Shadow Of The Erdtree Spoilers - Tumblr Posts

all this time i was wondering abt the lost carian princesses and now its revealed one of them dropped everything for a redheaded man... this cant keep happening i'm in hysterics from laughing so hard

𝕲𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝕯𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝕻𝖚𝖗𝖕𝖑𝖊

"𝕾t. Trina's life withered and fell, as fleeting as the seasons. At her last, she left a single water lily. Despite the velvety-purple hue, the flower is in no way poisonous—it merely blooms in quietude."

nonbinaries when they hear a carian princess voice line and she has a welsh accent

nonbinaries when the voice line is cut content and not used in-game

can we talk about how Metyr is like literally the word meteor and they’re described as a falling star which… is a meteor lol

O lightless creature… Embrace thine oblivion, as shall I.

MESSMER + 🔥

if you mention ymir in a room full of twitter, 9/10 some dudebro is gonna come along and laughably jeer “men can’t be mothers lmao”. which always had me worry, yknow, that maybe fromsoft WAS saying this.

but none of the lore or game itself ever points to ymir being presumably male as the reason for his failures; his downfall is due to hubris, yeah, but not from trying to birth as a man (that part goes very smoothly, actually), but as a human trying to claim some sort of dominion with alien life. far as i can recall, ymir’s gender never once is even pointed towards; not by himself, not by jolan, not by the player character’s convo choices

as that one analysis said, ymir was likely given shape by the devs in name association. ymir as the old norse giant seen as both male and female, then inspiring the character of elden ring’s ymir. there’s an emphasis in gender, yeah, but mostly just in reference, and not in how strange or bewildering or laughable it may be

ymir’s grief for the loss of any finger-children is taken as sympathetic and genuine, and also not laughable. his desire to be a mother shown as much the same, despite his pride. within the game, at least, he is not taken as any sort of a joke, and its honestly very heartening to see

(not that i recall soulsbornes have ever been particularly Bad with representations of alternate genders, barring fandom interactions themselves. but you always expect for the other shoe to drop eventually)

anyway i think it’s very cool of them to have done things like this, im very fond of ymir, and im glad they DID show such a heartfelt example of a non-ciswoman character who was so lovingly set on being a mother

St. Trina 💤

what’s ur take on the shadow people in the land of shadow? i’m intrigued by what other people think. i haven’t thought about it too much but my impression was that it’s quite literally the phrase “a shadow of their former selves” made manifest. these people have been stripped of everything, their way of life, their people, their culture, their right to live freely. they’ve fallen into despair similarly to how people become ‘infected’ with frenzy, but it feels colder… there’s a sadness to them. some of them sit and build little towers out of rocks.

when i first ran into them i assumed they were ghosts that we couldn’t interact with, and then they started throwing rocks at me and brandishing knives. these people are hurting and have done for a long time. maybe they were burned with messmer’s flame and can’t die thanks to marika’s removal of the rune of death? it’s quite ironic that her action of removing death meant she could never fully enact her intended ‘revenge’ on the hornsent, because no one can truly die.

Only the kindness of gold, without Order….Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal.

𝕾𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝕿𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖆 | One parting boon, one final gift: Be merciful as you are swift. And pluck me from my native ground. Pluck me and take me where you’re bound. I cannot live without you here: Then let your bosom be my bier.

Thiollier is incredibly fascinating to me, as his devotion to Saint Trina and his personality/dialogue leaves a lot unsaid, yet we can learn so much about him.

He is self-loathing, believing that from the very beginning he was worthless. Weak and an idiot only good for making poisons. This isn’t a belief that could have sprouted up from nowhere, whatever environment he had to have been raised in surely instilled and reinforced this idea in him. It’s up in the air what exactly led to him feeling this way about himself, but I do read it as Thiollier being a victim of abuse.

Then, Saint Trina has practically always been representative of addiction, both in the base game and in DLC. Hell, cut content would’ve made this theme even more obvious, with Rhico’s questline and the existence of Dreambrew— something that is pretty much just a form of alcohol. She genuinely desires to help, Trina does not mean ill will and wishes to grant respite to those suffering. However, as this respite is this inherently addictive thing that can prove to be rather dangerous— if you go too far, imbibe too much nectar, you are plunged into endless sleep, the closest thing to death offered in The Lands Between.

Thiollier was able to experience the “sweet repose of velvety sleep” only once. It’s different from the typical rest offered by Trina’s followers, likely stemming directly from the saint herself. And after experiencing it, he has spent the rest of his life chasing after it again. Desperate to be put at rest, to forget all his worries and woes and forget about his miserable life in the waking world.

Thiollier can’t stand himself, ever scorned and loathed.

It’s no wonder why he feels this arguably obsessive love towards Trina, and why he gets so angry with us for being able to speak with her. He wants to her to smile for him and him alone, to be the only one of the already very few allowed to experience the true rest she creates. Trina is one of the only ones who ever made him feel at ease, the only one to make him feel special and worthy of something, and he idolizes her. And she knows this, which is why she ends up speaking to us rather than him. She knows that his idolization would also lead to him being unwilling to accept the idea of needing to kill Miquella until it’s too late. But just as she does for all others, she still cares for him in her own way.

I do think too that Trina knows of how addictive her sleep can be, but I feel that, based off the description of the Lulling Branch, she desires to give people the will to wake up, to gather the strength to continue on living. I should make a post about Trina herself, eventually.

We will never again lose our way in the night.

This image goes so hard.

"Now, the vow will be honoured, and my Lord brother's soul will return."

Radahn stans keep winning, but I personally am in Miyazaki's walls rn

MOHG SWEEPS!!!!

WE WON

... .... ... NOTHING the dlc can say or do will deter my headcanons regarding the

childbirth/menstruation/womb symbolism involved in Mohg's dynasty. Blood is not some throwaway aesthetic. Blood is and always has been Mohg's physical and mental fixation.

The Formless Mother (who we now know had relatively benign intentions) taught Mohg to love the stain he was born with (ie. his menstrual cycle, his womb) Mohg built his dynasty on the shoulders of the accursed blood from the start. He's always been enamored by the beauty of blood and pain. Blood and pain are his suffering and his salvation. Mohg has suffered multiple miscarriages. Mohg desperately wants to have children. His blood pots are the memory of his youth, and I still believe they house the blood and rancorous spirits of those he's lost. He still keeps 28 day calendars all over his dynastic grounds. He wants to sustain a pregnancy, but his Numen heritage makes this dream so incredibly hard for him to reach, and blood is his obsession because of it.

If anything, the dlc has strengthened this headcanon for me. Now we know Omen horns grow alongside suffering. Every one of his twisting horns could be for one of his unborn who never made it. The Horned Bairn even reveals that Hornsent babies have a higher risk of infant mortality due to their heavy horns. And it's implied that horns sprout wildly from the ghosts of suffering - and to live in lamentation for a crown of twisting horns is greatly sacred, like blood.

(We also meet the Formless Mother's tribe, the Bloodfiends, and all of them have lean bodies with distended bellies, as if carrying young.)

Again, I think these are the obsessions that Miquella took advantage of. You know, in my personal interpretation of Mohg's blood-obsession ...

So now we have to recontextualize Mohg's key image in the introduction;

We know he's bewitched here. These actions are not his own, and yet Miquella lets Mohg hold him like a baby in the crook of his arm. He lets Mohg be gentle, despite that he must make Mohg look like a kidnapper and monster. Miquella is not slung over his shoulder. Miquella is not dragged. Miquella is not not carried away by disciples. He's letting Mohg feel what could be. He's manipulating. He's giving Mohg a taste of something he may have never had.

I could get even deeper and darker into headcanon territory and start formulating that the reason Miquella needed Mohg's body specifically was because Mohg is the only demigod left potentially able to bear children.

Malenia is made barren by the rot.

Morgott castrated himself. (headcanon)

Rykard is conjoined with Eiglay and lays her eggs.

Ranni is a doll.

Godwyn is corrupted.

Godrick is too feeble.

Radahn is his consort.

Fair enough that being God and consort doesn't require sex or children or such things - but it could. Radahn could be in for a rude awakening with that new body of his.

"Now, the vow will be honoured, and my Lord brother's soul will return."

Radahn stans keep winning, but I personally am in Miyazaki's walls rn

...Huh. Thiollier is seemingly the only other Tarnished to have arrived in the realm of shadow, yet instead of Miquella, he came in search of St. Trina.

St. Trina, who implores us to kill Miquella before he becomes a god...

Moreover, we were gifted the Spirit Summoning Bell by Ranni, under the instruction of "Torrent's former master." This was evidently Miquella, but... why would he call for the Tarnished if only to turn them away from his coming paradise?

But if St. Trina is Miquella's other half, and embodies his "doubt and vacillation," then perhaps it was actually she who gave Ranni the bell... After all, Ranni appears to have lulled Kalé and his donkey to sleep nearby, and one of her cohorts, Seluvis, was once familiar with another Tarnished who served St. Trina: Sleeping Arrow Dolores.

...Is St. Trina the real MVP of the entire goddamn game?