Personnal Storyboard Based On My Favorite Scene Of @eldenring Shadow Of The Erdtree, The Tragic Confrontation

This quote makes me think a lot of things...

If Miquella has removed all things golden from his very being, then I wonder if St trina and/or Messmer could be what remains of his respective halves.

If he removed everything "golden" (I assume erdtree/Marika/Golden order related) then how much of Miquella would actually remain? Would it be so little that it may as well be a different person entirely? I mean, Miquella is very golden. From his design, his lore, his lineage, his power and the very blood that runs through his veins, it all just screams "Golden." If Godwyn the golden hadn't already been born I'm half convinced Miquella would have been called "The golden".

After removing "everything golden" from himself would he even be "Miquella" anymore? Would he even want to be?

And what of the other half? Would that contain so much discarded contents that it itself could also be a new person? How would they feel or act knowing that they're merely the discarded, unwanted scraps of a larger, fiercely more powerful whole? Would they feel bitter? Wronged? Would they come to terms with it? Would they even care? They themselves were once part of the being that discarded them, so they may very well agree with what was done. Or they could despise the act and long for the day when the two could be reunited.

Malenia was able to (while likely accidentally) remove large portions of herself via her first aeonia bloom, which took the form of Millicent and her sisters, so what would happen if an Empyrean did the same with prior knowledge and full intent in what they were going to do?

I'd wager they'd be able to split themselves cleanly, and possibly become something entirely new in the process.

Messmer, Miquella's strength and flesh and lineage

And St. Trina, Miquella's other half and what remains of his ambitions and goals, but likely no means of carrying them out due to discarding their power.

Xenoblade chronicles 3 spoilers

Honestly with how prevalent the Aionios queens were in the advertising material for Xenoblade 3 I feel almost clickbaited by the reveal of them just being robots. The game really builds Melia up throughout the first, like, 2/3rds of the story and by the time you finally encounter her the tension is palpable and the amount of questions you have is insane.

I don't like being majorly negative here but having all of that build up just to reveal that "oh that's not actually Melia, it's just a robot that looks, sounds and fights exactly like her" feels like a major copout.

It's like they wanted a major hook of the game to be that you'd be fighting against 2 nations lead by previous party members but also didn't actually want to make them antagonists. A classic case of having your cake and eating it too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want Melia and Nia to be evil rulers knowingly waging an eternal, sadistic war. But if you're going to have most of your game building them up and creating tension, don't have the payoff be "they were identical robots the entire time!"

Something neat I just discovered while researching a different topic is that the icerind hatchet is known as the "freezing fog" and was crafted using a scale from a dragon. This dragon is almost certainly borealis, a boss who is found up in the mountain tops close to Castle Sol, and who also has the title of "Freezing fog"

It's a very small detail but I thought it was neat enough to talk about since I'd never read the axe's description before!

I always find it particularly funny when people say that Ranni is just manipulating the player and that she’s using them as a means to a much more nefarious secret end, because if you actually pay attention to the game and character then one thing becomes abundantly clear.

Ranni literally cannot lie to save her life.

No seriously, she’s a cunning mastermind but she is a fucking terrible liar. When a random tarnished comes looking for her and accuses her of the assassination of Godwyn, she just goes “yeah? And what of it?” as if she’s not admitting to being the one behind the biggest act of heresy in known history. That's not something you should just say to people, least of all a tarnished!

You get her alone with you and within seconds she’s rambling about her plan, her past, her family, her friends that she adores with all of her heart, how you’re actually a lot like them, nevermind forget that last part please-

Sorry to burst the bubble of all the nihilist theorists out there that really want age of stars to secretly be a bad ending but if Ranni was planning anything nefarious with her godhood then I’m willing to bet that she wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about it until the end of her questline.

I've had a bit of a mixed opinion on the newest doctor who stuff for a while now, and for most of that time I've really struggled to pin point what exactly it is that's been missing. The writing isn't bad (for the most part), the actors are great, the settings are interesting and overall its felt like a very needed breath of fresh air for the show... but there is something missing, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

The aliens are gone.

No seriously, look back on all of 15's episodes from both the current season and the last and count how many of them include some sort of alien civilisation or society. Not just a singular monstrous alien that acts as an antagonist but an actual collective. There are very few. And no, aliens that are visually indistinguishable from regular humans do not count.

from what I can tell, there are three. Just three. Three alien species across an entire season and a half of doctor who.

There's the slugs from dot and bubble, the birdmen in Rouge and the singular Silurian in joy to the world.

And from those three all of them act as antagonistic forces.

Just as a quick comparison, the first season of new who, which came out in 2005 and had a significantly smaller budget had at least 6.

Sorry, wait, did I say first season? My mistake what I meant was first two episodes.

Where have they all gone? The universe of Doctor Who used to be teeming with so many different reoccurring and one off alien races that all interacted and coexisted. They weren't just throwaway villains, they were living, breathing creatures.

It used to be so rich with so much diverse life. The living plastic, The Slitheen, Daleks, Adipose, Sontaran's, The Catkind, The Ood, Silurians, The Silence, The Atraxi, The Racnoss, The family of blood, The mighty Jagrafess, The Reapers, The Judoon, The Hath, The Ice warriors, The vashta nerada, The Sycorax, The tree people, The Zygon.

But now the best they can do is regular humans and sometimes the odd robot or two. It's kind of depressing when you really look at it. The universe of doctor who has lost its magic, the life that was once abundant wherever the doctor landed is now sparse and non-existent. We don't visit alien civilisations anymore, we don't even encounter aliens anymore.

Have some Madeline bc yes

My favourite crackpot elden ring theory is that the gloam eyed queen was a demi-human and also Boc’s mother. Allow me to indulge in why this might actually be possible for a moment.

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The biggest point of evidence I have for this is that both Boc’s mother and the GEQ are both said to have been seamstresses. Boc mentions this fact about his mother multiple times throughout his questline and a substantial amount of godskin/GEQ gear have descriptions/motifs that allude to the GEQ sharing this trait (i.e. the godskin stitcher, godskin peeler and the godskin swaddling cloth)

Additionally Boc’s mother also once told him of the legendary golden sewing set and how it was capable of altering the attire of the very gods. Now, why would a random Demi-human mother have such extensive knowledge of royal garbs and the materials one must use to craft/alter them? This seems to imply that she has deeper knowledge of how gods and demigods work as a whole right? Deeper than the common person of the lands between, as if she’s got first hand experience with them.

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My next point is how Demi-human society has a royal hierarchy, literally having queens that lead and protect groups of Demi-humans. To my knowledge, outside of Renalla, Marika and the GEQ herself, this is the only other mention the game has regarding queens. Would it be much of a stretch to assume that the GEQ was a Demi-human queen? Albeit one that commanded much more power than the typical one we discover in game. Though, you may believe that this is incredibly circumstantial, and I wouldn’t blame you.

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So how about the fact that the GEQ, being Demi-human, would 100% have a motive to hunt down the gods. The Demi-humans are arguably one of the most oppressed races in the game, not even having a place in the golden order society as slaves like Trolls and Misbegotten. They’re basically excluded entirely. And who’s sitting at the top of that violent and oppressive society? The gods.

If the Demi-humans did once have a singular queen that ruled them, could you imagine the anger they must have felt? The injustice, the needless cruelty. It would have been one of the few things I can genuinely believe would drive someone to challenge the gods.

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Once again, very circumstantial, I wouldn't blame you for not buying it. But what about the GEQ’s eyes? The “gloam eyes” if you will. The meaning of the word gloam in this name has been a heavily debated topic in the community basically since the game came out, but it seems like the common consensus, when looking at the beast eye, Melina’s sealed eye, the Godskin’s jewels and some of the common meanings of gloam being “dusk” and “twilight”, is that the Gloam eye’s in question would have likely been purple in colour.

Now, why is this relevant? You may be asking. Well, do you know who else in the game had purple or “gloam” eyes?

Demi-human queens.

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Also Farum Azula, good old Farum Azula. The location I theorised used to be the city that the Gloam eyed queen once resided in. Don’t you think it’s interesting just how similar some of the ancient corpses littering the pillars of this place are to Demi-humans? How the beastmen themselves wouldn’t look too out of place within a Demi-human group, ignoring their much thicker coats? Isn’t it interesting how beasts and dragons are the only surviving remnants of this Ancient place? How important they were to the culture? How about the fact that they are masters at incantations, some of the best in the lands that currently exist. The very same magic group that Godslaying flame belongs to. Wouldn’t it make sense for their queen to be just as much of a ‘beast’ as they are? Just as masterful at incantation as they are?

Isn’t it interesting how the eye Maliketh grants us to hunt deathroot, living fragments of destined death, the VIOLET eye is named the “Beast eye” as if it itself once belonged to a beast.

I'm sure Rex is going to be very normal about his daughter being turned into a child soldier with a few years to live and no other reason to exist outside being a glorified weapon, especially after everything his wives have been through.

I know promised consort Radahn is quite a controversial reveal but I honestly think it works really well. Miquella and Radahn were inherently tied together from the very beginning of the game's story, with Malenia and Radahn’s fight to the death. The game put so much emphasis on this battle over every other fight in the shattering that looking back now, knowing what we do, it’s kinda weird that not a lot of people really suspected that there was anything deeper behind the most influential battle in the shattering.

No one really stopped to ask why Melania, sister and blade of kindly and benevolent Miquella would be leading a war march across the entirety of the lands between to challenge Radahn. Why she was so desperate to defeat him that she was willing to release the scarlet rot and possibly destroy herself to take him down. Why the cleanrots and the redmanes hate each other to such a degree that even in death, they still continue to fight. Why Miquella was reaching upwards to the Aionian battle ground when we encountered his body.

I think there was always history between these 3 characters in the game. Not enough on its own to come to the conclusion that Radahn was Miquella’s desired consort, but certainly enough to get you wondering just what was up with them that caused the events to transpire the way they did.

Something I'd also like to add that didn't fit well into the initial post is that whatever it was that he discovered while looking into Marika, didn't just scare him beyond his breaking point. Whatever it was it also got him absolutely convinced that

a tarnished cannot become a lord

2. and a man cannot kill a god

which is rather odd, considering that no matter what ending we choose, we prove him wrong on both accounts.

There’s something so terrifying about Gideon’s downfall. At the end of his near-constant research he discovered something about Marika and her will that made him shudder in fear.

Gideon Ofnir. The man that ordered the full destruction of an entire village for a key fragment and then abandoned his adopted daughter for daring to question him. The man who’s henchmen died trying to take that very key from us, only to shrug it off like it was nothing.

The man who lives in a world of monsters and suffering eternal. The man who’s so dedicated to learning everything there is to know about The lands between’s blood soaked history that it’s literally part of his name. The man who probably knows of, witnessed or directly contributed to some of the most horrific atrocities in the lands between.

Gideon Ofnir, the all knowing. The man who took one look into Marika’s will and was rendered so terrified at his discovery that he almost immediately gave up on the goal he had worked so hard for, instead choosing to confront, and eventually fall to our tarnished character.

Gideon is one of the most unempathetic and uncaring characters I’ve seen in media. He’s largely unshaken by the state of the world around him, seems to lack any semblance of morals or values and his interactions with just about anything begin and end with trying to figure out how he can personally benefit. No matter what he'd have to do.

What could he have possibly figured out to make him of all people horrified to such an extent?