Elden Ring DLC Ending Spoilers.

mfw I completely rejected Harpae in my first playthrough, expecting her to turn on me at some point and ended up latching onto Enjel instead because "the only person you should trust is yourself"

(I feel like I've been played like a damn fiddle)

having a little refresher of the pocket mirror's main storyline with manly's let's play and look who's finally here!!

I think shits going to hit the fan hard in the next chapter. Something tells me that if the knight is a lightner, which they almost certainly are, they're going to follow us into the Dreemurr house dark world.

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Pure speculation here, but since deltarune has a lot of metanarrative stuff going on, what if the knight also follows this?

Ralsei seems determined to keep Kris (and by extension us) on the path of the hero who's going to save the world by sealing the fountains. Throughout the game he railroads the party down this narrative constantly and gets rather agitated when things go in a way that they're "not supposed to." (see his reaction to susie in chapter 1, the spamton fight aftermath or most scenes with him on the weird route). He knows what direction the plot needs to go in and it trying to guide us in that direction.

The story has a hero who is trying to save the world (Kris) by sealing the dark fountains and an antagonist that is trying to end it (the knight) by creating the dark fountains. Seems simple enough.

but Kris has now gone against that narrative by making their own fountain before the knight makes their next move. By playing the role of the knight themselves they've brought the world one step closer to damnation for seemingly no reason. You'd assume the knight would be happy with this since it makes their presumed plan of "destroy the world" easier.

But what if they're not.

What if the knight, the antagonist of this story gets angry that their role is being overtaken by the hero. That the way their story is supposed to go has been derailed by the protagonist fighting their own fate.

What if the knight ends up being a dark parallel of Ralsei. Knowing how the story is supposed to go and becoming confused and angry when things suddenly divert from that story.

In a battle of light vs dark like deltarune, what happens when the hero starts to fight using darkness as well?

Well the knight would only have two options.

Tip the scales and end the world.

Or seal Kris' fountain themselves.

What if we're not the ones to seal chapter 3's fountain?

Nightreign looks really cool but I’m definitely not looking forward to people using it in lore discussion for the next year, because as far as I can tell, it’s just a spinoff with very little to no actual relevance to the world and story of Elden Ring or Dark Souls, but everyone seems insistent in treating it like a full on sequel.

I could totally be wrong about this, but until we get more information on the game, I’m probably just going to treat it as a fun spin off/elseworld game and nothing more. And that's not a bad thing. I'd much prefer a crossover of these games to be its own thing instead of an actual "canon" story to both worlds.

Even with the recent developments with Messmer, I personally still believe that the smouldering butterfly is supposed to represent Melina. The main reason is because of the butterfly's main use as kindling.

Messmer might have a lot of fire stuff going on, but Melina embodies the butterfly much more. Not only was she seemingly born burned and bodiless, much like the smouldering butterfly is born eternally burning, but she also acts as kindling to burn the erdtree in a similar way the butterfly does for crafting items.

The butterfly's represent the main curses of all 3 of the youngest siblings. Malenia's being rotted, Miquella's appearing eternally young and Melina's being burned and inevitably used as kindling.

I personally don't see the connection to Messmer other than the fact that they both share fire motifs. And even then, he's presumably not a part of Malenia and Miquella's sibling group as he's likely one of the oldest demigods, so it wouldn't make too much sense for him to be the third butterfly in the trinity.

Rykard and the Night of the black knives.

Y’know after thinking about it for a while, I think Rykard's involvement in the night of the black knives could run a little deeper than just being a co conspirator. What if he was the person who actually did the deed?

Not on Godwyn mind you, we already know that was all the black knife assassins handy work. But there is one other corpse that is left unaccounted for.

What if he was the one who killed Ranni and carved the cursemark into her back?

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I know there’s no evidence in game that says anything about this but… it had to have been someone right? Someone other than Ranni I mean. She’s metal as fuck, but it would have been incredibly hard to carve such a specific symbol into her own back. Especially since failure would mean certain death. 

And I also don’t think it would have been some random black knife assassin either. It’s certainly possible but looking at everything revolving them, their alliance seemed shaky at best, and they may not have even known about Ranni's half of the plot to begin with. No, I don't think she would have trusted them to do it. But I do believe she’d trust Rykard. They were already in on this together, and assuming he wasn’t part of the heist itself then there’s only really one other role he could have played in the event. 

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And going off of purely in game mechanics, he definitely has the stats to wield a black knife blade. If you compare the stat requirements for the black knife and Rykards own blasphemous blade, then they match up pretty well. He would be able to use one.

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And then we've got Ranni's body itself, which is burnt beyond recognition. Which is strange for a black knife killing, since they have no inherent fire damage, and while they do seem to have some sort of burning affect, it's never as bad as how scorched Ranni's corpse is. We never see this sort of damage done by a black knife again.

This leads me to believe that Ranni's body may have been burnt after the fact. Possibly as one final middle finger to the Two Fingers and the GW for trying to control her fate. One last 'fuck you' by desecrating the holy flesh they bestowed upon her.

And who do we know that has access to fire powers? Or more specifically Magma powers?

Rykard. The lord of blasphemy himself.

Your honour, I rest my case.

Monster hunter wilds spoilers

Thinking about how there’s a possibility that Guardian Arkveld had Deviljho DNA in it.

It’d explain why it had this inherent, powerful desire to eat that other guardians lacked, to the point that it was able to teach itself how to with no outside influence and why when it did learn how to, it just couldn’t control itself.

And even if Guardian Arkveld lacked a digestive system like the other Guardians (which is unlikely because that food has to go somewhere and also unlike the other guardians it has/or grew reproductive organs), there’s a very real possibility that it would still suffer that same ravenous, environment destroying hunger that Deviljho possess.

There's also the fact that Guardian Arkvelds battle theme literally contains segments from Deviljho's own theme. This may just be hinting towards the thematic similarities between the two, but personally I think it could be read either way.

If this is true then... Holy fuck Wyveria really created the most aggressively violent and angry creature they could. Giving a monster Deviljho's aggression and ceaseless hunger with the ability to fly, tussle with every other apex predator in the area and with no way to satiate that hunger due to not physically being able to eat. They basically created a monster that's only goal is to kill everything it sees without need for rest or even stopping to eat.

Zoh Shia is their equal dragon weapon, but Arkveld strikes me as their attempt to create something that will kill as much stuff as quickly as possible.

The amount of times I said something along the lines of "They would not fucking do/say that!" while watching the live action atla series is insane. It felt so weird to watch because the acting was pretty fantastic and the set design/costumes weren't bad for the most part either, but the writing and direction itself was painfully bad.

I think King Bumi is probably one of the worst offenders of being written completely ass backwards, which is a shame because the guy portraying him did a great job and I think he would have made a fantastic Bumi if the writing was better.

It feels like they missed the entire point of his character. They took his goofy/slightly mad front from the original show and dialled it up to 11 all the while completely ignoring all the nuance behind that front.

Bumi isn't just the mad king they portray him as in the live action, he's a mad genius. Despite his quirks, he's a fucking fantastic fighter and a brilliant ruler. Despite what you may believe from first impressions, it really does feel like he always knows what he's doing.

Even when he's being antagonistic towards the gang in the show, he's never actually putting them in significant danger. The crystals he trapped Katara and Sokka in were ultimately harmless and all the trials he gives Aang were more akin to games than anything. Even when he fights Aang in his episode he's very clearly not giving it his all, as seen when he single handily takes back his city from the fire nation during the eclipse and when he takes back Ba Sing Se with a small group during Sozins comet, when the opposing forces would have been at their most powerful. My point is that if he actually wanted to beat book 1 Aang, he could wipe the floor with him easily. But this version is fucking furious with Aang (wrongfully so this time around because he explicitly did not run away from his duties in the live action) And very much seems like he wants to cause Aang as much pain as possible, but can barely manage to land a hit on him when he's not pulling cheap tricks with the crystals.

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I'm getting very side tracked but god damn it! This is the man Aang eventually decides to name one of his children after. Their friendship was so sweet and meaningful in the original. Bumi was such an interesting character in the original! And all of that meaning is lost here.

Ironically in an attempt to make Bumi's arc more dramatic and dark, they ended up making it significantly less interesting, along with also missing major parts of his character.

Castle Morne | Le château de vent hurlant

One thing I’ve been thinking about recently that I just cannot get out of my head is why Marika shattered the elden ring? I mean, it’s all well and good to just say “Oh it’s because she was driven mad by the death of Godwyn of course” but I just don’t think that’s quite right. Not only does it feel weird to assume the shattering was just some spur of the moment decision done in an emotional outburst when it was very clearly planned in quite a lot of detail but it also doesn’t really add up with the timeline since Godfrey was presumably sent out of the lands between long before Godwyn died and that seems to be a massive part of what Marika’s plan was.

I think I’ve come up with a semi possible alternative reason as to what could have driven Marika to destroy her own order.

Ok hear me out here.

What if she instead betrayed her order because of what happened to her omen children? I mean, think about it. They are still her children after all and she had to abandon both of them as infants to a life of hell because the greater will (or the golden order, could be both) doesn’t like Omens.

We know that the GW was a pretty controlling (and rather petty) god when it was in power so it definitely had the ability and motive to strong arm Marika into doing things she wouldn’t want to. Even if she did want to keep the twins with her, what choice would she have had with that sort of being looming over her head 24/7?

Imagine how much that would destroy your faith in a system. Her own children, subjected to a life of pain and ridicule because of the way they were born all because her god (or society) says so.

I find it hard to believe that she wouldn’t at least have some conflicted feelings over the whole ordeal.

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I think the biggest evidence I have here is the fact that the omen twins were not only gifted greatrunes upon the rings shattering (something only granted to Marika’s offspring) but Morgott was even ‘given grace’, which is something Marika has a lot of control over.

Even after being born omens and being abandoned early on in their lives Marika still considered them enough of her kin to be given a chance in the shattering race. Now you could argue that them getting their greatrunes was just a happy accident but I really don’t think the same could be said about Morgott being grace given. That seems like a very conscious decision.

We can even see that Godfrey himself had some sense of fondness (or at least respect) for Morgott from the way he holds and speaks to him in his opening boss cutscene, is it really so out of the question that Marika may have felt the same?

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TLDR

What if Marika having to abandon her Omen children because of the greater will and golden order was the catalyst that began her plot to shatter the ring and end her own order?

While I doubt they'll actually get added to wilds, it occurred to me recently that Seltas and Seltas queen would work really fucking well with wilds' Alpha/Pack system.

Like, imagine a quest similar to Alpha Doshaguma and it's massive pack that happens in the windward plains but it's a Seltas queen and her swarm of Seltas followers in the scarlet forest. I just think that'd be neat, especially with how underutilised the Alpha monsters were in wilds.