#er brainrot

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i think whenever Marika was on the edge of spiraling, only Messmer knew how to pull her back.

(my art is always based on this theory)

[lilypadisprobablyhigh]

if an elden ring movie/show actually happens i would love a show about miquellas followers from sote.

seeing what their lives were like before miquellas charm, and indeed what may have lead them to be susceptible or resistant to it would be so cool.

seeing ansbach fight his heart out against miquella, only for it to be stolen

seeing what actions led to leda losing grace and how she gladly followed miquella

moore and the brood being abandoned, thiollier following saint trina and perhaps being charmed by miquella upon first seeing her, and dane who followed miquella long before the others

i would ESPECIALLY love to see freyja bc after doing her quest i love her and i wanna see just how she is in other situations

(i forgot to mention the hornsent but yes seeing how his and the other potentates fucked up practices were somehow not despicable but even honored and ritualized like yes, yes, YES)

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so. Balancers huh.

maidens clad in white delivering balance and harmony to the universe, with a seemingly random story description about salvation offered to a poor village girl who had lost everything

and now we have their Everdark form, which is termed Salvation Standard-Bearers.

oh wow look at that! they lost their braid and their pure white flower 😊 drenched in blood and constantly howling in pain 😊 a maiden whose eyes we would never see again (their transformation is them gouging their eyes out) 😊 trudging on a field of blood mired in suffering 😊OH MY I WONDER WHERE WE HAVE SEEN THIS HARMONIOUS BLENDING OF FLESH TO MAKE DIVINITY BEFORE

the horror of "salvation" ?????? divinity written in blood and a maiden's "burden" ??????????????? excuse me? fromsoft when i catch you fromsoft-

also. 7 Balancers.

Messmer, Melina, Morgott, Mogh, Miquella, Malenia + Marika

6 M kids, and the mom. compiling 2 versions of Balancers fight will give you all the fight moves of all said demigods.

are we seeing this?

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elden ring OCs.

Raimes and Mirai. they hail from one of the main houses that made up Erdtree’s upper echelons.

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reading up some palm divination materials because Libra's hands animation reminds me of gestures seen in Eastern palmistry... and i came across the symbol for the eighth Heavenly Stem. man.

direction-wise, 辛 is the West.

in Five Elements, it's Metal (or, you guess it, GOLD. it's heavily associated with Venus, the colour white & autumn).

in yin-yang theory, it's yin (think: Marika and her sisters being spirit tuners/ shrine maidens and thus having close relationship with spirit world & the cycle of life and death).

since Heavenly Stems relate heavily to the cycle of harvest, 辛 is the time frame where plants wilt & ripe fruits being eaten by birds & other creatures, spreading new sprouts around to prepare for a new cycle of life.

Marika's name aside from the jasmine meaning, also means bitterness. the pattern seen inside the Erdtree is also used in Armored Core 6 under the name "Barren Flower".

the amount of work & consistency going into Marika's character design is really crazy. my character of all time fr.

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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.

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sometimes I think about this

Overseer viewing Coral as something that needs to be burned and destroyed, their symbol "prevention is better than the cure" shows them monitoring a divine tree, Walter calling Ayre "kindling for the fire", Coral explosion in C-weapon making tree-like imagery, the Branch group, the Nepenthes, Rubicon Liberation Font members have codename after each finger on a hand, O'Keeffe's emblem of Barren Flower having the same design as the Erdtree ceiling.

AC6 & ER ties you will always be special to me.

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im sorry but this is crazy 😭😭😭

Fromsoft is living in my walls i fear