Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 2

Yes, these are my hand-written notes. My descent into madness continues apace.

 
 

Check here for part 1.

PART 4: SECRETS OF 1.00

Digging through this immensely helpful spreadsheet has revealed many things. A lot of the changes from 1.00 to current were “there’s no description, now there is one”, and a decent number are clearly abandoned conceptual threads that aren’t useful for anything, and many of them are probably not particularly solid to use as a basis for speculation. But there are a decent number that are at least interesting, and several that are very interesting in ways that leave me more than a little disappointed that FromSoft either elected to remove the clues because they were too overt or removed them because plans changed and they never provided a replacement.

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Crepus’ Vial: Described as “sealing away the “shadow of death”. Current version says it was used by Roundtable Hold assassins to hunt down Tarnished who had fallen from the guidance of Grace. Which, if nothing else is a parallel of the shadowbound beasts serving as the GW’s hatchetmen when their Empyreans get unruly.

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Concealing Veil: “said to have been secreted away from the Eternal Cities and handed over to a band of assassins.”

If true, the Black Knives got their veils from the Eternal Cities but did not acquire them on their own. This seems to be more evidence for “Marika was behind the Night of Black Knives”, a theory which I don’t like one bit, so I am going to roll with Ranni swiping them from storage on a visit to the capital.

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Shabriri’s Woe: “The man, named Shabriri, was born without pupils. Known to be a great lover of the grape, a sickness in the form of a red colored chaos was said to have come to dwell beneath his eyes. Eventually, his pupil-less eyeballs were crushed by other men, and he was driven to the gloomy southern peninsula.”

Grape possibly a euphemism for eyeballs as found elsewhere, but also could just mean that he was an alcoholic.

Being driven to the Weeping Peninsula is a very interesting bit of text: the only place where frenzy is found in the region is in the Ailing Village, which doesn’t have much going for it besides there being an outbreak of frenzy there and folks being cogent enough to put up warnings (see Flame Crest Wooden Shield). Interesting, but ultimately a dead end, though I do like the image it paints of Shabriri meeting his end in a tiny little village that doesn’t even have a name.

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Daedicar’s Woe: “Disturbing likeness of an old noble whose skin was flayed. He smiles with a serene tenderness. Increases damage taken. This soft-featured man's name was Daedicar, and he was one of Captain Rykard's paramours, as well an attendant in his Inquisition. He would test new methods of torture first upon himself, making a gift of his pain and first-hand knowledge to the one he loved.”

This one got changed a whole lot, as the current version of the item reads:

“Disturbing likeness of a woman whose skin was flayed. She smiles with a serene tenderness. Increases damage taken. It is said that this woman, named Daedicar, indulged in every form of adultery and wicked pleasure imaginable, giving birth to a myriad of grotesque children.” 

My gut says this was changed mid-development when someone said “Hey boss, I’ve got a nifty idea for the snake-men”, and...it's an improvement but not by much. 1.00 is TVtropes-Issue Depraved Homosexual Bit Character, modern is "this woman has lots of sex and therefore is both morally and literally monstrous" and you know what, you can in fact write better things than that.

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Tarnished’s Furled Finger: “This finger of corpse wax, furled like a hook, is one of the fetishes bestowed by the maidens of the Finger Reader”

Just noting this one because you don’t generally see corpse wax involved with the Fingers; it’s almost always with the gargoyles who are typically linked to Maliketh.

**

Godrick’s Great Rune: “A large shard, found in hand of Godrick the Grafted. This shard is an imitation transcribed from one of the four large rings that make up the Elden Ring.”

The “four large runes” is most likely a remnant of an older version of the game with only four shardbearers, but the idea that Godrick is such a pissant that he can only manage a bad copy of a Great Rune is fun to consider.

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Swarm Pot: “Unpleasant yet short-lived, these flies inherit what might be the most worthless of legacies in all of man's meddling with nature's work.”

I just like the phrasing in this one.

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Flask of Crimson Tears: “A sacred flask modeled after a golden holy chalice that was once graced by a tear of life. It is said that a Finger Maiden will bestow two such chalices upon the chosen Tarnished when they meet.”

Pointing this out primarily for the “tear of life” reference, which I’d bet is a golden tear to complement Noxian silver tears.

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Soporific Grease: “The Saint of the Cradlesong has become the very symbol of lost repose, and the feeble of heart were powerless to resist her kindness even upon the battlefield.”

This gives us Miquella fighting during the Shattering (presumably) in the guise of St. Trina. So perhaps he took on that persona later than we thought, or he swapped between the two regularly.

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Celestial Dew: “A nostrum used by members of the Carian royal family, made from gathered moon tears remaining above ground. An old magic hides within, known to interfere with fate itself.”

“Moon tears” appear nowhere else in either version of the corpus, but rolling with tears = blessings = sap / amber…looks like the moon was a lot more active in the past. Silver tear link seems likely, especially considering the Erdtree “tear of life” mentioned just a few entries up.

And dare I say it, if we have silver tears, and we have golden tears, and if silver tears are from the moon, gold would logically come from the sun, fits very nicely into the alchemical symbology…

Wait a second…

Baseless Speculation: The Sun is the Greater Will
You know how it’s fucking weird that they barely mention the sun at all in the game? You know how Ymir basically confirms that there was a big bang? You know how meteors and stars are just bizarre alien god-organisms? How there’s blueish and gold amber of the stars?

• Sun’s a star.
• Sun’s gold-colored and gold-associated.
• Sun’s got all the properties of a lovecraftian god per that famous tumblr post
• Sun’s gonna burn you if you get too close to it.
• Sun sends out radio waves that you can tune in and listen to.
• Sun is distant and doesn’t really give a shit about you but is also the fundamental source of all mechanical processes on Earth.

I think the sun might be the Greater Will.

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Prattling Pates (multiple): “Said to be the wistful fetish of a now extinct ancient race who turned into clods of earth, losing not only their voices, but also their words.”

The only potential link we have is with the claymen of the Ancient Dynasty, though weasel words are fully in effect. Could just be a throwaway.

Miranda’s Prayer: “A doll fashioned in the appearance of an anthropomorphized miranda flower. While many revere it as a holy object of worship, it does not belong to the golden order, and thus has pagan origins.”

“Pagan” is a term that only appears with the Winged Scythe (affiliation with Deathbirds) and Serpent Bow (affiliation with Serpent Cult). Festival Grease doesn’t get the exact word dropped, but it does claim that the Dominula festival is an old enough tradition that the Erdtree permits it to continue and that’s good enough for me. So that’s one for Death, one for Snek, one for Godskin, and one for Rot for Pre-Erdtree religions.

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Cuckoo Glintstone: “Craftable with a cracked pot. Sullied remains and such are mixed together and sealed in the pot. Consumes FP. Throw at enemy to set vicious pursuing wraiths upon them. A curse works in tandem with the act of defilement to summon the wraiths, calling them into deadly action.”

Keywords to point out here are “defilement” and “wraiths” - we’ll get back to them in the next theory section.

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Meteorite (spell): “It is said that, in the Eternal City, now lost in ruin underground, meteorites held the same import as stars.”

Blessedly clear timing on this one: they believed this while they were still on the surface and a meteor had not yet ruined their day. Also interesting parallel with the Academy dismissing the Carians for their belief in the moon being equal to the stars.

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Black Flame (spell):
Originally titled “Black Flame of the Godslayer”; Black Flame’s Protection was “Protection of the Godslayer”, which says to me that Godslayer was at some point intended as a proper title for the character later called the Gloam-Eyed Queen. Which, if GEQ is Marika or a fragment  of Marika (or other way around), is very interesting indeed.

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Turtle Neck Meat: “Turtle meat is said to boost virility, but none in the Lands Between seem to have much appetite for it these days. In Lands Between, the urge to reproduce has waned long ago.”

Hard confirmation of Melina’s weird implications and theories of Erdtree birth. 

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Serpent’s Amnion: “Amniotic sac that held man-serpent roe in its mother's womb. Among man-serpents there are some with particularly intelligent roe. The amnion is known to never dry out, retaining moisture indefinitely. It is revered among man-serpents as a holy object of worship.”

Gross, but definitely worth noting as A) probably belonging to Daedicar and B) a means of reproduction outside the tree births of the Erdtree cycle.

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Asimi Silver Tear: "An asimi that has infected a tarnished. An intelligent silver sludge; asimi infect the body of tarnished, granting the host power."

This is a special tool that'll help us later.

**

East Limgrave Map: “Map of the eastern region of Tenebrae. The demesne of Tenebrae, far south of the capital, stands vigil before the vast Sea of Fog. Radagon's warning is yet told and retold. That one day, the Tarnished led into war will cross the Sea of Fog and return. For the Elden Ring.”

Tenebrae is probably just a different name for Limgrave in old dev versions, but that’s not the important part: the important part is that Radagon was warning people that the Tarnished would return and attempt to overthrow the current order. This would have been after his divorce from Rennala and adoption of Fundamentalism, so that checks out with what we know of his character. It lines up with the stories of Tarnished being hunted down or enslaved when they return, too.

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Unalloyed Gold Items: Unalloyed gold is called ivory in 1.00, which feels alchemical to me: we’ve got red and gold already, now we get white.

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Cracked Pot: “A remnant of bygone research into eternal life.” 

This is straight-up either a pre-seeded (and then deleted) connection with the DLC, or it was an idea that had a nice open interpretation that got developed later.

**

Smithing stones used to have elemental types, looking a lot more like Dark Souls: these old versions have “transformed as a result of a meteorite that fell during ancient times,” which should put us in mind of the Stone Lords. 1.00 somber smithing stones are “A blackstone shard that has transformed, storing light” - black stone is only ever mentioned in conjunction with golem weaponry, so I’m going to follow Quelaag’s lead and say that this is a link to Rauh.

(The “storing light” thing is also reminiscent of the stone-scabbard sword from the DLC.)

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Crystal Bud: “A parasitic plant that uses wounded trees as seedbeds. Commonly found throughout the Lands Between.”

I feel like this is symbolic of something, probably the Erdtree. Seedbeds are most prominently featured in the Seedbed Curse item, and that certainly is using a wound as a base.

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Icon Shield: “Strongly retains the Rune of Life's blessing, providing gentle HP recovery when held.”

Always good to point out when Runes have dedicated names. This one’s Marika’s or I’ll eat my hat.

Also, I should probably go through and see what sorts of gameplay effects are linked, or possibly linked, to runes or gods. We’ve done it before with outer gods and damage types.

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Fingerprint Shield: “A stone grave dedicated to lords in ancient times. Who would have thought to carry such a thing around?”

Now this is a very different description from current, and I like current better, but I do like the image of the Fingers pressing themselves into a headstone.

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Crucible Greatshield: “Greatshield inlaid with rune blessings, gifted by Queen Marika herself.”

Just some reinforcement that the Crucible itself was not Marika’s enemy: she was willing to use its followers like any other tool in her arsenal. At least until Golden Order Fundamentalism became the rule of the day.

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Blue-White Wooden Shield: “The crest-like design of the metal is believed to have ancient origins. Some say it represents a sword; others say it represents a tree. Whatever significance it may have had, it appears to have no special defensive properties beyond the mundane.”

Current version says “The design is said to represent the stars of the night sky, portending fate”, which rounds out to a funny little “no one has a fucking idea what these symbols mean” gag.

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Heretic’s Hook: “Scythe used both for collecting and offering up the dead. The blade itself seems to be a tortured, maddened thing.”

This weapon was cut but we do have an image for it, but the style doesn’t ring any bells for what faction it might be linked to. My gut says it’s part of the ghostflame regime, but again that’s all we get.

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Onyx Lord Greatsword: “A weapon unique to the Onyx Lords, a race of ancients with skin of stone who were said to have risen to life in an age when meteor strikes were common.”

More evidence for the Rauh connection, if we go with smithing stones being the result of meteor impacts.

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Cleanrot Knight’s Sword: “The process of consecration tempers the blade by introducing it to rot, allowing it to withstand the effects of decay.”

Innoculating your weapons against a god is a fucking rad idea.

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Abundance Twinblade: A weapon that never made it into the game, but the description remains to tell us that relatively late in development Miquella had the Rune of Abundance. 1.00 version of the Cleanrot Knight spear gives Malenia the Rune of Decay.

Putting the named runes together we have Life, Death, Abundance, Decay, and the Unborn, which is anomalously coherent.

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Spirit ashes generally don’t have much in the way of descriptions, but the blurbs do contain some alternate names or interesting implications.

Nomad ashes are called a “red-eyed watcher”, but nothing else in the corpus mentions red eyes like that so it’s likely nothing more than an older way of describing Frenzy.

Winged Misbegotten ashes are called a “Radagon chimera”, which could mean that either they were a chimera made by Radagon, or a chimera made from Radagon at some point in development. But, with only that title to go on, it doesn’t really give you anywhere else to go, especially with how well their current versions fit thematically with the rest of the game.

Oracle Envoy ashes are called “golden order dissenters”, which fits very nicely with their current description of waiting to announce the arrival of a new god and a transformative renewal of the Order.

Clayman ashes are called “runestarved”, which is not a description that shows up elsewhere.

Kindred of rot ashes are called “oracle of rot”, which parallels their role with the Oracle Envoys - they’re just waiting for a different god.

Lone wolf ashes: “These wolves were chased from their pack, and later found company with a human outcast—a fellow hunter. “

Now, this is updated in current to specify that the hunter is a Tarnished, but I would like to remind everyone of that statue of a woman with three wolves in the sanctum of Farum Azula.

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Nox armor sets: “worn by members of the Empyrean family”

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, what could this possibly mean…

Nightmaiden and Swordstress Ashes: “Summons the spirit of a descendent of Marika”

RING THOSE BELLS WE’VE GOT A FIVE-ALARM FIRE.

[A pause, as I draft out some theory or another]

Whoops, false positive.

The Nox armor sets are one of the biggest missed opportunities in the game in terms of lore - three sets of four pieces each, and they all repeat the same description - a description that replaced the one above, which was also repeated on all items. Which says to me that they had a penciled-in plan, scrapped it, and didn't have anything meaningful to replace it with. The current "Lord of Night" blurb is good enough for a single description, but there should have been at least 3. Even just an unrelated blurb about, I don't know, swordmistress initiation practices.

But let's say that there is some substance behind it. Let's treat it as true - we can't treat the DLC as true in the same breath, but that's no great loss to us. Base game only.

If true, this would mean that the Nox are essentially another version of the Golden Lineage. Marika had an entire other empire that collapsed on her prior to the current regime…or perhaps it has always been just the same empire, transforming over time as it collapses and reforms and collapses and reforms.

Calling them all Empyreans says that they’d either be chosen by the fingers, or born of a single god. Or, more likely, that Fromsoft’s definition of an Empyrean changed during development (which I consider extremely likely). Since the Fingers did not really have a detectable foothold in the Eternal Cities, the remaining option is that of them being buds of Marika in the style of Millicent & her sisters.

(I believe it was Zayf who pointed out that the Japanese text in the game uses the neologism "wagami", roughly translating as a split or doubled self, for both Millicent and the deathblighted Godwyn corpses.)

Those giant corpses on thrones, still uncertain. I’m going to spitball here, stream of consciousness style:

• They're certainly dressed in the colors we would associate with followers of the Erdtree (or, it should be noted, the inhabitants of Dominula). 
• They might also be buds of Marika, or she might have been one of a group. 
• Two thrones are held by corpses, two are empty. 
• The Eternal Cities are filled with all those corpses melted into the walls that we see again in Inir-Elim, which is a dead ringer for an attempted ascension for godhood.
• Do we ever see male Nox? I know we see mimic tears take male forms but I think that the Nox enemies are all female. Point for bud theory.
• Nightfolk character background says silver ran in their veins…looking back at the description for Asimi, silver tear says that it’s a variety of silver tear than can infect a Tarnished. 
• This could just entail Tarnished from Godfrey’s cohort that somehow came in contact with silver tears, that is entirely possible for a red herring.
  
• But if Tarnished are people who previously had Grace and then had it rescinded…
• Then maybe the Eternal Cities had Grace prior to their sin against the GW…
• Lord of Night, gods need a lord, Tarnished summoned together to fight over who gets the position…

These connections are tenuous bullshit at best and the combination of Metyr and the Hornsent throws it all into chaos. The plan at Fromsoft clearly changed multiple times, so all we get is pieces of what could have been.

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There were details about the GEQ in 1.00 and they removed them from the game.

Godskin armor sets are all “made from tanned Demigod skin,”, which of course brings us to the question of “which demigods?” The most reasonable choice would be the seven soulless demigods in the mausoleums, what with the seven-face aprons of the Godskin Nobles…and of course the most reasonable choice makes no goddamn sense, because there’s no link at all between the Godskins and the Black Knife Assassins, except the extremely tenuous single line implicating Rykard as Plan B against Maliketh (Even though Rykard’s connections with the Godskins are themselves circumstantial at best.)

This is, of course, presuming that the demigods killed during the Night are the same demigods that are in the mausoleums and the same that got hunted by the Godskins. I feel like the first two are probably the same, and as much as I would like the third to be part of it, I don’t think I can make that jump. Not yet, anyway. Let me work myself up into a greater fervor.

Godskin Swaddling Cloth description does not mention GEQ by name, but calls her “the queen in black”. This reoccurs in the 1.00 Godslayer’s Greatsword description.

There are some changed descriptions in the Dominula festival sets that are also worth noting:

Blue Festive Hood: “Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. The most important role in the festival can only be performed by young maids. They are distinguished by a wreath of stunning wildflowers in full bloom.”

Festive Garb: “Ceremonial garb decorated with charming embroidery. Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. This dyed cloak of brilliant blue can only be worn by the young girls chosen to play the festival's most important role."

Festive Garb (Altered): “Ceremonial garb decorated with charming embroidery. Attire worn during a humble festival beseeching the blessing of the gods. The embroidered flowers of pale white convey the palpable virtue and beauty of the blessing.”

Okay, so we have a festival older than the Erdtree, that has been permitted to continue by Marika, that involves skinning and crucifying people as a way of seeking a blessing from the gods. Gods in the generic plural. But there’s only one appointed god in the lands between at a time (at least in the system that the Ring / Beast / GW facilitates), plus outer gods, but none of the outer gods have presence in Dominula.

There’s the Erdtree and Godskin iconography on the gold and blue robes, respectively. That’s two gods, or at least two divine forces interacting with each other, but we can't know if that iconography preceded the ritual or was adopted later. It's the baseline Erdtree symbol, not the Ancient or Fundamentalist versions, for whatever that's worth.

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And there’s the end of the 1.00 secrets that I found worth recounting. Tune in next time for more rambling.

Addendum

So long as the Red Law is opposed, the Conqueror Worm has no victory. So long as Moloch is fought, it has not won.

It's fucking trite to say that, in the face of the horrors known and unknown before us, but I will cling to it all the same. Whatever it takes to endure this turning of the wheel. If hope cannot sustain us, may bloody-minded spite give us what we need to love one another and keep ourselves alive.

Take care of one another out there.

Positively Unhinged Elden Ring Theoryposting: Part 1

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Now that Shadow of the Erdtree has been out for several months, I have settled into the long tail of idling away time doing exegesis about a game with somersaulting electric sheep.

That was the original opener of this post, and the first draft reached over 5000 words with no meaningful progress, after which I changed tacks and rewrote the entire damn thing from scratch.

And then rewrote several large chunks of it again during a whole lot of video essay binging and several long discussions with longtime friend of the blog Kyana.

Since this was all from my second playthrough, I suppose this counts as a revisit post.

PART 1: CRITIQUE

With the benefit of a few months of hindsight, I think that Shadow of the Erdtree pushes Elden Ring over the line where it starts getting choked by its own lore. The base game was already close to critical mass, but the addition of multiple entirely new, extremely important, and mostly entirely unconnected story elements has been enough to be an active detriment to the game.

This is nothing new for Fromsoft DLC: they’re always post-hoc, they’re always pretty disconnected from the main game, and they always feel stapled on to some extent. There’s usually some handwave given for the fuzziness and lack of connection: time travel, dreams, distant lands, magical paintings. Some of those work better than others, and the ones that work well typically do so because they deliver on an emotionally meaningful plotline and let the fuzziness cover for the rest.  All we need to know about Oolacile is that it was a Longass Time Ago; that’s sufficient stage dressing for the story of Artorius and the rest is gravy.

Elden Ring, unfortunately, is a game where the world’s history is an extremely important part of understanding anything. It’s a game that sold itself on having a coherent timeline lurking in the background, so in order to avoid the stapled-on effect the DLC would either have to entirely disconnected, or it would have to have a really good reason why no one has talked about any of this shit in base game.

Well, they did neither. Nothing in the damn game makes any fucking sense anymore; every time a theory might be going somewhere, it runs into some little detail in Shadow that blockades any sort of progress. There’s no substantive connective tissue, but they threw in enough gristle to block any path you might draw for yourself. Not having an answer to the specifics of Marika achieved godhood in the base game was fine, you could just brush it off as a fog of history moment and go along your way. Adding more Lore without any additional context of when and why just makes answering the questions yourself much less fun. They’ve fenced us in. And the one plot thread they actually properly set up they don't even deliver on.

And this isn’t just applicable to the relationship of the DLC to the base game: there are elements of the DLC that don’t make any goddamn sense with each other. There are crests in the Shadow Keep indicating an alliance between the Erdtree and the Hornsent, (Hawkshaw has a video on this. I don't fully agree with his conclusions, but I buy the part with the crest) which makes no god damn sense considering Marika’s backstory.

(Unless she only learned about the pogroms later in life? Wait…wait wait wait the braid. It’s the fucking braid. It’s the fucking braids on the fucking statues, because she goes from two braids down to one, and we find the braid she cut off in the Shaman Village…see what drove me to iterate this damn post so many times? It’s got the hooks in and I can’t even write the damn thing off properly. )

The lorehunt in Demons Souls and Dark Souls had a sort of organic nature to it. There wasn’t an ecosystem for lore analysis video essays (or at least, not much of one) at the time, and so it was an added bonus, an extra treat, a fun imaginative exercise. As time has gone on, FromSoft have been moving towards more and more focus on that side of the equation; by the time we get to Elden Ring, they’re particularly brazen about presenting the world as a mystery to solve rather than a canvas to paint on. We get more Lore™, there’s more Stuff to Analyze, but the interpretive curve is flattened. We end up in one of those terrible self-reinforcing cycles that eventually reaches a breaking point.

(Would you look at that: a Theme! Don’t tell any lore analysts, themes frighten them.)

It’s the problem that was growing in the latter books of New Sun and came to awful fruition in Urth: the world is made smaller because the author has focused wholly on making an elaborate wind-up puzzle box. Wolfe went from implications of a vast decaying space empire filled in by your imagination to “nah, there’s actually just one spaceship, also it travels through time so it is all spaceships at once.”

My brain goblins love a good theorycraft. Why do you think I still have so much love for the SCP Wiki, if not for its unique position as an enormous database full of infinite points to draw connections between. But in that environment every connection and every interpretation is viable, because canon doesn’t reach beyond the individual article. It’s a participatory dynamo where everything is mashed up and every potential play is fair game. You could almost call it a Crucible…

(Gasp! A metaphor!)

...and FromSoft has filled the shoes of the Greater Will, imposing Order upon interpretive chaos. And like the Greater Will they are distant, inscrutable, and extremely unhelpful.
 
Most of my theories in the original draft spun their wheels and went nowhere because any potential progress ended with me running up against the gaps in information that make a full picture impossible.

In a dream scenario, we’d get three to five single-sentence bullet points that allow us to plant down when anything fucking happens. That’d be ideal, even if it’s just “X event happened between Y and Z.” Barring that, I’d rather have less. I’d rather there be no answers, or the answers just be “thought it’d be cool, so we stuck it in there.” I’d rather it all be a dream of Miquella’s as he lays dying in his cocoon, a failure at everything he has ever attempted.

This “oh no, there are answers, we just gave you half the puzzle” shit is really putting a damper on the fun. And it is fun when the flow is going well - I had a proper fugue state focus episode as I annotated my big text document of item descriptions in my first big burst of inpiration - but eventually there is the wall.

We didn’t have all the answers with the base game, but it felt complete in a way. I’d only say Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne give that feeling of holistic self-contained coherence. That’s gone now.

Part 2: What Now?

So. There’s my complaining done. What to do about it is the next question. I could pare down my theory list to the absolute basics and toss in all the interesting observations I made. I could leave this post as-is and just have it as a short critical essay chronicling my disappointments with the implicit storyline of a game where you can put a jar on your head.

But you know…maybe all that doesn’t matter. Listening to Noah Caldwell-Gervais, as usual, has refreshed and re-oriented my thoughts and it’s very clear that I got caught up in the trap that Souls fans have built for themselves. We too often ignore that these games are myth and poetry, vibes and images, foppery and whim.

And so I am going to do what I should have done from the beginning, and just make some shit up.

Part 3: Return of the Unhinged Rambling

Here I am going to dump all the minor themes, theories, observations, and assorted other thoughts I have compiled in this particular hyperfocus regime. They will contradict each other regularly, as is right and good.

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Interpretive Lens: 1.00 Descriptions are canon

Some people might think cut content isn’t fair game, I am not one of them. 1.00 stuff shall be treated as canon here if it doesn’t contradict the rest of the game, or if it does contradict but provides something I like better.

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Theory: The holes in the narrative and timeline are holes in-universe history as well, thanks to the Golden Order’s enthusiastic and well-equipped ministry of propaganda.

Marika loves nothing more than removing all traces of anything that she doesn’t like, and she already had House Marais acting as secret police, so this feels like a given. It’s also a nice anti-frustration method: who is the GEQ, or any of those other pressing, frustrating questions? Doesn’t matter; that information was expunged from the record and the only people who actually know are dead.

**

Theory: The Removal of the Lands of the Shadow was a CK-Class Reality Restructuring Event

Apologies for the SCP lingo, but it’s still probably the best way of explaining this sort of thing.

A CK event is an in-universe retcon: reality got altered in some way that affects the past as well as the present. The total lack of connection between the Lands of Shadow and the base game (sans a few anomalous bleed-throughs) is now perfectly coherent: that entire subcontinent and everything to do with it was pruned out of reality so thoroughly that it never really existed in the first place.

And the Vulgar Militia Armor has the line “Forbidden lands that will be excised from the memory of history”, that’s exactly what I am talking about.

**

Theory: The base game and the DLC exist in two different timelines

Continuation of the above. Bear with me, I will try to keep it brief.

Let’s start with Timeline A: the Lands of Shadow are part of the Lands Between, everything progresses forward with a nice little trundle, it’s all gucci. This is the timeline that leads to Marika attaining godhood, ordering the Crusade, and pulling off the CK event.

When Marika splits the lands, we ctrl+c ctrl+v Timeline A and rename it Timeline B. Then we go through and start deleting. This will become the timeline of the base game (this is important! Base game is the modified Timeline B!) There’s no mention of Messmer in this timeline, because Messmer doesn’t exist outside of the Land of Shadow and so never existed here. There’s no mention of the Hornsent, the Tower, the Gate of Divinity, the Shaman village anything of that nature, because they don’t exist anymore. Marika is still aware of it all as the divine orchestrator and bearer of the Ring, but everyone else is entirely in the dark. And this is a retroactive change, so it doesn't actually restart the timeline or anything. It surgically removes things from the past.

**

Observation: Godfrey had an extremely irregular army

I honestly get a sort of Black Company-esque “constant turnover as the army travels” vibe from the Tarnished. This is the old warlord Loux peeking through, I think - the Crucible Knights are fine and good for Godfrey, but Horah Loux the badlands warrior strikes me as the kind of guy who will recruit damn near anyone who shows the right stuff and he isn’t particularly concerned about unit cohesion as a tactical strategy.

**

Secrets from 1.00: There are only 16 Crucible Knights

I think this gives a nice contrast to the warriors Godfrey surrounds himself with. An elite cadre of knights devoted to a primordial divine force vs a motley crew of battle-hardened veterans whose lower individual power is bolstered by diversity and experience. Two armies for two sides of the man.

**

Observation: All three of Rennala’s children got involved with heterodox magic

This isn’t particularly hidden info, but I’ve not seen it brought up as a whole before now.

• Ranni was secretly instructed in ice magic by Renna (or so is generally assumed), who is called a practitioner of heretical sorcery.
• Radahn both studied gravity magic with an Alabaster Lord and had connections to the Sellian sorcerers - both of which are outside of the Academy or Carian schools of sorcery
• Rykard rediscovered the hexes used by the ancient serpent-worshiping cult of Mt. Gelmir, and revised them for modern usage.

I don’t think there’s any big revelation here, but it is a nice thematic resonance: No matter how the older generation tries to control how the world goes, the plan breaks apart on contact with the younger generation. And of course, all three of these heterodoxies being pre-Tree practices.

**

Speculation: Ice Sorcery comes from Zamor

The few Zamorians we see use ice-based attacks (and are basically the only enemies who use it), and the only other fact we know about them is that they allied with the Golden Order against the Giants. The Astrologers, who later became the Carians, were allies (or at least friendly) with the Giants (per Sword of Night and Flame). Seems a reasonable assumption that the sorcery of an old enemy would later be called heretical.

**

Baseless Speculation: The Lords of Stone originally hail from Zamor

They’re both weird, gangly, tall, and old. It’s grasping at straws but we got fucking nothing on either of them. If the Zamorians had pointed ears it would be a shoe-in.

**

Observation: Whetblades are described as having a cipher inscribed on them.

Not a certified genius take to say “this is probably smithscript”, but I’m not a certified genius so it's all right.

**

Theory: People used to be bigger

Once is random chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. Wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got six!

Example 1: Giant Crusher

"A hammer made from a boulder, used in the War against the Giants. One of the heftiest weapons in the entire Lands Between. After the giants were quelled, and man turned against man in violence, this weapon was all but forgotten. Man has grown feeble in comparison to his forebears."

Example 2: Page Garb

"Among the highborn, those with naturally smaller physiques were considered to lack the full blessing of the Erdtree, and thereby trained as pages. There were said to be many among their number who positively brimmed with potential."

Example 3: 1.00 Fire Monk Hood

"Worshiping fire and wielding flame, these brawny warrior monks claim to descend from the giants of old."

Example 4: 1.00 Flame Prelate Armor

"Those who claim giant ancestry venerate their larger frames. As such, prelate's armor can accommodate marvelous great sizes indeed."

Example 5: 1.00 Vulgar Militia Ashes

"In the Lands Between, the small were scorned, and so they formed their vulgar militia as a means to make a living, albeit in ignominy."

Example 6: Sword of Milos

"Sinister greatsword fashioned from a giant's backbone. [...] Milos was undersized for a giant, and was viewed as sullied and terribly grotesque."

So it feels to me that giants and humans aren't really all that separate, but exist along a spectrum of hugeness. You have the Giant-Giants, the normal giants, small giants (trolls), Milos-sized giants, big humans (bosses and elite enemies, descendants of giants, etc), medium sized humans (most people), very small humans (vulgar militia). Couldn't tell you why it was removed. 

And this idea is certainly common in assorted mythologies, including those ol’ George would be familiar with.

**

Baseless Speculation: The Rune of the Unborn was originally going to be granted to a third Empyrean sibling of Malenia and Miquella

The Rune of the Unborn lines up shape-wise with Malenia’s Great Rune, and we know that Great Runes come in matching sets for siblings (and not necessarily twins! Morgott and Mohg match, but so do Rykard and Radahn), and if Miquella's crosses are anything to go by his great rune lined up with both of those. The link is sound.

**

Theory: Those born of a single god automatically qualify for Empyreanism

This is just me attempting to justify how Ranni is an Empyrean as well as Miquella and Malenia. It’s just ambiguous writing in the Remembrance of the Rot Goddess.

“Miquella and Malenia are both the children of a single god. As such they are both Empyreans, but suffered afflictions from birth.”

See? That "as such" is pulling a lot of weight. M & M autoqualified, Ranni was chosen by the Fingers.

**

Theory: The Fingers abandoned Malenia and Miquella

Ranni tells us pretty explicitly that both Malenia and Miquella had their own Fingers, but we don’t see or hear a single other thing about them. They also don’t have shadowbound beasts, which seems to be part of the SOP with the Fingers’ favored godhood prospects.

So I think that the Fingers had started the preparation process with M & M somewhat automatically, but dipped out early because neither of them would be the right kind of god for the Fingers’ purposes.

Malenia was already compromised by the Rot, so she’s a non-starter (at least if the GW and the Rot God are rivals, instead of a more vertical hierarchical relationship - the game is unclear on this, and Kyana pointed out that the GW is very good at incorporating anything it comes across - while that’s totally true, I am a sucker for a divine cold war.)

Miquella’s resistant to mental influence, which means that he’s going to be even less controllable than Marika and is a worse choice than the already-terrible choice of Malenia.

(Thinking more on this later, since the stuff with Metyr makes it pretty clear that the GW has not been in the picture for a long, long time, I am more set on this idea. While the GW might be able to incorporate anything it comes across, the Fingers have gone rogue and are under no compulsion to act according to the GW)

**

Baseless Speculation: The Blind Swordsman got his sword from a cat

Look, the words “fairy” and “faerie” only appear once each in the entire corpus, you gotta give me this one. Lacrimosa is the faerie cat.

**

Baseless Speculation: Nanaya acted out of ignorance, not malice.

The “Nanaya is Shabriri” theory has merit, but it leans too far into “everyone is someone else” for me and I prefer the tragedy of ruin brought about by people trying to do what they think is the right thing while driven by desperation, ignorance, and despair.

**

Observation: Gargoyles, like the pots, are cobbled together corpses of champions

Just something I think is interesting. Same idea, different methods: pots meld the flesh of champions together, gargoyles are cobbled together from spare parts using corpse wax leftovers.

**

Observation: Demi-humans become feral at night.

Per the Demi-Human Ashes:               

"Though they seem somewhat intelligent, when night falls, their blood boils and they become feral."

It should also be noted that the crucified corpses in Limgrave all start screaming at night as well.

**

Theory: Demihumans are the descendants of humans who never had Grace / Erdtree blessings, and have been reproducing in the normal human way rather than via Erdtree birth

This is me spinning out Melina's weird "I guess this is what it means to have a mother" statement about Boc, despite nearly all of her lines in game telling us about her own mother.

They might also be the descendants of beastmen who were not safely outside of time in Farum Azula, same principle applies there.

**

Observation: Some more weasel words

Ah, “it is said”, “it is thought” and “it is believed”, what wonderful weasel words. Sometimes the belief is true, and many times it is not. I am going through the doc and tagging everything where this stuck out as noticable.

Crimson Seed Talisman: "The Erdtree was once perfect and eternal, and thus was it believed that The Erdtree was once perfect and eternal, and thus was it believed that Erdtree seeds could not exist."

We know, of course, know that they can (because there are Golden Seeds lying all over the place)

One -Eyed Shield: "Once worshiped by the giants, this evil deity is believed to have been slain by Queen Marika."

The Fell God is still very much alive and active in the Fire Giant boss fight, so Marika either thought she killed it but didn’t, let it live on purpose, was unable to kill it, or someone else did the job for her. Those are interesting options. Lies are interesting.

Man-Fly Ashes: "Afflicted hornsent eventually metamorphosed into a fly-like form. It was believed that the moment the transformation took place, they were relieved from their suffering."

No real implications here, it’s mostly just sad.

Sacramental Bud: "Believed to originate long ago from a strain of buds cultivated with youthful, sacramental blood."

The 1.00 description says “a leaf bud that is known to cure scarlet poison”, which leads me to think that this is Miquella’s blood. Couldn’t tell you what the fuck the sacrament is, it is only mentioned here in base game and in 1.00 the only other use is with the Phantom Great Rune. These are also red buds, and there's the Chapel of the Bud in the DLC and ???? I don't find the Rot nearly as interesting as FromSoft.

Ringed Finger: "Bludgeon made of an enormous finger sheathed in several heavy rings. Thought to have been cut from an ancestor of the Fingercreeper."

We know this one, thanks to the DLC. I think it’s likely, if it didn’t just come from a bigger than average finger-creeper, that whatever or whoever injured Metyr took this finger as payment. Weird that it’s in the Gelmir Hero’s Grave, the boss there is just another red wolf.

Guardian Garb (Full Bloom): "It is said that the blood-red flowers blooming on their backs mark the senescence of their ancient pact. Perhaps the guardians are part tree already."

This one, also probably true, but noteworthy; what else do we associate with the blooming of red flowers? Rot comes to claim the Erdtree so that the cycle may continue.

Royal Remains Armor: "It is said that the bones belong to an ancient lord―the soulless king. The lord of the lost and desperate, who was known as Ensha."

Now there’s no actual contrary evidence to this so it is probably true. All we've got is that he is a spooky scary skeleton man and honestly that's all he needs to be.

**

Complaint: Romina’s theme is entirely too good for a nothing boss

That’s it, that’s the complaint. Blasphemous Blade melts through her HP so fast that you barely have time to enjoy it.

**

Observation: Stone Lord Sword Colors

Alabaster Lords have blue-white swords, and we know one was friendly enough to teach gravity magic to Radahn & his cohort.

Onyx Lords are specifically called out for their destructive power, have gold-tinged swords.

**

Observation: Farum Azula was hit by a meteorite

Per Ruins Greatsword:         

"Originally rubble from a ruin which fell from the sky […] The ruin it came from crumbled when struck by a meteorite, as such this weapon harbors its destructive power."

So we know that FA was hit by a meteor, and despite the somewhat ambiguous phrasing I feel like the damage happened after it was already in the sky, which to me says that it was after Bayle attacked Placidusax. This feels Astel-related, possibly part of the GW's retaliation against the Nox. I've seen some recent theories that FA was part of, or had close relations to, the Eternal Cities, and they're convincing enough to entertain the idea.

**

Theory: The Three Fingers are not intrinsically connected to the Flame of Frenzy

Per Nomadic Merchant’s Finery:

"These merchants once thrived as the Great Caravan, but after being accused of heretical beliefs, their entire clan was rounded up and buried alive far underground. Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy."

So the Frenzy only came to them after the pogrom, that’s pretty clear. It didn't emerge until they had already been imprisoned and fallen into despair. We're told that they were accused of heresy, and as any good student of religious practice knows heresy isn’t real in-and-of-itself: it’s a belief that diverges from an orthodoxy and can only exist in relation to existing religious and political power (with a vested interest in maintaining their authority through strict adherence to dogma)

The three fingers / two fingers thing has at least some (read: probably a lot, you know how much this game loves literalized metaphors) inspiration from the 17th century schism in the Russian Orthodox Church - part of the reforms was a change in whether the sign of the cross was made with two or three fingers. A wholly arbitrary and meaningless distinction, which nonetheless led to mass death over fucking nothing.

From the Fingerprint Stone Shield, we get the following:

“The Readerless Fingers relayed their message through these imprints, said to be the very seeds from which frenzy first sprouted.”

Weasel words! Ah, “said to be”, you little bastard!

If it is only “said to be”, then there is the chance that it is not. And it would be so, so, so very convenient if a heterodox sect of your own religion, which existed outside of your religious and imperial hierarchy, was inherently affiliated with dread and dangerous powers specifically because of how they interacted with the divine. They don’t have Finger Readers, they can’t possibly interpret the Greater Will correctly! And they speak with Three Fingers, not Two!

So, theory in full: the Three Fingers are just an arbitrary variant of the Fingers (perhaps a mutation from after Metyr was wounded, perhaps the older variant, perhaps just random chance) that was carried around by the Grand Caravan (I fucking love this image, I imagine it’s got its own little tent and cart and everything). The Caravan did not have Finger Readers to interpret the Fingers’ movements, instead relying on reading the fingerprint messages it left behind.

Marika, whose primary hobbies are consolidating power and murdering rivals, uses all of this as an excuse for a pogrom - possibly with Shabriri firing up everyone with slanderous claims of a dangerous heresy. The Caravaneers are rounded up and imprisoned in the catacombs beneath Leyndell along with their aberrant Fingers. The Caravaneers try to find guidance from the divine in their despair and the Three Fingers, ever the dutiful transmitter, makes contact. But with the Flame of Frenzy rather than the Greater Will. From there it spreads through the catacombs, and then beyond.

The Golden Order completes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where their desire for control causes the very thing they feared to happen? Fucking poetry. That’s Dark Souls, baby!

(The tomb of an ancient god that is mentioned by the Fingerprint Shield? No idea what god.)

**

Theory: Flame of Frenzy = The One Great (kinda)

The OG (I see what you did there, Martin) is mentioned once in the entirety of Elden Ring’s text, by Hyetta near the end of her questline. Quote:

“I have touched them. The words of the Three Fingers. As your maiden, allow me to divine them. All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction. Every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again.”

Very soulsy, we know this well - a state of stasis that is then broken by disparity, and then disparity causes suffering that cannot be escaped. The universe as it stands now is built upon two grand cosmic laws:

Law of Causality

“Causality is the pull between meanings; it is the connections that form the relationships of all things.”

Law of Regression

“Regression is the pull of meaning; that all things yearn eternally to converge.”

Or: if you have a bunch of Things, the Law of Causality ties them together in relationships that resist the pull of the Law of Regression by having them pull against each other and thus remain separate entities.

So if the Frenzied Flame is to melt away all division and reduce the entirety of reality back into the One Great, it’s obviously the Law of Regression. Everything goes back to formless chaos. Naturally this puts the Greater Will in the role of the Law of Causality - forever putting order on chaos, dividing and distinguishing in order to keep discrete existence functioning.

Putting on my Dark Souls Thematic Detective Hat again, this seems like another case of “attempting to control or avoid something makes it worse”. Perhaps the Flame was not always frenzied, perhaps it became so under the weight of the order that forced shape upon it. The pipe is damaged, watch out for pressurized steam.

**

Speculation: The death of Placidusax’s Unnamed God resulted in the gradual loss of sapience among the beasts

1.00 says directly that the Greater Will gave intelligence to beasts, but since the god of that era would have been a vessel of the Elden Ring just as in ours, I think that distinction is minimal.

**

Baseless Speculation: The demihumans go feral at night - perhaps this Unnamed God was affiliated with the sun?

An extension of the above: lingering influence of the Unnamed God allows the demihumans to cling to some manner of intelligence. I think it's pretty safe to say that the Unnamed God was associated with lightning, storms, and ice (since those are the attack types used by the Messenger Beast) but the sun isn't out of the question either.

Mausoleum Knight Great Shield says that the eclipsed sun “keeps Destined Death at bay” - which implies that a normal, uneclipsed sun means that death is working properly. (Hmm, all those crucified corpses in Limgrave...) There’s not a whole lot else, because the sun is not given nearly as much prominence as the moon in this game. But we do have two bits that stick out.

Sun Realm Shield:

"Shield of honor depicting a city crowned by the sun. It has seen better days. Much like the wear upon the shield, the Seat of the Sun is long faded away."

I honestly don’t read a lot into this one, sometimes you just need to cryptically mention a lost civilization and explain nothing. This could be the Ancient Dynasty, Rauh, Farum Azula, even Belurat.

And the Omen Armor:

"The heavy, sun-shaped medallion represents both the guidance he once saw, and the ring to which it will one day lead."

Which is some cryptic shit indeed. But since Dung Eater’s entire thing is attempted emulation of the omen, which are themselves the result of the Golden Order’s repression and control of the Crucible via the Erdtree, I feel a faint crucible = sun tickling at the back of my mind. But nothing beyond that.

 **

Observation: A list of conspecti of the Academy

• Karolos: Oldest at the Academy, founded by Azur; spells about comets and making new ones.
• Olivinus: Founded by Lusat; spells about meteors; popular with the Sellians (Nox refugees)
• Crystal Cadre: Sorcerers attempting to unlock the “wisdom of stone” of the Crystalians
• Haima: Combat-focused; used by judges and battlemages
• Twinsage: Academy elites, who studied all varieties of sorcery
• Lazuli: Study Carian sorcery; considered deviant (even heretical!) by Academy for placing moon as equal to stars
• Heirodas: For traveling / nomadic scholars, no specialty
  

 **

Theory: Black Flame is giantsflame infused with Destined Death.

Since the black flame cult seemed to start among the Flame Monks, and since giantsflame is already extremely dangerous, this seems like a natural logical connection to me. It implies some connection between the GEQ and the Fire Giants but fuck all of what that relationship might be: she might have stolen it, bargained for it, been given it, I don’t know.

 **

Observation: The Rune of Destine Death is paired with Marika’s Rune

The Marika’s Rune item is a golden halo with a shape in the center: a vertical line or dagger shape with an upward-curved line at the top. Same shape as the Limgrave crosses, Marika’s own crucifixion site, and evocative of the Marika statues in her churches.

Destined Death is a vertical dagger shape with a downward-curved line on the top. Precisely the kind of same-but-slightly-different we see in the runes held by the sibling pairs among her children (thanks Kyana for pointing this out to me), and in the headless statues of Marika in the Land of Shadow.

As far I am concerned, this is as close to confirmation we're liable to get that the GEQ is either Marika herself, an offshoot clone/bud of Marika (similar to Millicent or the Godwyn surrogates), or Marika’s sister.

What does this mean for the statue of the woman with three wolves in Maliketh’s chamber? Fucked if I know.

**

Observation: Some sorcerers attempted to form an alliance with the Demi-Humans

Per the Demi-Human Queen’s Staff:

"Glintstone staff styled as a scepter. A gift once given to the demi-humans to foster peace, it can be wielded even by those of low intelligence. Sneered at by fools in the academy."

The “fools at the academy” makes me think that this was either Caria or the wandering wizards of the Heirodas Conspectus. Since it’s found in the Weeping Peninsula, probably the latter.

Worth noting that the only magic we see demi-humans use is glintsone sorcery, even in the DLC. Ken Haight is the only person aligned with the GO who even seems to notice the demihumans, but he does say he wants to “reestablish communication” with them, so there might have been some connection in the past. Regardless, the rest of his dialogue is pretty strong indication that they exist outside the Order and have never gotten blessed by the Erdtree. This is interesting considering how demihumans go feral at night: perhaps the moon is filling the gap where something used to be...

**

Baseless Speculation: The crusade reached the Land of Shadow via the tibia mariners

The burning boats in the shadow keep immediately put me in mind of viking boat funerals, Alexander the Moderately Successful burning his ships during his invasion of Persia, and Fuck-This-Guy-In-Particular Cortez scuttling his fleet during his invasion of Mexico. Can’t retreat if you’ve got no boats. Part of me wants to say that Messmer and his army were all killed at Marika’s command in this huge mass sacrifice, after which she conveniently let the mariners come and pick them up instead of dumping their bodies in the catacombs for tree burial.

And then there’s that fucking Helphen thing, the guiding light to the spirit world for those who die in battle. Quelaag associates it with the Shadow Keep, I just ignore it, save in this one circumstance: if Messmer was, say, attempting a coup of the Golden Order with accompanying First Burning of the Erdtree (per Tarnished Archaeologist), that gets us death in battle, that gets us the Helphen as a guide into the Land of Shadow, we’ve got the Call of Tibia craftable item to bring the boats in, it's all coming together.

This is one of those where I don't care how much it lines up with the rest, I like it more than the alternatives.

**

Observation: Undead associated with the Tibia Mariners are called “those lost in death”

vs undead affiliated with deathroot being “those who live in death”. The phrase also gets used with the description for the “Rosus’ Summons” skill.

The few Rosus and mariner items we have are all about how the dead tend to get lost and need to be lead / guided by someone. In Rosus’ case it’s pretty clear that he was leading them into the catacombs to be burned by ghostflame, but with the Mariners it’s less clear. I think they were a separate method of death, which may or may not have existed at the same time.

**

Observation: Rosus vs Cemetery Shades

There’s a merchant note telling us how to use Rosus’ light against the shadowy imps in a couple catacombs. The 1.00 version uses the term “tombshades”, and that lines up, somewhat, with the cemetery shades we see in a couple places. The ones that are all black, have the glowing white eyes and the fucked up bugs on their heads. Not a very substantial connection, but a connection nonetheless.

**

Baseless Speculation: Adan and the giantsflame heist

So we know that this guy Adan stole giantsflame - specifically the spell “Flame of the Fell God” - and fled to Lirunia. He was pursued by Fire Monks and ended up locked in an evergaol. This is all we get about him, but this is the good kind of “we know fucking nothing”. It’s got just enough detail for us to ask some questions, and doesn’t get too hung up on being coy about connections.

He’s wearing a combination of the Fire Monk and Fire Prelate armor sets, so we can safely say that he was a defector from that order.

He’s trapped in the Malefactor’s Evergaol, which gives us nothing since that just generically means “evil-doer”.

He is specifically a thief, and theft requires a motive. He would have stolen giantsfire for either himself, or to give it to someone else (or both), and giantsfire has the predominant quality of being dangerous to the Erdtree.

With all that in mind, I think that he stole some giantsflame in an attempt to reforge the Alliance of Night and Flame, with the ultimate goal of burning the Erdtree and unseating the Golden Order, but found out too late that the Carians were more or less a non-factor by the time he arrived (it’s tough to stay on top of current events when you live on top of a mountain) and there was no one left to make an alliance with.

This right here is lorecrafting at its best, I think. I am given the evidence and left to draw a conclusion as I see fit.

**

Theory: Godefroy is just Godrick’s brother who also got into grafting

If you are one of those true sickos who insists on having an explanation for this bastard.

**

Statement of Objective Fact: Godefroy is just bog-standard model re-use and he should not be read into.

Either ignore his existence or just imagine you were fighting just some random dude, problem solved.

 

Interlude

Here we reach the end of this part of the rambling. Tune in next time for more theories and observations, the secrets of 1.00, some larger hypothesis, and whatever other bullshit I have come up with.

Have at it in the comments: countertheories, recommendations, whatever. Have yourselves a ball.

This is Technically Not a Homestuck Reread Post

Prior revisit posts: Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Wizard of Earthsea, Book of the New Sun pt 1 (Shadow & Claw), Book of the New Sun pt 2 (Sword & Citadel (plus Urth)

At the recommendation of longtime friend-of-the-blog Ivy, I started listening to Homestuck Made This World. It was recced to me as a thorough critical analysis of the comic with a focus on contextualizing the Great MSPA Mania in its cultural moment, and it succeeds very well at this. My listen is on-going as I write this introduction, having just gotten through the Intermission, and I will be writing as I listen along.

As I am not rereading Homestuck for this review (I have more than enough things to read and all of them are time better spent), this post's commentary will be built upon what I remember of the comic, personal reflection of that era, HMTW itself, and rewatching some of the animated entries.

Let us return to the trenches, and pour one out for all those comrades we lost during the Vriska Wars; let it never be said that we let the spider march forth out of quarantine thread unchallenged.

(Note: Michael and Cameron are the hosts of Homestuck Made This World, they are not characters in the comic.)

**

Some of you are likely among that blessed company of people who do not know what Homestuck is. This is good, in the way that not knowing about a certain play titled The King in Yellow is good, and I highly recommend you maintain this ignorance. But if your curiosity of the abyss cannot be swayed, a description in brief.

Homestuck is a very long multimedia webcomic about an increasingly-unweildy number of teenagers trapped in an increasingly-complex series of time loops brought about by their participation as players in a video game called SBURB, which is the mechanism by which the universe propogates new iterations of itself.

It contains more text that War and Peace. Most of that text is teenagers yelling at each other.

**

For the purposes of my own sanity, I will only be commenting on the part of Homestuck that I read back in the day. This lines up nicely with the premise of it being a reread, and saves me a whole lot of time because I only just got past the halfway point.

(For those unaware, Homestuck has 6 acts, plus an epilogue. Acts 1-4 constitute a quarter of the comic, Act 5 another quarter, and act 6 is a full 50%. The pacing is not good. i will be listening to HMTW until the end, but that will remain for my own bile fascination and I will not subject you to it.)

**

Character Overview

The Kids

• John - A real goofy goober
• Rose - The cool goth friend
• Dave - Not nearly as cool as he thinks he is
• Jade - Head in the clouds (this is funny because it is literal)

The Trolls

• Karkat - Performative anger, all the time
• Aradia - A ghost, and sometimes a robot
• Tavros - Designated punching bag
• Sollux - No one gives a shit about sollux
• Nepeta - Feral catgirl and shipping enthusiast
• Kanaya - Very polite lesbian vampire
• Terezi - Probably not the best depiction of blindness in media
• Vriska - Causing Problems on Purpose (TM)
• Equius - HUGEQUEST.mov, but less funny
  
• Gamzee - A juggalo and that it, until the murders start
• Eridan - Aristo reddit niceguy. Not a wizard
• Feferi - Was late when they were handing out characterization

Some Other Kids

• Jane - Another goober
• Roxy - Crippling teenage alcoholism
• Dirk - Slightly cooler than Dave, maybe
• Jake - Adventure time ?

The Exiles

• Wandering Vagabond - Post-apocalyptic mayoral canidate
• Peregrine Mendicant - Postal worker
• Authority Regulator - A narc
• Windswept Questant - Royalty in hiding

Antagonists

• Jack Noir - Bureaucrat turned mass-murderer
• Doc Scratch - A charming man with a cueball head
• Lord English - Lord British after Scotland, Wales and North Ireland leave

12 More God-Damn Trolls

• We have entirely lost the plot by this point.

The Cherubs

• I nearly forgot about these
• I am now cursed to remember them
• Absolutely the worst
• Bad design
• Bad characters
• Bad

All of these characters have multiple iterations across timelines and universes, and none of it matters.

**

Plot Overview

BROTHER MAY I HAVE SOME LööPS

**

Things Andrew Hussie Is Good At

• Distinctive character voices
• Visual humor
• Shot composition
• Compsci and game-logic jokes
• Mechanistic worldbuilding
• Elaborate Rube Goldberg puzzles
• Identifying what will make the most people the angriest
• Acting on the above impulse

Things Andrew Hussie Is Not Good At

• De-escalating situations
• Non-mechanistic worldbuilding
• Knowing when to stop
• Getting to the point
• Avoiding pointless antagonism
• Breaking kayfabe
• Sincerity

Granted, I feel some sympathy for Hussie in that they were blindsided by extreme success they were not prepared for (including all the ways that can get pretty ugly online), but there were several big exit ramps on the road to dissolution and none of them were taken by any parties involved. As my listen through HMTW continues, the bare-faced cynicism becomes more and more difficult to ignore.

**

Acts 1-4 are still very good.

Act 5 is a drastic tonal shift and despite having some good and memorable components is really where the rot sets in.

Act 6 I have no positive opinions about

**

The music remains utterly unimpeachable. Toppest of tiers, greatest of greats, its what makes the whole thing tick. Sburban Jungle remains ingrained, along with all the rest, in the neurological equivalent of granite slabs fifty meters high. It's so fucking good.

FAVORITE TRACKS

• Showtime (Original Mix)
• Sburban Jungle
• Beatdown
• Dance of Thorns
• Descend
• Sunslammer
• At the Price of Oblivion
• Rex Duodecim Angelus

There are doubtless many I have forgotten

**

I wouldn't necessarily call the Homestuck fandom a cult, but it was certainly cult-shaped. (Edit: apparently Hussie said in an interview that they consider the Homestuck fandom to have been a cult they inadvertently started.)

**

While certainly a disaster for internet historians, I must admit that the loss of the MSPA forums comes as something of a relief. Tears in the rain and all that, but wow were a lot of those tears stupid.

**

I found Homestuck through TVtropes in...late 2010? I think that was it. I caught up during the hiatus right after Alterniabound, joined the forums immediately after.

It swiftly became an obsession, and it was not a healthy one. Emotional over-investment was the name of the game, and I was deep in.

**

I dropped Homestuck extremely early in Act 6, but I can't figure out when - it was before the ancestors showed up, which would put it somewhere between November 2011 and April of 2012, least according to the wiki. I had honestly thought I was in it for much longer, but it seems like I burned out flash-fire style. It certainly felt like an incredibly long time, but that's likely just the case when you're logged into the forums for most of your waking hours for a year and change. Timeline matches up with a swerve into much greater involvement with the SCP wiki, but I really thought it was longer than that... I hung around the forums for a little while after that but eventually got wise to how miserable it was and booked it for better pastures, that probably explains it.

Was an ordinary page that did it, something about Jake's inventory introducing some new mystery box and me realizing that no, Hussie was never going to break out of his closed-circuit storytelling and I had long ago reached the end of my patience for a matrioska mystery box. The overwhelming artifice, no matter how intentional, could not sustain itself and I was making myself miserable in my hopes that it would suddenly be something that it wasn't.

Dodged a bullet on that.

**

Two Best Friends Play SBRUB is the defining artifact of this period in my life, and it remains probably my favorite HS fanwork by a country mile.

**

Michael brings up Intermission-specific fans in that episode of the podcast, to which I say "Yes, hello, it is me."

Intermission remains one of my favorite parts and this is because it's basically Problem Sleuth II, and Problem Sleuth is great because Problem Sleuth is the kind of comic that invokes Hussie's strengths as an author. Incredibly silly, rapid-fire jokes in a nesting doll of absurdist game-logic time loops. Much of Homestuck contains this, but the Intermission wins out in the end because it is extremely fast and contains none of the padding that came to characterize the rest of the comic.

**

Opinion: The comic should have ended with [S] Cascade.

**

Best Character: None, asterisk

None, asterisk because all of them are more or less on equal footing when I look back at them - they are collections of traits and tropes to be compiled and recombined as needed for the circumstances around them. It's the reason the fandom grew as massive as it did - the best version of the characters is the one that exists in your own head, because you have built them into something that may or may not have support in the text.

That said, Wandering Vagabond. He hates monarchy and never has an annoying YA romance subplot, and thus combines two of the most noble and admirable qualities a person can have.

Also Karkat, everyone's favorite angry little shit-goblin. He's good too.

**

There was this guy I knew back in college, only other Homestuck fan I knew in real life. We were friends, and you'll note the loaded past tense. I didn't realize that it wasn't a particularly great relationship until years later. He was an ass; always had to be in the right, always had to be the cleverest. (Now who does this remind you of?) Did that condescending thing where someone talk around someone else's emotions to build up an argument of how they're irrational and how their view is correct. Should have cut ties with him a long time before I did. We might have bonded over Homestuck but we had very little else in common. At least two shouting matches over politics, and if you know mine you can guess what his side was. I invited him over for a couple game nights with some friends who didn't know him and got requests to boot him because he was being a sexist ass. (He got the boot.)

He would cosplay as Bro Strider for conventions, and I find myself instinctively recoiling at just seeing the character because of the correlation. What strange things brains are.

Last thing I heard, the guy was bitching about private organizations having mask requirements. He self-selected himself out of the one environment I was liable to cross paths with him in, and that's good.

**

An advantage of such a bogglingly huge fandom is that there was an equally bogglingly huge amount of high-quality fanart. I might still have my archive somewhere on a semi-bricked hard drive deep in storage, or perhaps it is gone for good.

I do legitimately miss the crazy things people would get up to in the image manipulation thread - HS has nothing if not a whole lot of easily-modified image character templates.

**

Despite it being a decade plus since I dropped the comic, I could still probably channel most of the character voices with a reasonable degree of accuracy. 

cG: ALL RIGHT CHUCKLEFUCKS ONE MORE TIME
cG: JOHN IS GETTING LO MEIN
eB: yep!
cG: ROSE IS GETTING FRIED TOFU
tT: Correct. Two additional spring rolls, please.  
cG: DAVE IS GETTING GENERAL TSO'S
tG: how did he become a general anyway
tG: like
tG: was he commissioned officer
tG: or was it a battlefield promotion
cG: JADE IS GETTING SHRIMP FRIED RICE
tG: did he have beef with kernel sanders
tT: *Colonel.
gG: wait! could i get the takoyaki instead?
cG: YEAH, SURE, CHANGE YOUR ORDER FOR THE THIRD TIME
eB: dave what about the burger king?
eB: where does he fit into this?
tT: I believe that the Burger King is currently embroiled in a proletariat uprising led by the younger MacDonald.
tT: His head will be delivered it to Wendy on a silver platter, as John the Baptist was given to Salome.
cG: AND I'M GETTING CRAB RANGOON
gG: pffft you guys :D
cG: ORDER PLACED
cG: FUCKING FINALLY
eB: so karkat where are the other trolls?
cG: AS PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED IN A CONVERSATION WE HAVEN'T HAD YET   
cG: ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD
cG: AND IT IS VRISKA'S FAULT
aG: You rang? ::::)
cG: GOG FUCKING DAMN IT

**

The people demand justice for Nepeta.

(Note: I do not know, at time of writing, if justice for Nepeta was ever achieved. I only know that the people demanded it, and thus it was never granted.)

(Note: Nepeta's death remains a...well, it remains the brutal murder of a child whose main crime was being a dork. Bludgeoned to death with juggling pins. Killer gets off scott-free. People were, predictably and rightly, upset by this (she wasn't the only death in this sequence, either) and they were mocked for it.)

**

Best Fandom Joke - Pantskat

(A coloring error on one page made it look like Karkat - who was far in the background of the shot - was wearing his pants all the way up to his chin. People had a field day. It's fucking stupid and I think it's great.)

**

Lots of people praise Hussie's mythbuilding, and for the most part I find that to be extremely generous overstatement of importance. The one exception to that - and probably the only part of Homestuck I would point to and say "yeah, this part has some real value outside of itself" - is the reveal that the universe has cancer.

This is literalized in the comic - a tumor of Plot Contrivance embedded in a vast cosmic frog - but the principle remains, transcendent of its surroundings.

You do not have to dig deep into my own writings to see the echoes and after-images of this idea; I'm certain somewhere I invoke it outright, and if I haven't before I am definitely doing so now.

**

Now, I wrote an entire essay about how my creative methodology is about breaking things down into components and then re-assembling them in new and novel ways. You might recognize this as exactly what Homestuck is founded upon, but I do have a coherent justification for favoring one and not the other.

Homestuck is a closed circuit: everything that exists within it is connected to everything else and nothing exists outside of this network. Any potential expansion of scope will inevitably turn back inwards upon itself. It is the Star Wars expanded universe spun out to its final form. No matter how much material you put into it, it will never break beyond the boundaries of the circuit.

This, plus Homestuck's penchant for repeating patterns and providing numerous overlapping categorical schemas for those patterns to fit into, makes it incredibly good for people who want to make stuff using only those provided components (see: enormous homestuck fandom), and signficiantly less use to me, who likes settings to be messy and organic.

**

This closed-circuit design is part and parcel why, among all the media I will occasionally use as writing practice, Homestuck has never appeared - it cannot function in an open circuit setting, because its characters are just collections of tropes without any exterior circumstances influencing them. To put them in an environment where external setting matters would be to immediately watch the waveform collapse. The characters stop working and must become entirely different characters in order to function, thus negating the point. Like in that little bit I wrote above - if I didn't write Karkat according to his steroarchetype, he wouldn't really be Karkat anymore.

**

Homestuck is like Neon Genesis Evangelion: valuable as a piece of art, mediocre-to-bad as a coherent narrative, and will collapse entirely at the mere implication of real-world logic.

**

A theory: there is no outside world whatsoever in Homestuck. Earth is empty. Alternia is empty. No one else exists beyond the players of SBURB. It is the only appropriate state for a work as solipcistic as this.

**

Troll typing quirks are legitimately a fantastic way of getting across vocal nuance in text, but also I side with jan misali in saying that they get pretty excessive and make text to speech accessibility functionally impossible.

**

Serialized storytelling and the cycle of hype and disappointment are the worst and we are trapped in this World Homestuck Made. Thrice I have been burned greatly by it. I have learned my lesson.

**

I will accept the bitter pill Michael and Cameron have set on my plate: Equius is a fascist creep and the fandom's re-interpretation of him as weird but ultimately protective big brother figure to Nepeta is significantly more uncomfortable in hindsight.

Thus is fandom - eternally dulling the sharp edges to achieve the state of perfect blorbo.

**

So. This is the part about Vriska.

Now, while I will strip my sleeve and show my scars and say "these wounds I had on Troll Crispin's Day, holding the line against Vriskathread" a decade free from the Great Mania has cleared my head significantly. To condense a lot of thoughts into a small amount of space, Vriska the character is entirely separate from Vriska the narrative function.

Vriska the character is not to my liking whatsoever, but I can understand the appeal in a general sense. She's well written, as far as a Homestuck character will go, and I can't say she's not effective at triggering reader response. There's a reasonably effective tragedy to her story, though I find it not nearly as vindicating as her fans will claim.

Vriska the narrative function is emblematic of Homestuck's greatest sin. Her role is that of a hatchet: whenever Hussie needed to make people angry, whenever they needed to divide up the fanbase and start setting fires because negative engagement is good engagement for the content-hawkers, Vriska would be rolled out, do something heinous, and be rewarded for it. Any of the characters could fill that role, technically, but Vriska was convenient because she had a divisive status since her introduction. She was a deliberately weaponized character invoked in Hussie's eternal war with the fanbase.

**

Hussie really liked making jokes at the expense of anyone with a non-normative body, didn't they?

**

Hussie's repeated abdications of responsibility for what they write - provided in the text itself and in book commentary cited by HMTW - are incredibly tiresome.

**

God I forgot that Doc Scratch's primary narrative role was "well you see, Vriska was being manipulated by Doc Scratch" and motherfuckers he's not mind controlling her, she just decides to murder other children because some weird guy on the internet told her to.

**

Michael and Cameron bring up how even early on there are questions over whether Vriska is going to get her comeuppance, or if this is a narrative that's going to eschew the idea that villainous deeds go punished. I know that later on there's more of this, past where I read, but I think there is a third option that will end up going woefully unutilized: there's no need for karmic retribution on a cosmic level when the other characters have more than enough reason (the reason being that Vriska is an existential threat to everyone around her) to find a way to remove her from the equation for simple self-preservation. Characters having coherent motivations solves this problem, but HS is about determinism or some shit so we don't have those, Things Just Happen.

**

~ Squeedly-dee, squeedley-dum, let's all sing a squeedly song ~

**

I'm not going to write much about Act 6, because I read barely anything of it. It took the forward momentum and grand crescendo of [S] Cascade - all that waiting and anticipation - and sent it careening directly into a brick wall. I do not know what follows beyond, other than I have heard very bad things, and the content warnings towards the end of HMTW get increasingly thorough to the point that I can barely believe it.

**

"Well you see, the ending is about Hussie handing over the characters to the audience and their freedom from his deterministic authorial tyranny."

"So why didn't they put their money where their mouth is and slap a big copyleft license on it in a final act of over the top and self-indulgent showmanship?"

"Uhhh...LOOK OVER THERE, IT'S VRISKA!"

**

Revisiting the comic, even by proxy, I find myself once again confronted with the bizarre, toxic, paracsocial hell of the author-audience relationship that defines the comic. I was part of it, same as so many other people, so take that into account here. I was lost in the sauce.

 

It was ugly. I feel like I should call it abusive, in some new and unpleasant form that was born from the newly-forming (at the time) mechanisms of widespread parasociality. An artist continually mocking and berating the audience for emotional investment, especially when the artist has cynically calculated the ways to maximize engagement in the first place - and especially when the bulk of that audience are teenagers - it ain't good. It's a bad taste I can't wash out, a lingering miasma over the thing.

And everyone bought it for so long, just ate up the lie of "oh it's all an act, it's ironic!"

Nah. Hussie's disdain for the audience was the one genuine thing in this entire circus.

I suppose that's the lasting impression I have of the whole thing; The lingering internalized shame of being duped. Of falling for a grift. Of sticking with the clearly toxic person in your life. The plot, setting, characters - all so thin and sterile already that they can't even be recycled. The comic itself, herald of a maddened world that it did not create but merely ushered into being.

There was good to be had in it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

They can't all be winners, folks.