I'm Sure Rex Is Going To Be Very Normal About His Daughter Being Turned Into A Child Soldier With A Few

Something curious I noticed recently while exploring Farum Azula is that some of the curtains draped around the area share a passing resemblance to the fabrics seen in Marika's bed chamber, and of the ones seen in the depiction of Marika from the opening cutscene.

I'm sure this isn't a particularly new discovery, and the designs aren't exactly the same, but they're just similar enough that it got me thinking.

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Funnily enough Maliketh also shares a very similar veil to Marika's (the thing connected to his elbows and looping around his back.) His even seems to have the same golden edges as the ones from Farum azula.

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To me it seems like black fabric with golden plant detailing's are a bit of a motif with Marika. Which is nice to know, considering how little we actually know about her. (It's also pretty sweet that she has matching outfits with Maliketh)

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But if this design is a running theme with Marika specifically and not just a mistake I'm making then it begs the question. Why does this ancient, timeless, crumbling city in the sky that's presumably much older than every other area in the game have Marika's favourite design decorating its walls?

Is Marika from the time of Farum Azula? The time of Placidusax? Is Marika his missing god who he's been waiting for? That should be impossible, and maybe it still is, but she seems to have some sort of connection to this place. If not for her design adorning its walls then certainly for her godly appointed body guard living here.

Her body guard who, by the way, uses a weapon that has cultural significance to the society of Farum Azula.

You know, the society that was blasted off the map by a meteor long before the age of the erdtree even began.

This was just supposed to be a nice little post about a small detail I noticed, and now it's turned into this. I don't even know if any of this actually makes sense but I've tried my best to put it together in an understandable way.

There's still so much to go into regarding this theory (why did Marika wage war against the dragons if they have a history like this? could the meteor that destroyed Farum be one of the ones the GW sent down to bury the eternal cities? If so then could that event possibly be one of the first things that shook Marika's resolve in the GW?)

But for now I think I need to just post this and let it simmer for a while. If you got this far then thank you for coming down this rabbit hole with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts because I am thoroughly lost in just what this could mean.

I find it utterly baffling that people can look at modern pokemon games and go "oh the graphical flaws are just a limitation of the switch" because like... what?! what the fuck are you talking about?!

The switch might not be the most powerful modern console but it's by no means weak.

This system can run games that look like this!

And this!

And this!

And this!

And this!

And this!

And this!

And this!

Oh yeah, and this.

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This is not a result of hardware limitations. This is the result of time constraints and unbelievable amounts of crunch. The scope of these games are getting higher and higher each year but the time they're allocated to finish them hasn't changed at all. In fact I'm pretty sure development times have gotten shorter. It's just not sustainable, which I think is something they've realised semi-recently.

Y’know, something peculiar I’ve noticed while looking through item descriptions is how absent Marika seems to be in all of her children's lives. Rennala, Radagon and Godfrey are all either outright mentioned in things revolving some of their children, or are heavily hinted at within other parts of the game

i.e Abductor virgin’s protecting Rya Lucaria academy, something Rykard likely chose to do to protect his mother. 

Rykard and Radahn both once having high standing positions in the golden order, likely due to Radagon.

Despite Radahn directly looking up to Godfrey he still wore his fathers red hair with incredible pride, even though it was something Radagon hated about himself.

Rennala was the one to introduce Ranni to the dark moon and other celestial entities.

Radagon and Miquella have both gifted each other incantations that they had developed for one another.

While brief, Godfrey holds Morgott in his arms as he fades into grace, being there for him in a way he was unable to when he was younger.

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But Marika… doesn’t seem to have anything. No comment of her doing anything or developing anything with any of her children, no small interactions that made it into item description flavour text. Even when it comes to her golden child Godwyn, there’s practically nothing.

For a while now I’ve wondered why this was. Why did Marika seem to be so absent in all of her children's lives? She has 9 direct descendants and not one seems to have a notable experience with her. But then after watching the new cinematic trailer, something dawned on me.

What if it was Messmer?

What if the things Messmer did in the name of Marika and her order during the shadow land war were so monstrous and unforgivable, to the point where the land of shadow was hidden away and he himself was erased from history that she just couldn’t bring herself to attempt a connection with the rest of her children?

Afterall, Marika seems to hate fire with a passion. Anything and everything in the lands between that has any connection to it is something she tries to snuff out. The giants and their forge, the crucible and their fire breathing abilities, the dragons, even the omens have bloodflame magic if Morgott and Mohg are anything to go off of. Even the phrase “flame of ambition” seeming to be a very negative term is something that’s throwing shade at the idea of fire.

And what is it that Messmer is so well known for?

His flame. Messmer's flame. The very same flame he used to purge the land of shadows.

Honestly when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that the lands between and land of shadow don't connect perfectly when you try to overlay the maps, even though they were once part of the same landmass.

The two have been separated for many years by the time the game takes place, and have both developed independently through untold years of turmoil, war, natural disasters and weathering.

I'd be more surprised if they did connect properly after all of that.

Screw Marika's motivations. I want to know what the fuck is up with Melina and Ranni. Why do they seem like 2 halves of the same whole?

Why are they so similar design wise? Why are they both "burned and bodiless"? Why are they the only characters that know torrent on a first name basis? Why do they both share the same closed eye aesthetic? Why do their faces complete eachother if you overlap them? Why do these two, seemingly completely unrelated characters have so much in common? What the fuck is going on?!

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Semi side rant incoming but what if those eye markings that Melina and Ranni have are markings of an Empyrean? I mean, other than Ranni have we ever actually seen the full, undamaged face of an Empyrean before? By the time we see Malenia, Marika and even to a certain extent Ranni’s own face they’re all damaged to the point where any marking would be long gone (and we just straight up never see Miquella’s face) and we conveniently also never see a proper painting or depiction of any of the Empyreans faces ever throughout the game. Sure there’s a couple statues here and there but I’d believe that tattoo/mark details would be left out of that sort of stuff.

I always find it super weird in the new doctor who seasons whenever they try to push the idea that the doctor has never settled down in one place for an extended period of time because… well he has. Quite a lot actually.

Just off the top of my head I can think of quite a few.

The weeks its implied that 11 spends with the Ponds in ‘The power of three’

The unknown amount of time he spends grieving in the sky of 1980’s London in ‘the snowmen’

The centuries he spent protecting Trenzalore in ‘the time of the doctor’

12’s 24 years living alongside River on Darillium in ‘the husbands of River Song’

And 12’s retired life as a professor watching over Missy in his final season

It’s not overly common but it happens just enough that it always makes me raise an eyebrow whenever they try to do the “the one adventure you’ve never had before” stuff again. Like, some of these are incredibly important to the doctor’s story and it’s always weird when they try to pretend they never happened.

One detail I really like about Shadow of the Erdtree's final boss is that you can tell he's not fully there... (lore analysis under the cut)

...because his horse isn't with him! What you learn in the base game is that Radahn would never willingly separate from his horse. This man mastered a new school of magic fully so he could keep his horse with him at all times. He's the prime horse girl of the lands between. And yet when we meet him he is on his own, no horse in sight.

For the people saying Radahn being the final boss is somehow a cop-out, i vehemently disagree. This part of the lore was always going to be present, and it was clearly planned out since the start. There's a lore reason Malenia and Radahn fought now. Miquella was always going to be an evil little shit. Long before the DLC came out people had already figured out that Miquella as a character is heavily inspired by Griffith from berserk. Griffith, the quintessential betrayer of hopes in modern Japanese fiction. The guy who murdered everyone he ever loved for a shot at godhood. Sorry Miquella simps, but Miquella is right: it was his very fate to betray you.

Speaking of which! I really like the contrast between Miquella and Ranni in that aspect. Someone else already discussed how they mirror each other in terms of love and how they treat those who love them, but fate is another really interesting contrast between the two. Where Ranni in the base game goes to absurd lengths to escape her fated godhood, to the point of killing the most beloved man in the lands between just to get a shot at killing herself too; Miquella goes to even more absurd lengths to achieve his. Ironically, this, too involves getting rid of his body.

And the narrative supports Ranni over Miquella. She's right to escape her fate, she's right to value the love of others as much as she does, she's right in her attempts to stop people from sacrificing themselves on her altar. But she also deserves to not be alone. She deserves to have trustworthy companions at her side. If you choose to stick with her, she ends the game victorious, with a trusted consort of any gender at her side*.

Miquella meanwhile uses those who love him as tools and sacrifices everyone who ever valued him in his bid to follow the path fate laid out for him. He gets rightfully stomped into the ground at the end of the DLC for his troubles. zombie spouse and all.

*=unless you got the frenzied flame ending, you naked maniac!

Probably the mildest head cannon I'll ever share on here, but I like to think that Miquella grew his hair out so long because it was literally the only way he could show his actual age with his appearance. He may have been cursed to never grow, but his hair would always be a clear signifier to his peers that he was much more than he appeared.

Words cannot actually describe how much I am interested in this whole scene of Marika doing....something important.

Is she ascending to godhood? Sealing the Land of Shadow? Creating the Golden Order? Fucking summoning the Elden Beast? I don't know, but it seems like a greatly significant moment.

The way she walks through that massive pile of bodies, and then stands there looking all gold and holy and powerful in front of that portal of flesh and blood. Her divinity being born of such vileness, created in a scene that Rykard would find appalling.

Also how the trailer says that the war happened after this. It feels like whatever she is doing here is so horrible that a war was bound to start from it. Is that why this war was completely hidden? Because there is no angle where Marika is not 100% at fault?

It's so unfair that they dropped Nightreign halfway through the game awards because there was no way I'd be able to pay attention to the rest of the show after that reveal 😭😭😭

From the moment the trailer dropped my memory of everything afterwards becomes more and more of a blur.