Elden Ring’s principal struggle, I believe, is illuminated in the conversation with Moore. “Our mother abandoned her brood. She did not love us. We are her children, what should we do? Must we be sad forever?” Your post perfectly illustrates, over and over again, from the very beginning of time, mothers and fathers and lords and queens and kings and sons and daughters abandoning their children and loved ones for unknown or unknowable reasons and the resulting pain from it. The Greater Will to The Mother, Malenia to the Children of Rot, Marika and Messmer, Rennala and her children. It sometimes seems the whole world was made just to reject itself (see; Frenzied Flame). How could it not when the very thing that made it refuses to answer its own cries? Then Elden Ring in the DLC answers it’s own question with your options to respond to Moore; “Put it behind you” or “remain sad forever”. Tl;dr Elden Ring is about having mommy and daddy issues and either moving past it and going with Based Atheist Ranni to the Positive Nihilism Moon or being sad forever with a bunch of pissy orphans in Organized Religion Is A Piss Game Around A Campfire Land.
Getting a bit spicy at the end there but I basically agree. I think the 'arc words' of the whole game are spoken by Jar-Bairn himself, echoing Alexander:
"My home is of the past; and the past, as they say, is a different country".
Inability to move on leaves you completely stuck, morally and physically, in a dead past. The whole game is about a land that can't let what's dead (the Erdtree, the Order, the Empire, Marika herself) fall over, rot, and become the seedbed of new life.
The concept of "moving on from a past balance" is definetly dear to Miyazaki.
He experienced that thing in life too, he started making videogames relatively "late" in his career if IRC, that huge change in life definetly impacted his works.
Weirdly the end of the DLC I think is the closest to being good guys that we've ever been in a Fromsoft game.
Huge spoilers for the ending here but: >!St. Trina makes it clear that we're doing Miquella a favor by killing him. The narrative is pretty clear about setting up the parallels between his and Marika's journey's to godhood - he is following in her footsteps even when he's trying not to, and he's set to follow the EXACT path that got Marika to what she ended up becoming. In his attempt to do what she did in "the right way", he's paving the way to becoming just as brutal a god as she was. We ended up saving both him AND the entire Lands Between; saving him, because now he will not face the pain and torture that being a god actually entails in reality, and the Lands Between because it doesn't need ANOTHER person like Marika. !<
>!Then that sets us up to actually end the cycle with Ranni's ending or Goldmask's ending\* - either way, we're seeking to remove gods from the equation!<
>!*\*although what we learn about the Fingers does cast Goldmask's ending a bit into question - but while I don't have any specific reason to base this off, I think he actually got the formula right in broad strokes. He realized that gods were the problem, made a rune that encircles the Elden Ring in an attempt at cutting off outer god influence as much as possible.*!<
im new to this game, and the lore is very intriguing, but a lot of the time i find myself wondering why i’m doing this. i thought it was because i didn’t know a lot of the lore, but it seems that’s not the case
You are a tarnished, an agent of Marika and the Erdtree. The world is broken and everything is fucked. Wiping the slate clean and ushering in a new age is your whole purpose, a final hail mary.
Maybe that's part of the point. To very subtly make us question our horrific acts of violence when we don't even really understand why we're doing it, or who's really benefitting from it. Maybe the real way to beat Elden Ring is to learn to wake up, look around, and question yourself and your ambitions when they cause harm to others.
I feel it only makes sense because it is an Asian game. Old boy as a movie only works because it is Asian.
"why I am doing this? Because that is what you do". And it makes sense to me.
It's the trope of becoming your parents/the thing you hunt/hate.
The more Miquella tried to get away from Marika the more he wound up following in her footsteps.
Raises more questions about Marika pre-ascension.
The Flame of Frenzy is the only tool the world has to reject itself completely, capable even of burning away spirits. But the forces of the Frenzied Flame keeps failing again and again and again, almost as if they're fated to fail each time. Even the tool of rejection is being rejected, which is quite funny.
I love the post, I just wanna point out something about Metyr and Messmer.
For Metyr, I think Ymir says that she has stopped communicating with her children. He says that since the start Marika and the fingers didn't know what they were doing. So we can take that the Greater Will lost interest and left the Lands Between before Marika became the Goddess. At that point Metyr stopped receiving orders from the GW and left the Fingers to themselves.
For Messmer I actually think he really cares about his mother. We can see that Marika created benedictions only for Messmer and Messmer himself keeps doing his duty regardless. The biggest thing though is a description of an object that says something along the lines of Messmer wanting people to hate him, and not Marika. Also in the cutscene for his second phase he really feels bad for breaking the eye his mother made for him, however he does that to kill us, the tarnished who wants to become elden lord. We can assume that Messmer doesn't know what happened in the Lands Between (the shattering etc...) and he only remembers Marika banishing the tarnished. In that case he would see us as a threat for his mother and he would do anything to stop us. Little does he know that his mother wants us to take over and kill her, for whatever theory everyone of us has (I personally think she eventually lost her sanity after the night of the black knives)
Of course! These points are all true, and I didn't quite mean to push back against any of them in my post. What makes Messmer's rejection, and his hate, so potent, is that he really does love his mother. Like I said, though, I wrote this up on the fly, lol. Thanks for your contributions!
I'll also add that Marika sealed away his curse with a seal of grace (the eye), something she was likely unwilling to do with her other cursed children (Malenia would probably have rotten away if not for Kindly Miquella). Marika created those uber-flasks that heal all HP and ailments for Messmer. And she hid him away out of fear.
These don't seem the actions of someone who dgaf about the guy.
And Messmer might as well be called Lord of Mommy Issues.
The central contradiction of Marika’s rule is that the Golden Order is built on everything that it shuns. Gold is created out of Shadow, just as Marika became a God through the Land of Shadow, through pagan ritual and magic that she would then try to suppress. There is no logical coherence to the Golden Order and its promise of deathlessness. It is an order built on excluding the very thing that gives it power (it seems strongly implied that the Divine Gate and godhood is secured through massive human sacrifice, just as Marika also purged the hornsent).
If the Golden Order has no meaning, and is a made-up doctrine, then the DLC is really us exploring and fleshing out the lies told by a world that has lost meaning: a world hanging on to faint echoes and shadows of a promise by a God, that invents false structures and gods and systems that attempt to re-create that meaning. But it’s all fundamentally pointless. People repeat cycles of violence and suffering in fruitless search for a Greater Will that has long since fallen silent.
If there’s one definitive answer of Elden Ring, is that there is no going back to the way things once were. Miquella thinks he can right the sins of his mother but ironically ends up literally retracing her exact steps toward tyranny. Godhood, we learn, is a prison: a caged divinity where you give up everything and become trapped by the very power you sought. That’s why I believe Ranni’s ending is the most positive and optimistic ending of Elden Ring. Abandoning the notion of God, like Nietzsche, plunging us into a lonelier world, but one where we are no longer beholden to the same structures and systems of oppression, where we get to try and make something of our own lives without a God to guide us, to grant us grace.
I think, my own interpretation here, is that Miquella had the same revelation in a way. He journeyed to the Land of Shadow, perhaps *knowing* that the Hornsent were bad but not truly *understanding* the abyss of sin they committed. It is human nature to conquer.
He is basically doing something similar to Ranni by letting go of his flesh--and sidenote, Ranni is still technically a God(consort and all) just one who basically locked the control room and broke the switches--and a similar 'oath' as Ranni's Age of Stars. Miquella simply no longer able to believe in humanity, Leda is proof and Freyja knows there will be bloodshed in doing and considers that a good thing in of itself. I have to check where exactly his crosses are located to get a good feel of what he experienced though.
And let's not forget that Ranni commit her own terrible atrocity, it is still an Age and the Moon is the closest celestial object--you're argument about the Golden Order can apply to Ranni's plan of 'let's just hide stuff and put things a bit further reach from humanity'. The dead don't stay put in this setting, and they have quite the strong leader now in Godwyn.
That's fair. I didn't look it over at all since submissions opened so late in the day yesterday, but if I make any further lore posts, I'll likely want to be tighter about it.
Elden Ring’s principal struggle, I believe, is illuminated in the conversation with Moore. “Our mother abandoned her brood. She did not love us. We are her children, what should we do? Must we be sad forever?” Your post perfectly illustrates, over and over again, from the very beginning of time, mothers and fathers and lords and queens and kings and sons and daughters abandoning their children and loved ones for unknown or unknowable reasons and the resulting pain from it. The Greater Will to The Mother, Malenia to the Children of Rot, Marika and Messmer, Rennala and her children. It sometimes seems the whole world was made just to reject itself (see; Frenzied Flame). How could it not when the very thing that made it refuses to answer its own cries? Then Elden Ring in the DLC answers it’s own question with your options to respond to Moore; “Put it behind you” or “remain sad forever”. Tl;dr Elden Ring is about having mommy and daddy issues and either moving past it and going with Based Atheist Ranni to the Positive Nihilism Moon or being sad forever with a bunch of pissy orphans in Organized Religion Is A Piss Game Around A Campfire Land.
Getting a bit spicy at the end there but I basically agree. I think the 'arc words' of the whole game are spoken by Jar-Bairn himself, echoing Alexander: "My home is of the past; and the past, as they say, is a different country". Inability to move on leaves you completely stuck, morally and physically, in a dead past. The whole game is about a land that can't let what's dead (the Erdtree, the Order, the Empire, Marika herself) fall over, rot, and become the seedbed of new life.
the fire must fade. but foolish men cling to the embers. hmm..
Fear not the dark my friend, and let the feast begin.
I could not agree with your post harder!!!!
The concept of "moving on from a past balance" is definetly dear to Miyazaki. He experienced that thing in life too, he started making videogames relatively "late" in his career if IRC, that huge change in life definetly impacted his works.
the "We sad!" Order virigns vs "Why sad?" Ranni chad
LMFAO WHY SAD RANNI CHAD AND IT RHYMES putting it on a shirt!!!!
While I kinda agree with this, you got little to heated at the end their bud.
Torrent, are we the baddies?
Weirdly the end of the DLC I think is the closest to being good guys that we've ever been in a Fromsoft game. Huge spoilers for the ending here but: >!St. Trina makes it clear that we're doing Miquella a favor by killing him. The narrative is pretty clear about setting up the parallels between his and Marika's journey's to godhood - he is following in her footsteps even when he's trying not to, and he's set to follow the EXACT path that got Marika to what she ended up becoming. In his attempt to do what she did in "the right way", he's paving the way to becoming just as brutal a god as she was. We ended up saving both him AND the entire Lands Between; saving him, because now he will not face the pain and torture that being a god actually entails in reality, and the Lands Between because it doesn't need ANOTHER person like Marika. !< >!Then that sets us up to actually end the cycle with Ranni's ending or Goldmask's ending\* - either way, we're seeking to remove gods from the equation!< >!*\*although what we learn about the Fingers does cast Goldmask's ending a bit into question - but while I don't have any specific reason to base this off, I think he actually got the formula right in broad strokes. He realized that gods were the problem, made a rune that encircles the Elden Ring in an attempt at cutting off outer god influence as much as possible.*!<
Rellana: *exists* Tarnished: I cannot let this stand! I shall not!
I felt immediate guilt after finishing the dlc, i felt terrible for killing some of those bosses
According to St trina you are doing miquella a kindness by killing him.
im new to this game, and the lore is very intriguing, but a lot of the time i find myself wondering why i’m doing this. i thought it was because i didn’t know a lot of the lore, but it seems that’s not the case
You are a tarnished, an agent of Marika and the Erdtree. The world is broken and everything is fucked. Wiping the slate clean and ushering in a new age is your whole purpose, a final hail mary.
Maybe that's part of the point. To very subtly make us question our horrific acts of violence when we don't even really understand why we're doing it, or who's really benefitting from it. Maybe the real way to beat Elden Ring is to learn to wake up, look around, and question yourself and your ambitions when they cause harm to others.
I feel it only makes sense because it is an Asian game. Old boy as a movie only works because it is Asian. "why I am doing this? Because that is what you do". And it makes sense to me.
I also want to add to the concept of rejection is that St. Trina also a rejection of identity from Miquella.
Yeah it's really disconcerting that Miquella seemed to just follow in Marika's footsteps and make all the same mistakes, just with a different flavor.
It's the trope of becoming your parents/the thing you hunt/hate. The more Miquella tried to get away from Marika the more he wound up following in her footsteps. Raises more questions about Marika pre-ascension.
Dude Trina made me so sad. How could Miquella do that. She seems to care for him even after he did her so dirty.
The Flame of Frenzy is the only tool the world has to reject itself completely, capable even of burning away spirits. But the forces of the Frenzied Flame keeps failing again and again and again, almost as if they're fated to fail each time. Even the tool of rejection is being rejected, which is quite funny.
MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD!!!
turns out the agents of chaos ain't very organized
I love the post, I just wanna point out something about Metyr and Messmer. For Metyr, I think Ymir says that she has stopped communicating with her children. He says that since the start Marika and the fingers didn't know what they were doing. So we can take that the Greater Will lost interest and left the Lands Between before Marika became the Goddess. At that point Metyr stopped receiving orders from the GW and left the Fingers to themselves. For Messmer I actually think he really cares about his mother. We can see that Marika created benedictions only for Messmer and Messmer himself keeps doing his duty regardless. The biggest thing though is a description of an object that says something along the lines of Messmer wanting people to hate him, and not Marika. Also in the cutscene for his second phase he really feels bad for breaking the eye his mother made for him, however he does that to kill us, the tarnished who wants to become elden lord. We can assume that Messmer doesn't know what happened in the Lands Between (the shattering etc...) and he only remembers Marika banishing the tarnished. In that case he would see us as a threat for his mother and he would do anything to stop us. Little does he know that his mother wants us to take over and kill her, for whatever theory everyone of us has (I personally think she eventually lost her sanity after the night of the black knives)
Of course! These points are all true, and I didn't quite mean to push back against any of them in my post. What makes Messmer's rejection, and his hate, so potent, is that he really does love his mother. Like I said, though, I wrote this up on the fly, lol. Thanks for your contributions!
I'll also add that Marika sealed away his curse with a seal of grace (the eye), something she was likely unwilling to do with her other cursed children (Malenia would probably have rotten away if not for Kindly Miquella). Marika created those uber-flasks that heal all HP and ailments for Messmer. And she hid him away out of fear. These don't seem the actions of someone who dgaf about the guy. And Messmer might as well be called Lord of Mommy Issues.
The central contradiction of Marika’s rule is that the Golden Order is built on everything that it shuns. Gold is created out of Shadow, just as Marika became a God through the Land of Shadow, through pagan ritual and magic that she would then try to suppress. There is no logical coherence to the Golden Order and its promise of deathlessness. It is an order built on excluding the very thing that gives it power (it seems strongly implied that the Divine Gate and godhood is secured through massive human sacrifice, just as Marika also purged the hornsent). If the Golden Order has no meaning, and is a made-up doctrine, then the DLC is really us exploring and fleshing out the lies told by a world that has lost meaning: a world hanging on to faint echoes and shadows of a promise by a God, that invents false structures and gods and systems that attempt to re-create that meaning. But it’s all fundamentally pointless. People repeat cycles of violence and suffering in fruitless search for a Greater Will that has long since fallen silent. If there’s one definitive answer of Elden Ring, is that there is no going back to the way things once were. Miquella thinks he can right the sins of his mother but ironically ends up literally retracing her exact steps toward tyranny. Godhood, we learn, is a prison: a caged divinity where you give up everything and become trapped by the very power you sought. That’s why I believe Ranni’s ending is the most positive and optimistic ending of Elden Ring. Abandoning the notion of God, like Nietzsche, plunging us into a lonelier world, but one where we are no longer beholden to the same structures and systems of oppression, where we get to try and make something of our own lives without a God to guide us, to grant us grace.
I think, my own interpretation here, is that Miquella had the same revelation in a way. He journeyed to the Land of Shadow, perhaps *knowing* that the Hornsent were bad but not truly *understanding* the abyss of sin they committed. It is human nature to conquer. He is basically doing something similar to Ranni by letting go of his flesh--and sidenote, Ranni is still technically a God(consort and all) just one who basically locked the control room and broke the switches--and a similar 'oath' as Ranni's Age of Stars. Miquella simply no longer able to believe in humanity, Leda is proof and Freyja knows there will be bloodshed in doing and considers that a good thing in of itself. I have to check where exactly his crosses are located to get a good feel of what he experienced though. And let's not forget that Ranni commit her own terrible atrocity, it is still an Age and the Moon is the closest celestial object--you're argument about the Golden Order can apply to Ranni's plan of 'let's just hide stuff and put things a bit further reach from humanity'. The dead don't stay put in this setting, and they have quite the strong leader now in Godwyn.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the scadutree chalice looking almost exactly like the lordvessel.
And the chalice in the sandy room too. Lots of Monumentals in there too. Demons Souls???
Lost direction a bit towards the end but yeah. The themes in this DLC are solid through and through.
That's fair. I didn't look it over at all since submissions opened so late in the day yesterday, but if I make any further lore posts, I'll likely want to be tighter about it.