#basically: i saw some really thought provoking Marika art

[cyborg-squid]

i've been replaying ER (5th time) for like the past week. and while you have the upcoming DLC and big Lore stuff. you also just gotta stop and think. "What was going through character's head at X moment?"

like the Ranni and Godwyn synced death, Night of Black Knives. seems to have been intentional on her end, but how did she feel about it? sad? begrudgingly acknowledging it as necessary? or was Godwyn a guy that was pretty far away on the family line that killing him barely counts as fratricide?

or when you have to beat Radahn to continue her quest. how does she feel at that point, orchestrating the slaying another one of her brothers, one that she seemed to (potentially) have more of a connection to? at that point, the state Radahn was in, it could be considered a mercy killing, but no less tragic.

and then Radahn, him verses Malenia, what was going through their minds when they clashed for the first and last time?! i've seen it posited that Malenia may have thought Radahn was targeting Miquella, which is part of why she ended up pushed to the brink and unleashing the Rot. but then on Radahn's side, maybe you have him facing down his half-sister, yes, but the child of the union (Marika and Radagon) that just absolutely devastated his own mother, these children potentially doted on by his father, who abandoned Rennala. it's not hard to imagine that some anger at that could have manifested itself in that conflict.

And Marika. and the Shattering. what must have been going through her mind then, to shatter the Elden Ring?! i think the timeline places it shortly after the Night of Black Knives, so maybe it was out of grief for her dead son? but i find that rather unlikely, it's probably more so that, perhaps alongside Ranni, she sought to break free from the yoke of the Greater Will, and like Ranni utilizing Godwyn's moment of death, Marika used that same moment and ensuing chaos as either her own or humanity's chance to break free, depending on how you view things.

and then for! after all that, for Radagon to try to reforge the shattered Ring, what was he thinking?! in the very literal sense! how entwined are the two of them?! could he see what she saw? could he feel her intent? or did he just 'wake up', come to, and see a son dead and the Ring broken, and tried to do what he could to physically fix things?!

it's really fascinating to think about, the "what happened here?", not just in the Lore sense with all their big Outer Gods and previous civilizations, but also in terms of the personal relationships and conflicts that end up bring a really big driver of this.