#Because they aren't active thoughts anymore and instead something that solidified into memory

[miirshroom]

Happy 1 year anniversary of that time when I had a breakthrough on how to read the Pattern underlying everything in Elden Ring. And was immediately struck with the dread of having no-one to talk to about it. I have since then found a few people who are thinking along similar lines.

Here is the key from my perspective: treat the Lands Between as if it is the deconstructed mindscape of an Outer God.

What are the characteristics of a mindscape? Distilled to a single core concept it's a world populated by thoughts and memories.

Memories are solid concepts - things that did objectively happen in the past - but over time some details may be eroded, or upon next recollection the gaps are filled in with embellishments and things that never really happened. I consider it as every tangible item that can be interacted with in the game is representative of "memory". This should be easy enough to understand through the item descriptions that associate them with various factions throughout the history. The "soul" of a person - the thing that makes them a unique individual - is the sum total of their memories. The challenge of Elden Ring is understanding all of the deconstructed memories scattered throughout the Lands Between that reveal the Will of the One Great - the God whose mindscape is being traversed.

Thoughts are more fluid, intangible concepts. "Thinking" is an expression of dragging up memories from past experience and combining them with new information to take decisive action in the present time. But not always do the thoughts agree - a good idea from one perspective may be a bad idea from another. Chronic pain can cause exhaustion that clouds all thoughts and judgement and generate negative thoughts. Painful memories may lead to overly cautious thoughts which lead to stagnation and lack of resiliency in the face of a sudden forced change in status quo. The Lands Between is extensively haunted by "spirits" that represent these thoughts backed by negative memories and resistant to change. Any enemy that bursts into sparkles upon defeat? That's a thought. The enemies that leave bodies upon death are perhaps to be understood as beliefs that have solidified out of certain well-trodden thought patterns.

On the other hand, the Tarnished player is representative of a new perspective entering the picture and capable of overcoming all of these indecisive elements holding back the One Great from overcoming the current dilemma. The Shattering is on one level a Crisis of Faith, but more to the point it is a collapse of self-image. The god Marika is dead and the Lands Between is grieving.

And this is the interesting trick pulled with the multiple endings. Because the Age of Stars ending is the one preferred option of the One Great - it is the ending that FromSoftware is nudging the player towards choosing and it is the one end that does not result in either an attempt to reconstruct a crumbling persona or succumbing to oblivion. Believing any Elden Lord ending to be the best is - consciously or not - an admission that the player does not understand the nature of the One Great. Rather, they choose impose their own Will and force the Lands Between to regress back to a vaguely remembered version of a previous point in time. At least in the past there was faith in Marika, but now she is a dead god and little more than a hollow victory has been won.

Also the player Tarnished is the most powerful person in the Lands Between because they can out-think all other beings populating the land with the assistance of a Torrent of Thought.