH I want to do with it. I've been struggling trying to figure out exactly how I want to fuck Nyle and Stroud up, and the DLC gave me my answers on a silver platter. Stroud has a drake to kill and a heart to eat. Nyle has some eldritch horrors to witness and FINALLY something to break his spirit enough to become the antagonist I want him to be. I could kiss Miyazaki on the lips for the present he has given me and my sad middle aged men. Lux has so much to learn from the DLC too! I can't wait to throw her into Belurat and see what she does.

Finally, the elephant in the room. Mohg and his treatment. I've seriously been going back and fourth about how I feel with his treatment, but I've finally come to a conclusion. Am I sad that he died for, ultimately, nothing and was pretty much just used? Absolutely. Am I angry at the creators of the game? No. I could never be. Sure, Miquella choosing Radahn as his consort does seem pretty out of left field. I know that's one of the issues I've heard tossed around a lot. We don't know very much about Miquella from the base game, who are we to assume that this is completely out of character for him? We are not the people who made the game. We STILL don't know a whole lot about him. I've just decided to accept what happened and move on. I can be upset about how my boy Mohg was treated. I'm allowed to cry some tears of mixed feelings about what Ansbach says. I can express myself through the characters that I write (which I absolutely will. Good luck Nyle). But I'm not going to let it ruin the whole DLC for me. I'm not even going to let it ruin the characters for me. I still love Miquella and how compelling his pointless pursuit of love and happiness is. I still love Mohg, and possibly love him more, now that I know that we don't really know what he was actually like and only know him as a shell of his former self. I now have more respect for Radahn and understand his character so much more now. Personally, all of that is so much more compelling and inspiring than being upset that the DLC did Mohg and/or Miquella wrong. To each their own though, I just love talking about a particular tree game and my opinions over it.

Anyways, rambling over for the most part. TL;DR I love the DLC and can't wait to start writing again and have Lux and the goon squad explore every little inch of it. I also can't wait for the heartbreak I'm going to put every single character through.

I'll get to editing RBRB through the next couple of weeks. I have like two more weeks of work before I get ready to go back to school, and after that I'll be way more free to get to writing for the DLC and the rest of the game.

[jasminedeserveslove]

Been back on the Elden Ring grindset and I love my best bois 🫡❤️

[jasminedeserveslove]

我精神矍铄

[jasminedeserveslove]

crying a little at how fucking cute this little insignia on the back of ansbach's robe is

[jasminedeserveslove]

Happy teen boy

[jasminedeserveslove]

Monster fuckers are so creative cuz it’s like you’ll look at a monster and go “how the fuck would one go about fucking that?” And then a monster fucker will slither from the shadows and give a demonstration of human ingenuity