#elden ring fandom

[eirliss]

Ranni The Witch

Twitter | Instagram

[jujaazz]

my wife, my beloved

[performarie]

I just want them to be a couple and to heal each other’s wounds ❤️‍🩹

[lewinusart]

Val deals with the a case of mistaken identity before the radahn fight

[crow-drawing-their-cards]

had the funniest elden ring x reader idea that could work for like any character really.

dumbass tarnished decides to fuck around with magic they aren't good enough for accidentally chaining/handcuffing themselves to one of the npc/main bosses. now the two have to go on the adventure together because for plot reasons they cant kill each other.

[dvinaamesca]

Hey all, this is my new Instagram. If anyobe is interested in Lies of P, Elden Ring and other in-game photography, come follow me there. :)

[faewrenbird]

Okay, hold up, you know what? Since I’m at it, I also want to talk about the other big Elden Ring twt fandom discourse that makes absolutely zero sense in the context of the game other than the Good/Evil Miquella/Mohg debate, and that’s the Miquella x Radahn debate da da dummm

I want to preface by saying this is neither an anti nor pro miq/rad ship post. On the contrary, it’s a “it doesn’t even make sense to argue about it at all” post

Every time I see discourse or infighting about this topic (and there’s been a lot. Whole twt communities have cannibalized each other over it), I’m again floored that people think it warrants a debate. Like, genuinely and sincerely perplexed, and this is why:

The basis for the discourse relies on the premise that romantic and familial relationships, sex, and societal expectations in the Lands Between, necessarily mirror those things in reality. And…that entire premise is just…completely flawed and has been emphatically disproven by the source material.

Hot take, but I’m actually hard-pressed to believe that the act of sex even exists in the universe.

Here’s what the game tells us. It asserts that romantic love exists through the tale of Radagon and Rennala. It asserts that marriage exists, and that through marital union, children are conceived. This is where the similarities to reality ends. If we only had these facts to go on, the assumption that the mechanics mirror reality would be a reasonable one to make. But then the game goes all over the place and completely overturns our presumptions.

Let’s see, we have marital union that conceives children. Good. Okay, but also marital union between two selves in one body that conceives children… Oh, and also the conception of children that does not come from marital union at all, rather from the rotted battlefields of war between a brother and sister. Hm. We have a woman who sleeps with the dead, but “sleeping with” might not mean sex, oh, and she can also have a union with a corpse in game that conceives a child. Oh, but she also needs you and a bunch of other people to help conceive the child, which can later be placed over/in(?) the womb(?) of its grandmother/grandfather’s combined body, which then reconceives its father.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Depending on what angle you look at the game from, you could say it’s fraught with incest, selfcest, and necrophilia (also whatever the fuck is going on with Count Ymir). But this interpretation lacks soooo much nuance.

The thing of it is that we just don’t know how the demigods work. We don’t know the how, why, or even the if they have sexual relationships with each other in the way we’re familiar with. Your personal interpretation can be whatever you want and you literally cannot be proven wrong (or right!).

So why the hell do entire friendships get broken over whether you think twinkella wanted his brother’s gravity sword? Who knows? Who cares? You can headcanon anything you want.

People being morally performative over it is also just completely bizarre for the same reason. The relationship dynamics are between fictional gods, they literally and physically cannot be held to the same real life morals as you and I. The whole entire thing is the biggest nothingburger discourse of the fandom, and I bet the devs spent no more than five seconds considering that western fandom might be sending death threats over whether or not you like a little spice in your cosmic-god-rot-infested-golden-soup

[mohgreal]

as much as i honestly dislike sote i dont get why people have become so pessimistic about it i thought everyone agreed that eldon rong™ is just a silly video game™ and that you shouldnt get so worked up over it. execpt...no??2?2? for some reason i feel like everyone in the eldon rong™ fandom has their tolerance in negative numbers to anyone who slightly disagrees with them after sote dropped. it was KIND OF like this before but damn it wasnt nearly as bad... what happened to joy fun love and whimsy chat...

dont you all remember mohg™'s famous qoute????

(sorry for all the ™'s, marika started copyrighting me again 🙄 smh) (also yes this was a excuse to put that mohg image)

[bubble--cosplay]

Elden Ring Adventures 🌌

[floffris]

Finally finished my first handmade Ranni cosplay 💙

photo taken by @aizen.photo on Instagram

[eirliss]

Godwyn The Golden

Instagram / Twitter

[jujaazz]

"I am Melina, I offer you an accord"

[performarie]

Miquella the Kind ✨

My boy is literally shining like a star. I have so much fun drawing different Elden ring stuff and guess what? Malenia is coming tooooo

[midnighvtm4ss]

finding comfort in starting a new gameplay of elden ring when my life is going to shit

[troythecatfish]

[drenched-in-sunlight]

one thing that i find interesting is that even though we never get to interact with Marika directly, only knowing her via obscure cutscenes and other characters' dialogue... she actually displays a wide range of emotions as much as any other NPCs.

her statues depict her as having a warm, gentle smile:

the Mimic veil description points to her playful, mischievous side:

(it's a popular theory in the JP/Asian side of the fandom that it's sth from her childhood - hence the "Marika's Mischief", not "Queen Marika's", and she used it to escape the grisly fate befalling her family.

additionally, its equivalence in Dark Souls is also something described as "the mischief of a young girl who sought relief from the solitude of the woods at dusk", aka Princess Dusk who hails from "Oolacile, land of ancient golden sorceries", but i digress)

her portrait, the story trailer's "Queen Marika was driven to the brink" and Gideon's dialogue after the player defeated Malenia pointed out her sorrow:

(back when i first played the base game, this is the portrait that drove my eyes most in Roundtable Hold. i kept gazing at her - the Queen with permanently lowered eyes, and thought "there is a girl in there")

The bat lady's song, Messmer's entire Crusade, all those conflicts to establish the Erdtree, shows her anger, and the cruelty she's capable of:

Then there's Shaman's village, the clinic underneath Shadow Keep, the golden braid, the Minor Erdtree, the sealing of Death - that points to grief, trauma, survivor guilt, kindness, and the ruinous drive for revenge that results in the above path down hell:

(there's also a theory for the Crusade's headless statue being a reminder for the Hornsent of what they put Marika's mother through, but it's not concrete canon so here is the link if you want to check it out)

The fact that all of Erdtree's incantations are heal and protection spells (with only one exception of Wrath of Gold spell which was found after the Elden Ring was shattered), the Capitol's Perfumers originally being blessed healers, and that all Erdtree blessings come in the shape of tears give the picture of Marika's gentle wish at the beginning: to heal everything and everyone.

(and to me personally, there's a kind of vulnerability and honesty in showing your tears to the world and let it be your power to heal at the same time.)

the eye she blessed Messmer with (i do think the Eng translation at some part lost the sentiment of the JP text - that the eye is always referred to as a blessing)

the blessing flask that - unlike its Dark Souls equivalent (which ranges from 6-13 flasks), only have 4 available to us player, heal all ailments and status effect, and specified as sth made for Messmer.

the Marika's soreseal in the Haligtree + the waterfall near Godwyn's final resting place

the Regal Omen Bairn (that was fashioned after the Jizo statue - sth made by grieving parents wishing for protection for their deceased child in the afterlife)

the blessing, gifts, equipment that Messmer and Godwyn's personal knights all get

the fact that Marika's bedchamber and the Impaler's Catacomb (which is the only catacomb in the base game to have the spike trap mechanic used in catacombs in the DLC) remain the proof of Messmer's existence in the base game

how Godwyn's ending is the only ending where the mending rune is placed on the position of Marika's womb (the lower arc or the Elden Ring - also referred to as the basin in which its blessings pool)

that's a whole barrage of motherhood. the love, the fear, the postpartum depression, the guilt and anxiety, (the occasional scheming for revenge with her son). and despite how flawed and tragic that love ends up being for all of them, it is there.

(there's a whole subplot about how Messmer is the only demigod to be called ugly in-game (Hornsent npc dialogue) while Boc's questline is about how his mother being the only one to always assure him he's beautiful, despite everyone else calling him ugly. and how each NPCs questline does reflect a wider theme seen in Marika and her children. but again, i digress)

every time i think of her, Marika is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, holding everything from within (the beauty and the malign, light and dark, birth and death, she's warm and gentle, she's cruel and unjust, she's strong and kind, she's weak and resentful, she's sweet and she's bitterness made flesh)... and i could only stand there and admire it all.