#and the thing is i like miquella too

[art-from-within]

Can i be real with you guys? Irdgaf abt that mohg discourse lol

[puppppppppy]

my brothers been playing elden ring recently and he let me draw his character ^_^

[drenched-in-sunlight]

I know you mostly focus on the Marika/Messmer relationship in your works (which can i just say i fucking ADORE IT IT'S SO GOOD GAAAH) but i wanted to ask, what do you think of the other parent? Who do you think Messmer's (and by extension Melina's) father is and what his relationship is with him? Is it Radagon? Godfrey? A secret third option perhaps??

im glad you enjoy my work!! as for your question, i think Messmer and Melina are like... parthenogenetic offsprings?? they are born of Marika only, which is why the game groups them in as brother and sister and they are the ones inheriting everything closest and most personal to Marika.

but i don't necessarily think they know each other exist, or at least it's my personal headcanon that Melina was born after Marika shattered the Elden Ring (at which point Messmer was already stuck in LoS, so he didn't know).

i actually think Marika only split into Radagon on the eve of Liurnia war, when Messmer had already been a grown young man fighting alongside Godfrey for a while. so technically, Messmer existed before Radagon. but on paper i guess the guy could be counted as Messmer and Melina's dad? cuz he's Marika still? (ugh my head)

but imo to Messmer and Melina they don't consider him their dad (and he doesn't consider them his. i lowkey think Messmer and Radagon despise each other 😭). they only regard themselves as Marika's children. at the same time, Messmer respects and trusts Godfrey, which is the closest he'll ever regard anyone else as a father figure.

[cometblaster2070]

side rant on the kindred of rot but they're genuinely some of the most annoying enemies in elden ring because you have things like normal knight, sorcerer with weird hat, t-rex dog on steroids, and whatever the fuck an astel (I'm so terrified someone send help they scare me so bad it's not funny) is but then there are these fucking shrimp ass motherfuckers with mommy issues who have homing missile technology in ye olde elden ring days and they do a frankly EMBARRASSING amount of damage.

and that's not even counting the emotional and mental damage caused by accidentally encountering them in the sellia tunnel (I think) after opening that trapped chest at the beginning of the game in nice nice sunny happy limgrave only to be met with a literal nuclear wasteland 5 seconds later.

all im saying is yk i don't blame malenia for abandoning them the second they were created because these abominations regularly made me go through the 5 stages of grief every time I encountered them.

[littlegoldfinchh]

why are people so upset about the ending of sote??? Like the base game hinted at miquella using his charms to manipulate people nfnd did ya really think that he was pure and innocent??

[orange-coloredsky-archive]

the "3000 year old child" trope has the possibility to be genuinely intriguing and could explore the way children are treated across time no matter their apparent level of intelligence. it could be funny it could be heartbreaking it could be horrific to think about. too bad 90% of it is just an excuse to be a creep. sad!

[katyspersonal]

^ Still love Miquella and don't think he is evil in the slightest, but blocking anyway for absolutely obnoxious attitude 🤦‍♂️ What a repulsive thing to put under a fanart caption.

Honestly, it starts to make sense why I dislike Leda so much, sometimes to the point I feel a pit in my stomach when people express love/lust for her. It is not her being crazy fanatical bitch in the 'bad' way (like.. Alfred, Adella, Lautrec and Queelign fall for the trope as well after all), but the fact that she is like this over Miquella specifically. Because she is like a manifestation of this type of fans, as if developers knew what's going on in the fandom. :/

Like, no other character attracted fans THIS repulsive and obnoxious and intolerant for different interpretations. They were acting like fanatics as though they themselves fell for the Bewitching Branch energy before DLC, they are still doing this now. It falls for the common behaviour "trope" in other fandoms where the nicest characters/niches attract the worst kind of people.

I was ALSO fed up with 'evil Miquella' readings, I am still fed up with 'greep Gehrman' takes etc, but I still disapprove of 'gEt MeDiA LiTeRaCy uwu' behaviour in the fandom!! Anyways this blog is a safe space for people that dislike Miquella or want to shape him into Griffith or whatever you like

[valkyurii]

it’s funny how things have gone full circle with malenia. she was so hated when the game first came out, but then people grew to like her. then the dlc came out and now people hate her again lmao

[eldenrat]

Demigod Constitutional Monarchy AU: The Miquellan Imperial Presidency

Returning to the pseudo-crackfic idea I baked up months ago to reflect on the idea of how an immortal being with pseudo-divine origins and the power to shrive clean the hearts of men would operate in the conditions of a 19th-20th century liberal republic barely a few years into its existence and facing existential threats from both church and nobility.

One: The Imperial Presidency

A term that became popularly used in the United States in the 1960s to describe the nature of the executive branch of the government. Specifically, it listed two major issues outlining how the office of president had exceeded its constitutional limits: the vague nature of presidential wartime or emergency powers, and the secretive nature of politics within a far larger presidential staff. Staffers appointed often had greater loyalty to the person immediately above them as someone that they were to in the form of patronage, and the appointment of people to Presidential staff was not legally overseen by Congress (unlike the cabinet). This essentially created a presidential court and an executive that was not accountable to congress save for election years or impeachment.

Miquella is, in both the official story and in this AU, a very secretive person. His city and the Haligtree he grew to usurp the power of his mother are located in one of the most inhospitable areas in the Lands-Between. The only way to reach this place is via a secret key to the Grand Lift of Rold, and even once through there you must light fires within the town of Ordina to access Elphael itself. His presence in Mohgwyn palace is a long-standing mystery that neither Gideon nor Sir Ansbach appear to be able to unravel until his ascension in the Land of Shadow is well underway. His purpose within the sealed off lands is only clear insofar as he seeks the divine gate of Enir-Ilim, but little is known about what exactly that means until it is already too late.

His followers are, in their own ways, reflections of the secretive nature of their kindly lord’s operations. Leda professes her devotion to him regularly and keeps good on that by simply not divulging any of his plans, a loyal right hand who believes zealously in his promise of a gentler world and will brook no treason or internal opposition. Hornsent, Dane, and Moore are those who find themselves in the pilgrimage through the promise of something to gain. Hornsent is promised redemption for his murdered clan, Dane can see the aims of the Dryleaf sect through to their conclusion in the ascent of a new God, and Moore and his brood can find love and belonging where they were once outcasts rejected by their own mother. Thiollier, Freyja, and Ansbach are potential subverting elements that are, unlike the others, deliberately kept largely in the dark about Miquella’s plans for St Trina, Radahn, and Mohg respectively.

While the other Demigods have this court system in place themselves as the heirs of an imperial system based on the rights of lineage held by the aristocracy, none go to the same length of secrecy that the master of Elphael will go, nor do they have the sizable following that are active in their most private plans. Hence why I see him as a much more standout example than even the likes of Morgott or Ranni.

Two: On Political Corruption and the Nature of Secrecy in Democratic Politics

Miquella would not be a personally corrupt executive. He has, after all, gone to great lengths to divest himself of the things that interfere with his impersonal compassion. His love, doubts, vacillations, and fears are all put to the wayside. But this does not make him wholly infallible, and his desire to embrace the whole of the world, including those with ill-intent, can be examined further. Many of the followers he has taken in are some manner of person with a long history of violence or murder through more indirect means. Even were he to make himself into the perfect and impartial ruler he would still find himself having to deal with the very personal flaws of the members of his court. As that court grows new people will be added at the recommendation of his followers, and those that enter would each need to be shrived clean lest they contribute to turning the office into a space of petty factionalism and scrambles for favor and power. This would, if only temporarily, make the court or executive office of this hypothetical AU Miquella into a functioning state body when by all means it should be tearing itself apart in a struggle for personal standing like a school playground. But this stability rests on a knife’s edge, should Miquella falter or be out of commission this house of cards would collapse in on itself and do potentially irreparable damage in his absence.

There is also the problem of how secretive Miquella is in his operations and his unaccountability tlwards a democratically elected legislative or judicial branch of government. Even if the two branches found something that they could potentially use to get him to share more of his staff’s inner goings on, it could just as easily be turned on a specific member of the court who would quite willingly put their career on the line for Kindly Miquella’s sake. The information would go the way of a paper shredder or kindling for a small fire as with the Iran-Contra affair and other instances where documents were destroyed to prevent legal accountability from being placed upon the president or higher-ups.

To be clear, I doubt that Miquella’s staff would end up in a position like this for reasons similar to that of Nixon or Reagan. His imperial presidency and the corruption and secrecy of his staff would not rise out of an open desire to smear and ruin the lives of his enemies, nor illegally sell arms to keep funding an anti-communist drug cartel just for being anti-communist, but rather one where his efforts to pass laws and policy for the sake of the welfare of the underprivileged is stonewalled by a legislature that he, like many American presidents after a mid-term election, no longer has control over.

But what does that look like exactly?

Three: “I TURNED MYSELF INTO THE TELOS OF HISTORY MALENIA! I’M END OF HISTORY MIIIIIIIIIIQ!”

For those of you who have not heard of the work The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama: I envy you. I can offer little but a surface explanation of what it entails but it is a thesis that states that the competition between the modern political ideals in the 20th century ended with liberal democracy triumphant on the grounds that it proved the ethical, political, and economic superior to the various strains of fascism and communism that arose to challenge it. History as an evolutionary process with a distinct point that will always find a way to prominence even if another breed of anti-democratic politics find its way back into prominence. The French Revolution let loose a genie that cannot be put back in a bottle so long as there is a democratic impulse present.

Miquella in this AU is the head of state of a republic that has only just unleashed this genie upon the world. The empyrean has seen what the previous governments have done for the lower racial castes and lower classes of baseline humans that the governments of his mother and Ranni, and he has found them wanting. The young Empyrean seeks to raise these people up through the establishment of welfare programs and sweeping redistribution of properties into the hands of both smaller landholders and worker-run business ventures, and a massive increase in the power of the state to acquire and use funds for public services through heavy taxation and cooperation with non-government enterprises. These policies are criticized by the conservative forces in parliament as radical, socialistic measures that represent a betrayal of the republic’s core principle of individual liberty, while others even among Miquella’s allies say that the policies on their own are not enough and that a complete and total war against all forms of private ownership is the only way forward.

In practice, Miquella’s plans seek to stifle the rise of the type of men and women Fukuyama (and some later schools of Marxism) predicts rising to prominence within the prosperity of liberal democracy. The wealthy middle class that has gradually allowed their own upward-mobility to cloud their civic sense of duty with a perverse sense of entitlement. A democratization of aristocracy without the noblesse-oblige that maintained the stability of the old feudal system. People who are bored by their own success, who lack a sense of what to struggle for, and thus turn what little community they have to a struggle against the prosperity given to them for the simple reason that they desire to have servants and workers who are made desperate and willing to cater to their every whim.

To Miquella, this threat to the end of history, to the most compassionate and capable political force that he has witnessed in the course of this AU, is unacceptable. His presidency will meld both socialist class struggle, a widespread cult of reason and civic responsibility akin to the projects of Radical Jacobins, and the ultimate supremacy of liberal democratic institutions as the means of shaping society.

However, when the legislature is lost to him in an election and now presents naught but opposition, how can he bring about an end to history and the cycle of unending conflict his mother and others before her inherited? The president cannot sit idle while the people who elected him to office call out for aid, and so Miquella chooses to find a way around the institutions he has upheld as sacrosanct. Use of emergency powers will become more frequent as the republic becomes embroiled in internal conflict and the real threat of aristocratic counter-revolution. Secrecy within his staff allows him to circumvent the other branches with new departments and agencies willing to go to great lengths to seize property and place it under the jurisdiction of people that will need to be trained in economic management, which in turn necessitates the creation of more departments in order to accomplish this. These departments achieve their intended effect, but how long can they last when they are instituted at the command of one branch ignoring its limits? How can he trust the many of the people that comprise the electorate when the privileges and newfound wealth afforded to them from those who came before have infected them with a disease of abundance? What happens when Miquella himself cannot go on? Those are questions left unanswered, for every person in his staff dreads what will happen when they recieve one. What they all know is what must be done.

In the name of compassion he will create a utopia where the holiest liberty and justice are the commandments of god, and ‘love thy neighbor’ is a law enforced with the same violence as all others like it must be. It is terrifying, and for those who have long suffered under the previous reign of Queen Marika and her flawed attempts to balance the crown upon a republic, that terror is worth the beauty of hope for something better.

[bellepeppertronix]

Elden Ring thoughts re: Mogh and Miquella, and Miquella in general

Why are writers still doing the thing where there's a reveal that an apparent victim of kidnapping and molestation turns out to be the secret mastermind controlling the molestor?

Especially when the apparent victim is shown to look like a child?

What are these (let's be honest) mostly cis-man writers trying to get us to absorb? Who are they trying to make us feel sympathy for? And why?

To point out, after some digging, Mogh already had a compelling backstory before they decided to *checks notes* have perpetually childlike looking younger brother seduce and then mind-wipe him. And then use his body as a shell to put the soul of their half-brother into. So that the childlike older brother could marry the body with the soul of his half brother living in it.

Like Oooo The Tragedy...(and his story up to this point IS a tragedy)

But did we need this "actually the pre-pubescent looking victim of a kidnapping is at least hundreds of years old AND he orchestrated his own kidnapping 😌 and the guy who the whole fandom has been making 'molester' jokes about was innocent all along 😌" ???

Did we need this in this day and age? When so many actual victims are coming forward and pointing out that they couldn't speak out for years because the person who attacked them was socially prominent or wealthy? Like why are these men making DARVO into huge plot points in videogames, presented as a vindication for the apparent aggressor?

[knightofleo]

Can I get an Amen.

[reitziluz]

mogh's theme is in my top three for the entire elden ring ost and it's one of the few songs i risk my eardrums for because it needs to be blasted real loud to properly hit.

there's basically a single word sung in it that kills me. in second phase, when after the drop it goes quiet, instruments drawing back and the low voices reducing in number (maybe there's only one mainly heard?) and sounding personal and up close instead of grand and ceremonial and preaching.

and then at the end of a line there's a word that kinda sounds like "praetori" and the lilt of it. sounds like such adoration. disney princess lifts a forest critter on her palm and nuzzles it to her cheek.

combine that with how the low and high voices interact, what the bells are doing. it's so rich in implications.

idk man. the whole thing sounds so much like a monologue (switching to a dialogue, or asides responding to commentary at times) and i keep hearing so many different types of speech in it. makes me want to use words like implore and beseech.

and then the ending is like hands reaching toward the light only for it to cut off.

no amount of pomp nor fervor could save mogh from being an omen.

[luminaryofblood]

God, every time I see posts arguing about "Stop comparing Miquella to Griffith!" I feel this burning sting because, come the DLC and-- yeah, they kinda did go and turn Miquella into a Griffith.

[trashingfish]

I do wanna re-think on Malenia's flaw, being that she can't accept defeat. I still think that is her flaw. But with the new information that the DLC brings, I wanna think more on it

[pillowenvelopchair]

Even MORE doodles. Cant get these brain worms out of my head. Some stuff here is from Still Waters by @un-local go check it out!!!

[katyspersonal]

Regarding previous post about disco horse: I really appreciate that everyone is actually talking for once, but a kind of jab happened on my mental health so I have to step away. It isn't from this post, but the reason is sort of connected

Again, I personally find no problems with the DLC except for how Radahn ship came from nowhere and can justify how that comes. But regardless of how many things anyone else dislikes about the DLC: you are valid to hate it as much as you want, but when you start insulting people who loved/accepted/justified the DLC as "media illiterate fromsoft dickriders who keeps coping even after the honeymoon phase passed" and variation I draw the line. There are many ways where other fans can find reason where you didn't and there is potential in new lore that you won't use. Absurd how some people are still willing to support illusory narrative that Radahn Redditor simps are the "worst" part of the fandom when not even at their most arrogant and annoying they can dream to reach HALF of the toxicity cultish Miquella/Malenia fans have, over the awful crime of having different readings, opinions and priorities.

And yes, I know it is inevitable that Tumblr and Twitter fans WOULD make a moral/intellectual/maturity contest out of how people feel about the DLC (🤡🤡🤡), but it hurts when people I actually don't want to butt heads with who start to approve of this mentality. Like, okay cool. Wallow in your elitist toxic pool of Ledas while we, "pathetic dickriders" go and "cope" somewhere else, hope everyone is more comfortable this way 🤦‍♂️ I am tired of getting hurt through endless passive aggression and I have my limits. It is just always hurtful to finally rip the bandage, even IF it is to the better. I need a hiatus for a longer time, albeit for a different reason now