arx-aru

[arx-aru]

if you're worried that you're a bad person, don't be. not worrying about it will make you a worse person, and you should always be evilmaxxing

[arx-aru]

[arx-aru]

video games will give you two options which is the “male “ voice which is just some dude and the “female” voice which is one of the best performances you’ve ever heard in your life

[arx-aru]

son boys allowed

[arx-aru]

we will never have true gender equality until we start obnoxiously woobifying female villains. gone girl discourse is a good start but we need to go further. she needs to be like “I hurt people on purpose because I like it” onscreen and the fandom needs to be “she’s so misunderstood 🥺” and write five thousand out of character self-shipping fics. this will fix society

[arx-aru]

this is what leftists mean when they talk about walkable cities! Dont let them trick you patriots 🚗⛽️

[arx-aru]

#86 eighty six

[arx-aru]

2 months later i wish to express my deepestest regrets that i did not make a joke here about the. the mausoleums literally carrying soulless dudes.

this has tormented me so

gods. imagine if i were clever ...

look if u don't feel bad making the walking mausoleums sit u probably don't have a soul

#honestly for the best idk how to make the joke work #but a cleverer dipshit than me could have managed it #i am certain ..

[arx-aru]

SIR GIDEON OFNIR, THE ALL CUCKING!!!

#can somebody hire the voice actor guy to say this #it is deeply vital i think #he delivered the dung eater line... dawg he could do it...

[arx-aru]

Miquella Lilies and the Isolated Divine Tower

at the end of dragonbarrow, hid ahind a twisted tree

in Jarburg, aneath a bush's shade

in Limgrave, among those who live in death

There's weirdly few! And only the first really draws any attention to the tower, where Malenia's(and therefore, presumably, Miquella's)two fingers lay. strange!

Given how Miquella's flowers occasionally point towards the Haligtree or hint at his present location, you'd expect they'd also show you another oft-visible, distant set piece: the Isolated Divine Tower(the one associated with Malenia's great rune(the omen twins share a tower, so it would follow that the 'prodigal' twins would as well))...

But it's actually pretty hard to find any instances of a lily doing so, save one time in dragonbarrow, where it's already pretty obvious. Which was kinda surprising, and a little disappointing, but-- there's also a nifty pattern: it's difficult to even get a lily and the tower in the same frame...

Like, for all the inward-facing cliffs in the Land Between, you'd expect plenty of instances of miq-trina flowers being, at the very least, visible while looking at the distant-most divine tower... but what usually happens is this:

there's almost always one bit of geometry or tree or something in the way, to the point where--frustratingly--you can rarely get a shot with both in frame.

and when you can, there's always* something obstructing it and the tower.

*except once, that I've found, where there is a clear "line of sight" between the tower and a lily--and it's that one(third image) in Limgrave, where it's specifically a Trina, not a Miquella.

Making observations about miq-trina flowers is 95% confirmation bias, to be clear, but you could headcanon this idiosyncrasy as indicative of Miquella having "hid" from his and Malenia's two fingers, if you wanted--after all, the only time one of his flowers isn't tucked behind something is when it's his more subtle form.

Or on a more symbolic level... as, like, Malenia's power being "Isolated" and just barely unable to see Miquella.

but, ok, to be clear the three examples shown in Limgrave and Liurnia are very definitely indicating other, specific stuff(a tibia mariner, a headless knight, and jarburg(locale of a downtrodden people, like most of Miquella's followers)). They just also happen to loosely follow the aforementioned "pattern." still, this is anything but substantial lol

#miq-trina flowers #miquella's lily

[arx-aru]

#i honestly think miquellas whole theme of childbirth and unborn stuff is really cool#like i dont really believe it has anything to do with mohg- take his haligtree form for example.#his cocoon was in the womb of the figure and the figure is likely female so that also has gender implications but thats not important#mohg was probably trying to….. replicate. the womb stuff with the pelvic bone maybe he thought it would help in some way??#egh. mohg is weird. but anyway#forever nascent. his butterflies are said to look like theyve just emerged from their cocoon for their entire lives#eternal childhood. trying to rebirth himself. his cocoons in the haligtree. the land octopus and crab eggs.#theres so many like…. childbirth and feminine themes with him and i think its incredibly interesting#like. i dont think it HAS to be thought of in like a. weird sexual way. i think its just a…. positive theme.#my personal little theory is that rennalas rune of the unborn was supposed to be miquellas. it would have helped him perfect his rebirth#hmmm…. i dont really know how to explain it?? it feels like a commentary on how beautiful motherhood and childbirth is in a way??#from what ive heard bloodborne also has themes like this? im not sure tho since i havent played that yet#eh well. theres probably a post out there explaining it. i just make it sound odd and strange#i promise you i do not view those themes as anything sexual. thatd be weird as fuck#elden ring#cw: mohg#i do think he needs therapy though hes got some horrid stress

@solpuff yeah!!! I get it--I think I absolutely agree from a similar angle; Miquella in of himself, I feel, is definitely like. very connected to motherhood/reproduction/renewal, and I think it is in a positive way. The vibe I get from all the stuff that does associate those themes with negativity seems very much a point of outside interference, every time. I kinda read his depicted "struggles," where all that is concerned, as another discussion of disability, plus obviously a ton of trauma, cuz, like...

the crab eggs are definitely like. completely fine, in of themselves. that's just how crabs do! it's that people prey upon them, and--with how the description is phrased--almost fetishize the consumption of them. It's not the crab or the eggs that's "gross" here, it's how they're explicitly seen/misused by a third party.

the octopuses are forced to require outside nourishment for their own reproduction because their biology just isn't set up right. It's not really their fault, but the twisted circumstance that surely affected their ovaries such that they don't function "normally." which ties in, I think, with how Miquella's and Malenia's afflictions are implied to be largely thanks to Marika's selfcest. (i personally find it pretty meaningful cuz like-- needing to reckon with bodily issues stemming from forseeable-but-ignored complications by parents is relatable stuff for me)

the singing bats! little fellas are sad they can't reproduce. they're literally and actively expressing the trauma of their infertility through art. combined with how they tend to be near flowing water or an overabundance of rain, it's definitely like-- they're really really sad. and it's not their fault they have to deal with this.

the mohg stuff can make it all super uncomfortable to approach for obvious reasons like you mentioned, but in spite of that it is absolutely like. pretty important just to miquella i think-- and i don't think it detracts from the basic, pre-mohg "reproduction-as-a-good-thing" idea. it's just kinda. real. cuz that happens--his pre-existing trauma and struggle got amplified and compounded because somebody tried to force him to do something he couldn't do(in the worst sense imaginable, in his case, ofc).

since it's really common for disabled ppl to be put in similar situations, it does feel meaningful that the game explores that part of disability/vulnerability/trauma...

i just hope that the dlc expands on that reading in a positive way, and that FromSoft doesn't like. do what they did to ds3!Gwyndolin again. I'm pretty hopeful about it tho, since the twins are currently a big improvement and sign of growth in terms of narrative handling of these heavy themes as compared to their myriad soulsborne predecessors like Quelaag and her sister, Lothric and Lorian, Gwyndolin, and so on. (and I think there's good themes and very real and positive aspects to those representations too, but improvements are refreshing and exciting for sure)

Also yes!!! there's already a ton of connections between Miquella and Raya Lucaria, where Rennala is--which is super interesting because the rune of the unborn is surely of unique and extreme interest to the twins.

There's all sorts of Miquella items & mobs around Liurnia--which is flooding!--, and the nearer you get to Raya Lucaria there's more and more Trina items specifically instead, which I think suggests he(she, here? they? i like the idea of the trina thing being indicative of like, genderfluidity but that's neither here nor there lol) was subtly trying to get nearer--or at least investigate--the rune of the unborn or rennala's studies of it. although that's equally likely to just be more of him looking into "heresies" to help malenia after abandoning fundamentalism (that said--he seems to have moved towards 'faith' rather than 'intelligence'(fundamentalism being split int/faith) by the time of the Shattering??? unclear tbh). i like to think it's at least both though--hopefully in the future we get to see a bit more what the deal was with miquella's hypothetical on-off alliance/association thing with the carian ladies.) bah

trina lilys like big crabs fun fact

"wow miq rlly likes crabs that's cute :)" wrong.

it's another. reproduction thing. ):

take note of the how weird that last sentence is. and that it's trina(sleep) lilies rather than miq lilies in this case.

can somebody please get miquella therapy

#rambling #cw: mohg

[arx-aru]

Imagine if you survived taking a railroad spike to the brain but you didn't get any personality changes out of it but everyone was constantly assuming that you did and it made you notably more irritable than you used to be

[arx-aru]

it is pretty cool that mr miyazaki developed an entirely unique language of flowers for elden ring

for example, some mean "oh no", others mean "oh nooooooooooo", and still others mean "oh no :("

u can rlly say anything with these bad boys

[arx-aru]

trina lilys like big crabs fun fact

"wow miq rlly likes crabs that's cute :)" wrong.

it's another. reproduction thing. ):

take note of the how weird that last sentence is. and that it's trina(sleep) lilies rather than miq lilies in this case.

can somebody please get miquella therapy

#cw: mohg

[arx-aru]

message to all bitches

please survive

[arx-aru]

the corpse with the pulley bow is also facing towards where Latenna's sister and Loretta's shield are

...he's probably actually meant to just be looking over the ruins of the First Gelmir Campsite. but it's a fun little coincidence that a bowman dies looking to the same place Latenna seeks.

you'd actually be able to see the Great and Magical Murder Mausoleum of Doom and Destruction here too... but it's unfortunately only drawn in starting in Altus proper (you can see it from the windmills!! good dog ahead!!!)

[arx-aru]

the haligtree's fork/bark inclusion is unhealthy?? nah fam take a look at this

see. miquella just has a clear bias where tree shapes are concerned

these are all different trees

mans just thinks it's hilarious to make it look like that. loretta raised concerns over the structural integrity . she was promptly banished to the Platform of Doom beyond the Ladder of Despair by malenia