#the greater order

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

When in doubt, Soup it out.

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[jacketpotatoo]

The thematic implications of Caitlyn transitioning from solely a sharpshooter, to learning the ropes of hand-to-hand combat, and how it follows her growing distrust in Ambessa. If the weapon is a reflection of mentality, it prefigures Cait's mental expansion - away from narrow-minded thinking and acting from a distance. Instead of tackling from afar, she melds her skills in accuracy and deduction *with* close-up action. This is her power play. "Vision" is cait's strength (as opposed to "Might" and "Guile" and "Sacrifice") and Ambessa qualifies this with the phrase "tunnels in your eyes". Ironically, she trains Caitlyn and literally gives her the tools to pull away from her rifle-mindset. In teaching her how Noxus views strength, she offers her the keys to dismantle it

[drenched-in-sunlight]

probably a weird read of all the mending rune endings but I feel like Marika guided a Tarnished of no renown to become the next Elden Lord because, should the new Age still has her as a God, at least the new Lord would not prioritize their feelings for her over the world anymore (like Godfrey & Radagon did).

as Ansbach said “a Lord not for Gods, but for men”.

She’s already a really flawed God with too much love and hatred and humanity even after her ascension, a God who is willing to break rules for her loved ones (at least from my interpretation), and 2 previous Lords are…too involved with her. No matter if one interprets that as love or duty, you can’t deny those two guys act in accordance with their interest in her. Look how well that turned out.

So I feel like the reason a random Tarnished got the chance to become the next Lord is because Marika wanted them to know the Lands Between first, to love this land & the life within on their own term, with their own journey separate from her.

We don’t need to love or to know her at all.

And so she can trust us to always choose the greater good over her.

(But joke is on her I’ll suck af as a Lord I love her too much I’ll literally just be Godfrey Radagon 2.0 😭😭)

[disabled-dean]

Changing channels 2.0 but Gabriel makes Cas the Bachelor and Dean is the P.A. having an excruciating awakening of homosexual lust

[blasphemousclaw]

Do you think radagon ever regretted leaving his wife and kids? I always had a headcanon that he did love them deeply but due to a mix of beliefs, aswell as being a literal pawn for the two fingers and greater will he did it cause he had to.

ok in all seriousness, I do believe Radagon did genuinely love Rennala and his children based on the way Miriel talks about him and Rennala. However, despite his love for them, I don’t think he necessarily regretted leaving them.

Radagon has shown at every turn that above all, he is loyal to the Golden Order — Marika calls him “leal hound of the Golden Order,” he’s identified as “of the Golden Order” in his boss fight, and he attempted to repair the Elden Ring after Marika shattered it. While Marika wants us to succeed in becoming Elden Lord, granting the Tarnished grace and tasking Hewg with crafting a weapon that can kill a god, Radagon does not want us to succeed, blocking off the entrance to the Erdtree with impenetrable thorns in the shape of his rune, and personally attacking us once we make it inside… he would rather the Order be preserved in its shattered state than be created anew. Radagon even turned the greatsword Rennala gave him upon their marriage into a Golden Order greatsword:

“Greatsword made of light, modeled after the Elden Ring itself. Forged by King Consort Radagon to proudly symbolize the tenets of the Golden Order. One of the legendary armaments. Telltale signs betray that this was once the greatsword bequeathed to him by his first wife, Rennala.”

Perhaps he chose to reforge the sword in order to still carry a memory of Rennala with him, but the fact remains that he has changed this sword from one of Carian make into one “proudly symbolizing the tenets of the Golden Order.” To me, this reads as carrying the past with you, but still forging ahead with what you believe is your duty… Golden Order fundamentalism also combines faith and intelligence, integrating the knowledge Radagon learned as Rennala’s husband with his Golden Order faith.

Essentially, Radagon is a zealot who will serve the Golden Order no matter the personal cost. And I do believe him leaving Rennala and their children was a great personal cost to him… he loved them, but he left them anyway. His cutscene upon his defeat is a perfect symbol of this idea — his body itself being turned into a sword, a literal tool used by the Elden Beast:

“Sword wrought from the remains of a god who should have lived a life eternal. Thoughts on what the weapon portends are many and varied. Some consider it the mark of a great sin, or a sign of great devastation. Some think of it as the end of an age, while others; the beginning.” (Sacred Relic Sword)

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

It's DNA

I was watching Smough's video, and he featured this sacred seal from the Erdtree peoples who were inspired by the Hornsent peoples.

The Land of the Tower (Hornsent) considered helixes as some kind of divine geometry/symbol. The double helix is notably calls to mind either the Caduceus symbol of medicine (twin snakes in a double helix - wink nudge nudge) OR...

It looks like a strand of DNA.

The Crucible wasnt just the primordial form of the Erd Tree. It was the primordial form of Everything - all living beings. To be Crucible blessed like the Hornsent is to acquire a mixture of active genes that would be have been recessive otherwise- thats why you get wings, horns, tails. (We share 90% or so of our DNA with like flies or bananas!)

Everyone is technically born from the Crucible and (as Marika proves by birthing OMEN sons) the Hornsent/Shaman are the same species!! Again recessive genes that get activated maybe?

And guess what? Splicing, grafting - that could be done to trees... or DNA... Godrick's prized practice is essentially a revised version of what the Crucible does naturally to living creatures.

The Crucible = The Gene Pool

[ranpowriter]

Among my many thoughts on this chapter, perhaps chiefly is about how badly screwed over Nikolai has been. Aside from being deceived by Fyodor into falsely grieving him, right, if one order applies to a user’s subordinates, then Fyodor’s subordinates include the DOA, thus include Nikolai, right? (or at the very least, the argument could be made that it might)

And, given the powers of one-order, wouldn’t this strip Nikolai of his freedom (or at least his conception of it) completely?

You joined the ranks of a man who understands you, just to be shackled down by your love and grief for him, only to learn that he abused the desire you had, which only he understood about you, to his own means, and then trampled any chances of you achieving it underfoot by obtaining total control over you. The cost of serving the devil was your soul, which he crushed in your own chest.

—that’s assuming Nikolai knows about this, of course, but I digress.

[transingthoseformers]

Love the idea that Sentinel Optimus and Elita all get spidered. Geting all of them as Decepticons because the three rechno Organicshave nowhere else to go?

I feel like they'd all at least start out as becoming decepticons together, though I can't promise any staying a decepticon tbh

[starfreak]

Random Elden Ring Rant (Contains Spoilers, VERY LONG)

So, the Numen. We can choose it as a character preset, which tells us they come from another world, or another land. I say "or another land" because historically, America is referred to as the "New World," but it's not a separate planet. However, translations from the Japanese version of the game suggest that the world they come from is one of spirits, the dead, etc., so it could definitely be a Literal other world.

Marika is (rumored to be) a Numen, as are the Black Knife Assassins that participated in the Night of Black Knives.

If Marika is Numen, then it stands to reason so is Radagon, since they are the same person in the same body. This means their children together, Malenia and Miquella (and now presumably Messmer since he has red hair like Radagon, but Miyazaki said that he's the child of Marika, so unless there's another red-haired hottie running around the Lands Between, Radagon is the father), are also Numen. This also means that other children of Marika/Radagon are half-Numen.

It seems Numen are not a single ethnicity, but a whole race of people, with various different contradicting skin tones and hair colors. The template in the character creator has medium-dark skin and brown hair. Marika has pale skin and golden hair (possibly changed to be gold from the Greater Will's influence) and Radagon has the same skin with fiery red hair. We know from the Giant's Red Braid item description (below) that Radagon was either cursed by the Fire Giants or simply born with red hair. I mean...no item descriptions suggest he was born with it...but if I was born with hair I hated, I would blame it on a curse too. Though, to be fair, it IS the same color as the Fire Giants' hair.

Also the Black Knife Assassins have no physical form, so we can't discern their hair or skin colors.

So skin tone seems like a non-factor, but Hair is much harder to parse, due to half the Numen in the game having fiery hair and pronouns. The game says nothing about Marika's hair changing to gold, so it may have always been that color, leading me to believe that indeed, Numen are just...magic humans from a land far away...she's just blonde.

WELP.

That's all cool, but what is the culture of the Numen like? Well we can see that they have a very strong affinity for women and femininity. Not only is Marika, the most powerful Numen we know, a woman...all of the Black Knives are women. Additionally, if we choose to believe that Malenia and Miquella are Numen, this fact is further evidenced by Malenia's being a strong warrior woman (she is literally a Valkyrie) and Miquella's own complex gender identity. Miquella was (supposedly) born male, but presented as rather feminine/androgynous all his life. While Malenia is a masculine woman and reflects Radagon, Miquella is a feminine boy reflecting Marika. Not to mention that Miquella is ALMOST DEFINITELY Saint Trina, who is exclusively referred to as feminine.

In addition to the stong feminine aspects of Numen society apparent in the overabundance of strong fem-presenting characters, the description of Marika's Hammer suggests that women in Numen society (like Marika) have a role as destroyers and warriors, while men (Radagon) have a role of construction and repair.

"Queen Marika shattered the Elden Ring and Radagon attempted to repair it."

Again, this is just speculation, and the mythological actions of Radagon/Marika are likely motivated by a mutlitude of things (namely, the Greater Will constantly looming over them, the presence of the Elden Beast constantly lurking just under the surface), but I'm making do with what I have.

Also, back to genetics of the Numen again for a second, of all Radagon and Marika's children outside of the ones they had together (Messmer and the Twin Empyreans), most of them seem to inherit Radagon/Marika's hair.

Radagon and Rennala's kids, Radahn, Rykard, and Ranni, (presumably) have red hair. We never actually see Ranni's hair pre-doll form, so I'm assuming it's red lkke her brothers'.

Marika and Godfrey's kids, Godwyn, Mohg, and Morgott, all have either pale hair or no hair (Mohg has no hair visible on account of all the omen horns).

So it seems like the genes of Numen are incredibly dominant, even dominating the gene pool multiple generations after the first. Godwyn's kids, Godrick and Godefroy, have the same hair color as he does. Malenia's "daughters," although not genetically related to her, all seem to have gained her red hair through exposure to her Scarlet Aeonia. This may also be true of the Cleanrot Knights, but they could also have plucked the red hairs from Fire Giants or Leonine Misbegotten and used them as decor for their armor.

Even merely interacting with a Numen as powerful as Marika, or her direct children, can change one's appearance irreversably. Sure, this could all likely be from her status as a God, but who knows how powerful the average Numen could become if granted the strength? We become Elden Lord after all.

[aq2003]

macbeth star wars au. i am cringe but i am free

[miquella-everywhere]

Fr tho Marika is the worst mother ever

She gouged out the eyes of her first born and after a while couldn't even bother to look past his deformities and abandoned him in a parallel dimension to carry out her divinely mandated bloodshed but he still tried to please his mother because he loved her but at the very end realized that she didn't love him and cursed her with his dying breath, she was apparently a healer and a God on top of that but evidently did absolutely nothing to try and help her daughter who suffered from "rot-from-the-inside-out" disease from birth and did not care about her, and now with her history with the hornsent you know damn well that she absolutely loathed the omen twins and felt no remorse throwing them into the sewers

and then you have her youngest son who was absolutely terrified by the idea of becoming a God and saw all of his mothers evils for what they were but also believed that godhood was the only thing that could fix the misery she inflicted upon the world so you can only imagine the kind of toxic traumatic relationship he had with her throughout in his eternal childhood and also marikas grace sending us to murder said child

like damn what the hell

And I do not give two shits about her "my family died 😢" sob story because if anything it pisses me off even more

Like I have seen so many interpretations that Marika must have been a good person for what she did at the Shaman Village and tried to be good past that, but no.

Absolutely not.

The Shaman Village is where Marika buried her kindness and went on to commit a Genocide and one bloody slaughter after another and another and another and another and another...

Gideon says it best when he confronts us; "Queen Marika wants us to struggle unto Eternity."

Marika killed her kindness and made sure that the rest of the world would suffer alongside her, including her own children.

and yknow what?

I actually would not have minded any of this and definitely would've liked her character way more if the DLC actually went into detail about how she betrayed, murdered and stole from a pregnant woman in order to ascend to Godhood

like

yas! 👏 you go you unapologetic power hungry queen! 👏

but now with the story trailer fucking lying and the dlc doing everything to try an justify her genocidal bullshit I'm actually pissed the hell off

[dxxtruction]

Armand is evil in honestly a very accessible way, like who actually can say they haven’t lied to cover for themselves, that they haven’t doubted themselves into a self fulfilling prophecy, that they haven’t given to the pressures of others, that they don’t put on some sort of face for the world, that in some form or another they had forgotten or not utilized their true potential because they felt it was so useless to try and do anything but? Is that not what getting up to do a job that you often hate when you’d rather stay in bed all day suggest? That you feel compelled to comply with it for the suggestion that you don’t could spell your ruin or even your death? Are we not all moved to act by things that feel out of our control in any way that can possibly manage it? Are we all a bit angry or emptied into apathy at the futility of such things? Wouldn’t we all want love more than anything in the world if we had been denied it our whole lives? Wouldn’t we all when denied something to that extent somewhat deny its possibility? If you’re oppressed do you sort of have to reckon with the real possibility you will die still oppressed? Or perhaps if you aren’t don’t you even consider the very real possibility that so many do? Of course maybe not as many can quite say they’ve done these in quite the way that he has, these circumstances for them as well are even more unique, to actually impossible, but we’d all be lying to ourselves in saying we are all entirely incapable of it. Like if you think any bit about it, you really don’t want to say you get it, you have far more morals and backbone to stand on them, surely, but you do. If you get over the scale of it all, you could quite possibly imagine yourself in his position and be unsure if you’d be any different. It’s true too the same goes for all of these vampires, in their own accessible ways, but Armand’s evil is disquieting for me personally because when breaking it down I find its just unfathomable power given to someone unruly ordinary and alike myself.

[untitledgoosegay]

one of the weirdest experiences i ever had was flipping through dimidue fic early on and realizing " ... oh some of you guys are here for the power dynamic? like straight-up? you're getting off to the appearance of their relationship? and not the complex interwoven navigation of the personal, interpersonal, and political in an attempt to honestly connect and express selfhood? not the balance of truth, half-truth, and façade? not the struggle to truly express, receive, and understand love, despite the power dynamics at play and the political realities of the situation?"

skill issue. lmao

[lyculuscaelus]

The difference in popularity when it comes to the nine ἀριστῆες who volunteered to duel with Hector (ten if we’re counting Menelaus) has never ceased to amuse me. Like, despite being specifically listed by Homer to tell you that they’re the best of the best and having a bunch of mentions in the Iliad, Idomeneus and Meriones just didn’t get the popularity as Diomedes and Odysseus got, then Agamemnon and the two Aiantes having the next tier of popularity. Still, I believe the two of them were mentioned every now and then. Meanwhile, do I even need to mention Eurypylus son of Euaemon and Thoas son of Andraemon?

[ratwithhands]

Fun fact I used to consume a lot of Land of the Lustrous stuff.

Anyways this is one of my many Land of the Lustrous OCs, Vivianite. Mohs hardness of 1.5, dark green/blue in colour, and very old. Due to the nature of his weak composition, Vivianite can't actually do much of anything, and has had to live under very specific conditions.

Vivianite wears a tight full body uniform to hold any chipped pieces in place, and is kept in a box stuffed with loose cloth to ensure minimal damage. If he comes into contact with light, he begins to oxidize and darken, so he's kept in a windowless room with curtains over the entrance.

That's all to say he's isolated and bored. He spends much of his time inactive, but he'll jump at the opportunity for conversation if there's someone around. Certain gems visit him to chat, get guidance, or give him the recent news. A task given to some gems is to clear his room of dust, and maybe bring him some books if he's up for it.

Vivian sees himself as an older sibling/friend to many of the other gems, and as such he's very keen on providing a listening ear and giving advice where possible to those who need it. He's essentially emotional support in a can.

Other notes/details:

not all gems know Vivian exists! He's hidden away so most gems wouldn't see him unless they were actively looking for him. A lot of the older ones know about him, but the younger ones don't

Rutile is endlessly tired of having to glue him back together so often due to his softness, which is part of why he has a tighter uniform to keep all his broken pieces in place

Vivian struggles with walking, he tends to be slow and stumbly

the tanks in Vivian's room are for jellyfish. Gems who are sent to clean his room have to switch out the jellyfish too. They're there to provide a faint light source so he doesn't go completely inactive

Vivian, despite living in a box in the dark, has a lot of technical knowledge about things as a result of millennia of going through the library collection. He' a living encyclopedia and can usually offer some answers if a gem has questions on a particular subject

his internal structure is basically a lot of shards stuck together like fibers, so he does minor repairs on himself by affixing strands of his hair into empty spots. He's had his fingers repaired and replaced this way often

In the few instances where Vivian has gone outside, he has an abnormally high amount of energy as a result of his inclusions being able to work at full capacity in the light

If I remember anything else I'll add it, anyways have a good day!

[charmwasjess]

Oops I did it again.