#it feels like an eternity ago

[thefairywithboots]

Every time I watch TSRTS, I feel like I am rediscovering this band for the first time all over again. Every emotion comes rushing back to me. I'm put under the same spell all over again. When the film finally ends, I feel like a dear friend has departed from me. Until next time...

[blinktimes182]

I've quit my job

I'm moving out of the city I've fallen in love with and back to my shitty hometown...

..away from all my friends

I hope these are the backwards steps I need to move on with my life. I don't know how much longer I can take things not going my way.

[sapybara]

How long it's been since the last Tommy and George stream???

[lumiilys]

Saw someone on twitter point out that only about 4 months passed between the first teaser dropping and the show being cancelled and I’m so angry and sad all over again!!

It was about 3 months after the season first started airing, about 2 months after the season was completed (more like two and a half but shhh) and just!!! That’s such a short amount of time!!! We got so little time to actually appreciate it!!!!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 242

   He looks the same as he had that fateful day, a storm raging around him and risking sending the ship down into the abyss. Hair whipping in the wind as the sky roars its deadly challenge echoed by the beasts they all sought to bring down those centuries ago. 

   It looks just as human as they- that is to say not at all, not anymore. A body twisted, sand and lightning melding into a molten sea ever-expanding. Its eyes as gold as the treasure it guards, brilliant blues and greens dancing across bodies in sigils unknown. 

   It looks exactly as it did that time ago, smile dancing on its lips as the sky opened up in torrents, like blood gushing from a wound. “You’re free to go,” it says, in words they understand and words they don’t. “You don’t have to stay here any longer.” 

   “Where will we go?” They ask, so very tired of this eternal battle, of being trapped in crashing waves and storms of water and sand. Being tossed one way and the other, never able to go home, for home was gone long ago. 

   It looks up, their own gaze following, the ship crashing through the dredges of a storm they had thought eternal. And for the first time in eternities, they see them. The stars. Dancing and dripping from a serpentine form that cradles the Sun and Moon, smiling down to the beast and them alike. 

   And so, they take from the seas, and take to the stars instead. 

[windydrawallday]

Target In Sight

[idlesuperstar]

current sexual orientation: tweedy, warm, intelligent, wry, ping-pong playing, whisky-drinking, poetry-quoting, motorbike-racing, gloriously red-headed here-on-earth-I-am-your-defending-counsel Doctor Frank Reeves [Roger Livesey: A Matter of Life And Death, Powell & Pressburger, 1946]

[a2zillustration]

More fanart for my friends, this is @owlsockets air genasi storm sorcerer Clair! I didn't play in this campaign so from what I remember there was outer space, and Clair had a baby with an evil god. Good for her!

[water-weaving]

ok yeah i think i might be entering the critical Autumn Madness period actually

[moveslikekeithrichards]

its so hard to talk about how traumatic it is to watch somebody be claimed by dementia without going "well i cant complain because at least i wasnt the one losing my mind (for now)" but that shit fucks you up so much. that ghost is going to haunt me for the rest of my life and all i can do is hope it Stays a ghost

[pulsingvoid]

i used to think that there will never be another trc because of its unique quality for the genre but i'm starting to think that there will never be another trc because i am not a kid anymore and loath as i have been to admit it i was a kid at the cusp of 19 when trc found me making it the last story i would ever experience that would feel like it's part of my childhood. because it is

[lineffability]

What do you think of azira and Crowley becoming human at some point in the show? I feel like most people really don’t want this to happen but I think it would be sooo sooo thematically relevant to them and their relationship.

I'm also not a fan of that, unfortunately:/ I see the appeal so I understand why some people want it, but it's always made me feel a bit iffy. I haven't found the right words yet but fortunately this fandom has so many wonderful people who've been able to express the sentiment quite well, like @bornonthesavage in their post, or @queerfables who literally just reblogged the post from me with these succinct tags that mirror my feelings exactly:

having an ending where they turn human would, to me, feel a bit like the death of them, I guess? (sth about 'i would die for you' - 'thats too easy. would you live for me?') (sth about them having to give up who they are to be able to be together? I prefer for them to suck out all the marrow of life, elbow to elbow, arms on the same table, forever hungry and forever satisfied)

[sinnabunii]

remember when bsd was about dark academia aesthetic detectives?

[imminent-danger-came]

My new hobby is skimming through seasons of Ninj//ago to induce a fever dream like state in my psychese

[blender2902]

IN DEFENCE OF QUEEN MARIKA PART 1: THE GUIDANCE OF GRACE-

Welcome to the first part of my Elden Ring lore series where I defend Queen Marika from slander. For the past 2 and a half years she has gotten a lot of unfair shit thrown at her, most of which she never did. With this series I hope to prove that Queen Marika loves Godfrey and all her kids excluding Radahn, Rykard(cuz they are Radagon’s not hers. I do think there is something going on between her and ranni tho.) and godrick( no one does tbf). But to do that I must first analyse the guidance of grace and then refute the many allegations thrown at her due to that. I will be using logic and evidence for most of my analysis, if I see a flaw with what I provide, I will say so. If I don’t feel free to point that out.

(Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that ‘Queen Marika did nothing wrong’ as that would be stupid and a massive disservice to the writing. What I am trying to do is portray Marika's complexity using evidence that I have seen no one else use and to clear her name of the crimes she did not commit. She is objectively a bad person just like every major character in the game but just like them she is complex, except her complexity is much higher than the rest in my humble opinion. Her complexity is far more than just ‘tragic past boo hoo’ and I want to show just that with this series.)

If you have any disagreements with my logic or you see that I have missed a piece of evidence then feel free to point that out. Either my delusions break or yours do and both are a win for me! Please present your arguments pointwise though as that will make arguing a lot easier.

DEBUNKING THE GUIDANCE OF GRACE ALLEGATIONS:-

The nature of grace is left pretty vague by the game. What matters to us is, what does it tell us about Marika? I have seen many people claim that Marika has complete control over grace hence she guides us to kill her kids in cold blood to fulfil her own selfish desires. There are several factual and logical problems with this argument. For the sake of this analysis, I will do 2 things 1) Go along with the perspective that Marika has complete control over grace and where it guides us. I will prove that if this is the case, then Marika’s motives simply can’t be selfish by using logic and evidence. 2) I will give an alternate interpretation of the nature of grace based on in-game evidence. What I want to prove is that Marika loves her kids, but besides maybe Ranni, she doesn’t love the Carian demigods since they are not her own children but Radagon’s. She doesn’t love Godrick either(no one does tbf again lol).   

1) Let’s go along with the narrative that Marika controls grace completely.

So the first question we must ask is why is she guiding us?

Well, the answer is clear, she wants Radagon and Elden beast to killed. Everyone can agree on that. Now, what is her motive for wanting them killed? I have seen some answers painting Marika as some Machiavellian Evil Mastermind, so let’s debunk them one by one-

She wanted to rule eternally even as a husk: Ok so, there are many holes in this answer that refute it.        

1) The biggest hole is that even after we inherit the frenzied flame, we still have the guidance of grace. If she wanted to rule eternally, why would she allow someone who inherited the frenzied flame, you know the thing that fucking destroys the entire fucking world all the way down to the fucking spirits. Why in the name of fuck would anyone who wants to selfishly rule eternally ever guide the dumbass who is willing to destroy the world including her. Her guiding the tarnished even after inheriting the frenzied flame alone refutes all claims of ‘Marika had a masterplan that after Radagon and Elden beast were killed she would blah blah blah’ but I am not done destroying this line of thinking just yet. Also, don’t even try to argue ‘Oh it���s a game Mechanic not lore accurate’ as that would also apply to grace itself so you are refuting your own argument.

2) If ruling for eternity was her goal then why did she shatter the Elden Ring? She had zero fucking threats to her rule. I have legit seen someone say that she felt threatened by Miquella as he was a prime candidate to replace. Now that argument is just plain dumb because 1) Miquella had to go to the shadow lands and do a whole bunch of fucked up bullshit to himself to even be able to ascend which he was able to do only because of Mohg and we know from Freja’s questline that Miquella was doing the stuff at Mohgwyn after the battle of Aeonia, so don’t tell me that Marika got scared as fucked of what Miquella was going to do and 2) even if Miquella had gone to the shadow land and had ascended what the fuck would he do without Radahn being there. All Marika would have to do in this fictional scenario is to keep Radahn alive which would be easy considering how strong he is. 3) She can just send Malekith to kill Miquella if she felt so threatened. The other empereans were Malenia (who is loyal to Miquella and shows no interest in becoming a god) and Ranni, who is literally fucking dead. Why would she take everything down when she has nothing to feel threatened with? The only other argument I have seen for this is that Radagon was usurping her so she wanted him gone, which has the major problem of - SHE WOULD BE IN THE SAME GODDAMN POSITION AT THE END OF THIS PLAN AS SHE WOULD BE IF SHE HADN’T DONE THIS EXCEPT, SHE WOULDN’T BE FUCKING CRUCIFIED. Like ok, so she did not want to be a tool of Radagon so she instead plans on becoming a tool for the tarnished? The latter is way worse than the former because 1) she is a fucking husk and at least in the former she wouldn’t have that pain and 2) Let’s face it, 90% of us are degenerates including me and our player character would reflect that, why would anyone want us to control them. Again, all of this is assuming she even had control during Radagon’s age and was all around malicious both of which I think is untrue (I will discuss this in another post in the future).

There is a lot more I could say to refute this answer but these two points should be more than enough.

She had a plan to ascend to a higher being somehow:

1) Again, the frenzied flame argument refutes this

2) So we are just assuming that she can ascend further even though zero things say that? Yeah. I think I am done with this answer.

So, what does she want from us? I believe that she only wants us to go kill the Radagon and Elden beast. Radagon is keeping the world in purgatory via his seal whether it be by his own will or the Elden beast’s depending on your interpretation so her wanting them to be killed is not really selfish especially considering that she would also die. Now at many points in the game the light of grace guides us. What does this tell us about Marika? Let’s take a deep look.

Here is the Elden Ring map with all graces active:

UNDERGROUND:

DLC:

Let’s analyse where grace guides us and prove that Marika’s motives for each case is born out of love (even if its morally complex) and is never selfish using simple logic. I am excepting Godrick and the Carian demigods (except maybe Ranni) as I believe she is apathetic towards them. We are going from hardest to explain to easiest to explain-

DLC: I have 2 explanations here.

1) I have seen many claim that Marika just wanted Miquella killed for some self-serving reason but this just logically cannot be true. Grace stays with us even after we inherit the frenzied flame which would destroy everything including Marika and reset the world so we can’t logically argue that she has any plans for her future. Therefore, the only sensible motive for her guiding us towards Miquella is to free him from godhood. Lets look specifically at where she is guiding us in the dlc:-

Something very interesting to note here is that she only starts guiding us if we rest at the divine beast arena. She never guides us in any other open world area other than ancient ruins of rauh. If her intent from the moment we entered was to kill Miquella then we would have been guided in gravesite plains or scadu altus but no, we get guided when we kill divine beast at which point she realises what Miquella has fallen into. This suggests that she does not want us here at all but after seeing that Miquella is going to fall in the same trap as her, she makes the choice to end his suffering before it begins, for she knew better than anyone how horrible of a fate godhood truly is. This does mean she guides us towards Messmer so we can get his kindling but I do think she is doing this out of love as well. Think about how Messmer is feeling after all these centuries. The last sign of he felt from his mom were her shattering the elden ring which was seen as a sign of wrath as per the wrath from afar description. He was suffering immensely too and seeing his mom as a crucified husk would have probably made his life worse than it already was, so bringing him peace and ending his pain would be much a better fate. Now Messmer will have his own post in the future as there is a lot of stuff about him that is unfortunately not brought up enough but that is beside the point. tldr Marika loved him but circumstances forced her to seal him in the shadow realm which happened very late in the timeline, like night of the black knives late. Again, I know this sounds kinda ridiculous to most of y’all but I will make a post with all the evidence in the future where we can discuss this. Her motives just logically cannot be self-serving because if it was then she would have stopped guiding us when we inherited the frenzied flame.

2)The grace at divine beast is simply pointing towards the entrance to enir ilim leading us towards a dead end. This could have been an attempt from Marika where she tried to tell us ‘hey ya can’t reach Miquella so let’s just get out of here!’ but she unintentionally points towards Messmer. When we kill Messmer she decides its best to free Miquella from his prison as well so she starts guiding us again. The fact that its only the divine beast grace that points towards Messmer and not a single other one does, supports this argument quite well.

Pick whichever explanation you want but logically her motives here have to have been born out of love and not some selfish shit because she has no problem guiding us when we inherit the frenzied flame. Me personally, the first explanation is quite sound with logic so I would pick that but there is plenty of merit with the second one. The thing going against the second explanation for me is that I just find it kinda silly that from would just have the grace point towards messmer but have it just be for enir ilim. Like important details like that being mistakes is just not it. Nonetheless the second interpretation is logically valid as we can see it as a desperate attempt from Marika trying to save her son but end up doing the opposite so feel free to think that way.

Caria Manor: Sorry for the low-quality pic-

So, Marika guides us towards caria manor which is where Ranni resides. Now I have heard some people say that she guides us here to get a great rune, but that cannot be true since Ranni is stated to have cast her great rune aside. Now something very interesting to note here, is that the site of grace that appears when you give Ranni the fingerslayer blade guides us towards Renna’s rise where we can continue her questline. This would mean Marika supports Ranni’s goals. Now I know you will say that I dug myself a grave because this ‘proves that Marika planned Godwyn’s murder’ but no my friend I did not. I will go in depth about the night of the black knives in the future but I will leave a few explanations here- 1) Marika supports Ranni’s goals even if she killed Godwyn. Marika very much holds resentment against Ranni for killing Godwyn but she realises that Ranni does have the right end goal so she is willing to have us help her. 2) Even in the scenario where Marika did help Ranni in stealing destined death, what says the goal was to kill Godwyn? Nothing, from what I can tell and motive wise, this falters a lot too. What could have been the end goal was for Ranni to steal the rune of death so that Marika could use that to kill herself but the assassins double crossed them. 3) Maybe Marika doesn’t even want us to help Ranni but kill her instead which would be really funny cuz most ER players ended up marrying her lol.

I will make a future post that will debunk the Godwyn allegations so I will ask that if any of you wish to refute this post, leave out this particular section.

Church of the plague: sorry again for low quality pic-

So why does Marika guide us towards church of the plague? Well, the simplest explanation is that she is not guiding us towards that church, but toward Radahn. If she was guiding us towards Millicent, we first have to assume that she even knows about her in the first place which is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. Now we can definitely argue that Marika is trying to use Millicent to get to Malenia as Millicent leads us towards castle sol. I will explain that is the next point about castle sol.

 Castle Sol: Sorry again for low quality pic

So, she guides us towards the secret medallion in castle sol. I have seen people say that ‘Marika wants us to kill Malenia so we can get her great rune but that makes zero fucking sense when you consider the fact that when you reach this point in the game, you do not need any more great runes. If she really wanted us to get all great runes then why does she not guide us towards Mohg in Mohgwyn palace?

Simple, she does not want us to kill Malenia nor Mohg. If try to argue by saying that ‘Oh she doesn’t know about Mohgs palace’ don’t, because my guy, she starts guiding us towards Ranni after she disappears from her tower and she immediately guides us towards Miquella after finding out what he is upto. She is shown many times to actively react to what is happening in the present so if we were to discover Mohgwyn and her motive was for us to take all great runes then she would immediately guide us towards Mohg the moment we touched a grace over there but no, she does not which refutes all claims of her wanting us to slay all her demigods. Now begs the question, what does she want from us getting the secret medallion? Well, we have a few answers- 1) This could be another Ranni situation where she thinks Miquella can succeed her properly and she wants us to help him out but she realises that it’s too late for him. 2) Gideons dialogue does seem to suggest that Marika knew that Miquella got kidnapped so maybe she hoped we could help him but we know what Miquella was up to. Again, like I have said multiple times before, this will require a post of its own but the point is that Marika’s motives here just can’t be selfish as all the logic and evidence says otherwise.

Leyndell and Morgott: Same thing as with Messmer, Morgott was defending the capital for a very long time which caused him a lot of suffering. Marika just wanted him to be at peace after everything. It is very, very important to mention that Godfrey was likely also being guided at around the same time as us which I will elaborate on late in this post.

Castle Morne: I guess she guides us here to get stronger cuz that is the only logical explanation.

The rest either guide us towards a  shardbearer who Marika does not really care much about.

Another very important point to mention in this discussion that supports my stance of Marika actually loving her kids- Vyke and Godfrey. Vyke was a tarnished guided by grace and is stated to have almost become elden lord but failed due to frenzied flame bullshit. Now he somehow got to the point of the forge of the giants without killing any of the demigods. This flat out tells us that Marika tried her best to help her kids live but her attempts were met with failure as seen with Vyke. But at the same time she guides us, she is also guiding Godfrey. Godfrey would definitely come to peaceful agreements with Morgott letting him live. This means that even after Vyke failed, Marika still tried her best to save her kids it seems. Unfortunately, we were just faster than Godfrey. In Godfrey’s cutscene, we see that his grace guides him towards us. Now what does this say to us? Let’s logically break it down. Is Marika trying to see which one of us is stronger so she gets the best chance to be freed? Well, this makes little sense logically speaking. Her goal is to be freed, so it’s best to have both Godfrey and the player kill Radagon and Elden Beast together instead of doing a dumb battle royale which might result in failure. Like at least send them one by one to weaken Radagon and Elden beast for the other. So logically Marika is not being calculated over here which means emotions are at play. The only way this makes sense is if Marika wants Godfrey specifically to come and rescue her. Looking at Godfreys cutscene and the Ashen Capital site of graces, I find it quite odd that Marika seemingly stops guiding us when we release destined death but then Godfrey is immediately guided towards us. This is, in my opinion, a very strong clue that Marika wants Godfrey over the tarnished.

Ok, done with the first perspective.

2)An alternate interpretation of grace-

So, if we go kill the final boss of the base game, we kill Radagon which in turn kills Marika also. Now if we go light a grace that gives guidance after this, it still gives us guidance. This does seem to suggest that grace works independently to Marika even though she is the one who gives it. Now the reasoning can definitely be chalked up to gameplay reasons but that can also be applied to every site of grace so that the argument goes both ways. There is another thing that suggests grace works independently to Marika-

The other tarnished called by grace seem to be following their own path that does not really lead to lordship. Fia, Dung eater and Goldmask seem to be doing things that don’t really lead to them becoming Elden Lord.

This suggests that grace does not necessarily guide all the tarnished to become elden lord but instead towards their ambition. This seems to check out with everyone- the player and aspiring lord, Godfrey wanting his wife back, Fia doing shit with Godwyn, Dung eater eating shit and Goldmask moving his fingers. There is a distinct possibility that Marika does not have complete control over grace at all. Now having said all this, we can explain the behaviour of all the tarnished using logic but I don’t think that is necessary for what I am trying to prove.

Conclusion:

If you have read this post thoroughly, you should either agree with what I am saying about Marika’s motivations or concluded that the nature of grace is left too vague to come at any solid conclusions. Either option is good enough for me. Like I said earlier, if you disagree I am more than happy to discuss with you, when I get the time(life has been quite busy for me the past month🥲). The point of my blog is to create an environment where we can have proper discussions about the lore whilst being friendly. We can disagree without having to tear each other's throats out.

I have some more work to do irl so it will take some time before I post again or reply to anyone so I just wanted to post. Once my irld work is done I will become a lot more active here. Have a great rest of your life to all who see this post!

[deus-ex-mona]

no tiered lunchbox this time, yujiro?