Elden Ring And Leftism

Elden Ring and Leftism

Elden Ring can be read as leftist, but not for the reasons the bigots think.

Every now and then, you'll see queerphobic or sexist complaints about "wokism" in FromSoftware games, or complaints about "leftist content" being pushed. If you want an example, I've included some at the end of the post.** However, know that you can safely skip that section, as the specific details of the bigotry are not relevant—just that they exist.

This is endlessly funny to me because this *isn't* actually the reason that Elden Ring can be read as leftist. The reason is that transcendentalism is in the water supply.

Transcendentalists have at least two qualities that are very relevant to Elden Ring: 1) They are explicitly anti-authoritarian. They believe that the best course of action is for individuals to think for themselves rather than blindly take guidance from a monarch, divine power, or other paternal figure. 2) They believe that everything is connected, both in nature and society, and that you can never fully understand one person without understanding the network as a whole. It's why all the poetry has nature symbolism brainrot.

Elden Ring is highly transcendental. First, let's address the anti-authoritarianism. Most of the villains are blindly following an authority, and commit atrocities on their behalf. Messmer with Mommy is the most obvious example. It's always tempting to ask why he kept following her orders to do genocide when she had so clearly abandoned the shadow realm and rejected him outright. Isn't this deeply *weird*? Would you not change your mind and start thinking for yourself after all that time? Maybe do something you enjoy that doesn't lead to a deep complex of self-hatred, hmm?

But the reason he doesn't think for himself isn't that he's a bit daft; it's that this serves a purpose narratively. It sets him up explicitly as villainous under a transcendental lens. "Blindly follows mommy's orders to do atrocities" is code for "pathetic, wet mess of a villain" in transcendental language. So as sympathetic of a character as he is from a social standpoint, he still serves the role of villain from a transcendental narrative standpoint.

In contrast, those characters that buck authority tend to be the most sympathetically written. Ranni is the most straightforward example. She explicitly undermines the Greater Will in order to seize back her own destiny and bodily autonomy. Her ultimate goal is to remove all gods (i.e. all hints of top-down authority) away from the Lands Between and keep them safely stashed far away in space, returning autonomy back to her homeland. And of all the demigods, her quest got perhaps the most attention in the narrative, making you want to follow it to completion. She flies in the face of the authoritarian system, and is written to be appealing—not at all a coincidence.

And just for a little more evidence, the Mending Rune of "Perfect" Order is explicitly described as a rune of transcendental ideology. Its main "insight" is simply that authorities aren't meant to be blindly trusted. You can read more about that here: https://www.tumblr.com/thewisecheerio/755852131024650240/elden-ring-rejection-of-authority-and

For the second transcendentalist property, Elden Ring also presents a highly interconnected story in which narratives are literally inseparable. You can't fully understand Miquella's story without also understanding Marika's and Malenia's and Radahn's stories. You can't fully understand Messmer's story without understanding Marika's. You can't fully understand the beautiful duality of Morgott and Mohg without looking at them both together. The narrative style has the same sort of interconnectivity that transcendentalists lust over in their analyses of nature.

So why does this make Elden Ring more woke than the bigots may even realize? The far right shares the anti-authoritarian notions, but without the interconnectivity; they tend to believe that it's every person for themself. But anti-authoritarianism plus a belief that all things are connected—that all of our actions affect each other, and that we therefore achieve nothing without caring for each other—IS the recipe for leftism, at least in the US. And indeed, many early transcendentalists were also active in the socialist movement, so it should be no surprise that there is overlap with modern leftists.

Importantly, all of these points would be identical whether there were queer and feminist characters in Elden Ring or not. So next time you see someone with their panties in a bunch over Elden Ring's "woke agenda", just know that it is possible to read it as WAY more woke than maybe even they realize.

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**For those looking for the example of bigoted "discourse" I mentioned, here you go. All others, you're done reading this post; the analysis is all above.

CW homophobia, transphobia, sexism. In a recent video ("Shadow of the Erdtree is Overrated"), you can explicitly hear gamer Synthetic Man spend multiple minutes complaining about gay characters and then say, "And look, I obviously hesitate to call this DLC woke, but I am noticing FromSoftware including more and more leftwing content into their games...Whether it's the sheer number of girl bosses--there's a lot more strong, female knight characters in this DLC...[or Ymir] a man(!) becomes a mother(!) and it sounds like pure, gross, autogynephilic fetish content..."

Unfortunately, it's not just him, as any fan who's been on any forum knows. Here are some comments on the video compiled by reddit user SlippySleepyJoe:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1dz53av/elden_ring_and_its_lore_is_too_woke_that_its_out/

sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really. 

Very low res Morgott sketch

I'm not really happy with this one but I will post it anyway

getting attached to how Curly encapsulates the horror of disability and loss of autonomy while being dependant on people that make any and all decisions for you

Endure

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