Hi, I read your post about Messmer & the hornsent crusade, and I found it really intriguing but I also disagreed on some of your points, however I'm not sure if I just didn't understand them or I misunderstood, so I thought I'd ask about it.
To preface, I mean no disrespect or hostility to you or your opinion, I'm just curious about some of the things you brought up in your post & I'd like to just understand them better. If I come off in an aggressive or confrontational manner I apologize, this is not a hate ask, I'm not great with tone in through text.
you mention in your post ppl in the fandom talking about how they like Messmer, but feel the need to justify why, or try to find excuses for simply liking a character. On those points I do agree completely, I think it's a Little ridiculous to do mental gymnastics to 'excuse' simply liking a souls character even though 99% of them are very morally grey. What I don't understand is your next point though, you say Messmer's past does excuse the crusade.
The post makes it seems as if the hornsents are one big monolith, who all participated in the torture & genocide of the shamans, despite them being a massive civilization and the greater potentates being the ones who specialize in, and practice the jar stuffing. From what I understood from the post, you believe that the hornsent as a collective, deserved to be genocided because of what happened to Marika's village.
You also say in the beginning of the post, that you like darker themes in Fromsoft stories like death and suffering, that the characters do terrible things but that we like regardless because we understand or sympathize with their reasoning, why they do it.
So what I didn't understand abt your post was this: Why bring up how Fromsoft characters are capable of terrible things, but we like them Bc we understand WHY they do those things, if you think the crusade was completely justified?
Following that logic, that the Hornsents all deserved to suffer and die, that wouldn't make Messmer a character capable of great evil, because then that just makes the crusade him enacting justice for his & his mother's people and it wouldn't be a morally wrong action.
That's why I wanted to clarify if I grossly misunderstood your points on my end. but If I didn't misunderstand I want to know why you think the Hornsent deserved to be purged completely. To me, It's not like the entire people all committed crimes to the shamans. If Messmer wanted to prevent/protect more shamans being jared, (assuming they weren't all dead) He wouldn't need to destroy their entire civilization & kill them all. he would just need to go after the potentates, places like bonny village & whipping hut etc. He and Marika are literally Gods who command multiple armies so I'm sure it was possible.
I just don't see how the Hornsent are all collectively responsible for the shamans being murdered when there was a entire village whose sole purpose was torturing shamans. Assuming that the shamans are indeed all dead, and Marika (understandably) wanted revenge then why not go after the ppl who actually committed the crimes in the first place? There's characters like Romina, who you can see in the trailer her church being burned down while she cradles her pole blade or something, getting caught in the cross-hair of the crusade but how is she & others like her, deserving of Messmer & Marikas extermination?
Basically how is Messmer excused for the crusade, when it didn't even target the ones responsible & only continued the cycle of violence by committing the same atrocities that happened to Marika's people. I see your point about ppl trying to be '' all-forgiving '' and virtuous over fictional characters but I don't think it's abt ''forgiving'' or anything, the way I saw it the story was conveying how the Hornsent weren't the 'good guys' or entirely innocent whilst still showing the tragedy of the crusade, bc it was still wrong to wipe an entire race out of existence for the actions some of it's members committed.
Again, I truly don't mean any animosity to you by sending this ask. I know fandom discourse can often be utterly vitriolic and I'm not tryna contribute by being disrespectful to you over a post. I merely wanted to understand your points that I was worried I misinterpreted. Even if I didn't I still respect your opinion. Anyway feel to grill me or ignore this if I'm wrong/grossly misinterpreted your post lol. I'm sorry it's really long, I tried articulating my thoughts as best I could. I hope you have a good day.
Thanks for the question. It’s a perfect illustration for what I wanted to tell, but obviously failed.
You’ve noticed a lot of details, you know the lore of the game pretty well, I am not to question it, and in a way this is the problem. This post is not about the lore and the characters, but about point of view and the language we’re speaking.
What I actually wanted to say with this post is that it’s pretty easy to be forgiving when you are not in rage. When you are not in rage, when you don’t see death, when you are not in fear for the ones you love and/or for the people of your kind, it’s easy to say “they are not monolith”, “their culture”, “not all of them”. In this peaceful state of mind, when you see only the story on the screen, it’s easy to notice those details and play with words.
But when your point of view and your state of mind due to the situation you are in changes, you are not capable of this anymore. When you fear, when you are in rage, when you see mutilation right before your eyes for months and years, it changes you to the core. You are simply _not_able_ to forgive, you are not able to differ your enemies. There is nothing like “culture”, “not all of them” and so on. When you see one of their kind, you see “one of their kind”. Not “someone”. People, - no, creatures, - who are a threat to you, who have already brought you sufferings, are not humans anymore. It’s easy to recall their humanity in the back of your mind when you don’t have memories of them slaying people right around you with joy. But once you’ve seen something like that, there is no way back. You will never see all the things you are talking about now, they will never matter anymore, and the enemy will never gain humanity in your eyes. When you understand that someone wants to slain you just because you are you, and when you see them actually doing it with the people of your kind, on the streets you are walking, you don’t want to ask questions and discuss their culture. You want to kill them all just in order to stop it. That’s how this puzzle looks from another point of view.
Returning to your question, are right in a way, but you are speaking in the language of peace. Most of people here, on Tumblr, I believe, have never seen war and terrorism knocking at their doors. And what I wanted to say with this post is that the language of peace is a privilege of peaceful times. When war comes, you forget it once and forever, because now you live in the new reality, and in this reality language of peace becomes total cringe.
I am speaking in the language of war, rage and vengeance.
I expected this fandom (since all dark things and so on are okay for people here) understand it perfectly, but now I see that they don’t. They’re speaking about war in the language of peace because peace is their reality, and seems like they can’t even imagine another one.
Sadly, I can. I don’t even have to. This is the reason we misunderstood each other, and, obviously, we will keep on doing it again and again.
P.S.: Remember what I said in the end: that post wasn’t only about Elden Ring.
