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new modeling suggests LIGO superevent 190814 may not have been a neutron star black hole merger, but an unexpectedly small binary black hole merger (gizmodo article for more info)

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green stormveil flags with golden lion

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peapod farum azula floral door vs the design on the halig tree divider that includes human faced beasts, reflecting the dying ascetic planting their cutting with maiden attendants

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the texture from the great jar shrine in belurat gaol, trying to make the design clearer by doing a draw over.

the left half is actually visible on the front of the shrine and the right isn't

beasts fighting, beasts looking happy hanging out

humans dominating the great bird and lion beast

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"No matter our efforts if the roots are rotten, then we have little recourse."

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underappreciated aspect of the maternal horror is that like the one great sees us all as pieces of itself to reclaim, marika views all of her children (including us) as extensions of herself and her will. we are extra limbs to be used.

miquella never had a chance, even though his tree failing made sense to gideon as a cause for marika's sadness. as an extension/reflection of herself, miquella failing had to hurt even if him succeeding at becoming a god still lead to us killing him for marika's status to be preserved.

if miquella failed to win and eradicate her, well, that was just as well. this is why i think the best and canonical end is ranni's. she wanted to be bested and if your game isn't on the level you're nothing but a sacrifice.

maybe if miquella had been clever and original he could have won, but he failed to one up marika but imitated her game.

if Miquella The Kind is a monster to those who had been charmed by him and he failed to live up to being a marika 2, how terrifying marika must have been.

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everything you reject forms your shadow

marika split herself in two convinced she could contain that shadow but the self is structurally built on contradiction, on the mutual forces of attraction and repulsion.

radagon gets blamed as the true villain or the geq when it's clear that it keeps coming back to marika but this is what i mean. radagon is marika. she is having the internal war that lead her to commit the shattering. that lead the one great to divide, the greater will being the impulse that could not be taken back once manifested.

the story is about the fact we are all the one great, but fractured and given autonomy and the ability to suffer and harm itself through war and oppression. our suffering is the one greats suffering.

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i havent dug into what people have said about shifting earth as memories of the night but that makes sense in terms of what the golden order rejects = erased and night erases the old order, so does the night remember what the day rejected?

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banished knight's greatsword details:

swirls around potted plant/large multi layered flower/Order lattice

consider: nox birds around potted plant/the flower as the fell god head/SUN flower + birds as the twinbird attendants who are also shown as legless maidens and swirl feet lions or other chimera

flower/potted plant of the jar gaols--they are growing potted plant people

order lattice

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theres some great storytelling happening in the designs of the weapons and armor but it's difficult to see in regular game play.

see: banished knight sword + sheath and where it exists as ambient props

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shaded castle statues

erosion is a feature of rot. the gold road in caelid has most of the decoration eroded away

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To the east...ruins of gold. To the west...the serpent's sacrilege. Wherever the path leads, so shall you follow. Wherever the path leads, only more sorrow. Tis a curse! A curse! The curse of Queen Marika! Ah...ahh... Ha...ha...

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it helps me to forget

the terror of her

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there's generally some clear distinction between the attending twins in imagery to show they're not just mirrored but two individuals and aside from the hippo/lion missing an arm i'm not sure what to draw from that.

but it's in line with how frustrated i am by shaded castle. melania is the severed harpy but there's some really OLD severed twin imagery and the discarded statues in the shaded castle seem to be of the old rot goddess but they're statues from raya lucaria and catacombs and leyndell.

there's been back and forth for ages about who the fuck the statues are and the closest we can get is people praying to them saying mother marika.

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the primary concern is the same as dark souls: will you allow everything that has ever been be erased and forgotten, or will you do anything, even the impossible to preserve (selected) memories eternally?

prevent change with an iron grip becoming the enemy of everything and nature itself, fighting the dying of the light or accept death and change and whatever it brings with it?

i think marika's refusal of change aligns her with the one great more than might be immediately obvious. the one great resents change from itself. the greater will was change incarnate. you can never go back. you can't stay forever. blindly following orders and fate robs you of your own godhood.

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like if you let go of the need for "innocent soft mommy kindness of gold marika killed the fell god so she can't have anything to do with it, it's a giant cyclops" but if u look at the evidence in the game it keeps leading you to conclude marika was the old death god who betrayed her station.

marika's statues are all over the darkness castle bequeathed to her child ordered to burn the hornsent using the fell god's image. it's marika's castle. it's the location of the conversion to tree worship.

if we're meant to mirror what nightreign did with the foundation, the trees were established by people giving up their bodies to become the trees, and the trees would be fed the dead and the dead would be birthed anew from the trees. the amber egg provides a broken version of this.

marika's dog brother is trapped holding death at the end of time, he is her blade. he wields death. the geq wielded the death rune.

her son who shares her black gold aesthetics also just straight up became the prince of death. who does that imply his mama is?

her first twins are the fell omen.

every time i see someone rightly bring it up they get shouted down with "that's not her aesthetic, marika is anti-death" she converted.

either she's so unbelievably persecuted and punished by this world for no reason it doesn't make any sense or she did a pivot.