Yet Another Post About Leda

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Rin, smiling, and nagging

Rinsha Fana’s character is summarized in a couple facts thrown here and there. Because she worries for him, she follows Kabru to help his cause and protect him, and to nag him. She’s a grumpy angry tsundere, but it seems not only rooted in her attitude but on a deep rooted physical level, to the point where any intense emotion she feels will make her frown and scowl even if it’s genuine joy. Her childhood was half spent ostracized in the tallman community her family lived in and half with the elves, where she’s said to have been treated like an animal.

We don’t know how she was raised exactly or who it even was, but knowing she was "treated like an animal" by the elves taking care of her…

Elves are shown to have a highly hierarchical society, not only with their concern with status such as nobility and the purity of bloodlines but also reflected by its social culture imo. They have high society and etiquette, upmost devotion to the queen, very role-oriented, like cogs in a machine, and as such, it’s a bit skewed since most of what we see of the elves is in a military context with military people but they seem to value having emotions under lock and key to be efficient and not bring dishonor, Flamela is an interesting character on this. Don’t be a bother and do your job until you’re called on, fulfill your role, everything else is extra at best inconvenient at worst.

Personally I do think the canaries kept Rin, it’d make sense that whichever canaries got stuck with the job at the headquarters would be barebones with her and treat her like an ‘impounded article’, they couldn’t find another place for her and this way they can get her report on the events whenever she can speak again in however many years, and this way it makes sense that she could keep in touch with Kabru too. They’re used to prisoners, not kids. Being raised in a military context rather than at some orphanage would shape her further.

All of this to say…

She’d already seen the world’s harshness to those who don’t conform in her hometown, but with the elves? Her disdain for those who had formal education at a magic school?

Wouldn’t she become very concerned with proving she is not an animal, proving that she’s smart and skilled in her own right on her own merit, even without schooling. And to do this she nitpicks and nitpicks, because even being pristine isn’t enough to be respected, but at least it’s not giving others reasons to disrespect and dehumanize her. Learning to school her emotions, to scowl as a defense mechanism because anything else makes her vulnerable, because they don’t care about her as a person with feelings, because showing other expressions was dangerous or punished in some way: because it was fit in or don’t fit in and that’s the difference between having your house burnt down and being tolerated, between getting her food or having her questions answered and being yelled at to shut up… Because all her life she’s been surviving in hostile social environments and at the mercy of others, but unlike Kabru she doesn’t become a people pleaser but becomes very self-reliant and wary of socializing.

So she nitpicks and nitpicks and nags, because she’s worried. Because flaws are dangerous. So she has a hard time smiling and laughing, because it’s dangerous to allow yourself to feel safe in being authentic.

It would be nice…

Is my red, red enough? I'm waiting for your teeth at my throat. It’s only good manners. -Stephanie Valente 

Elden ring + Shadow of the Erdtree lore thoughts

Alright, so, first off, obviously, spoilers ahead.

I've been thoroughly enjoying and getting my ass kicked by SotE and what ive seen of the lore so i wanted to ramble about it.

I specifically wanted to talk about how Elden Ring explores power and godhood.

In the base game, godhood isnt seen as inherently bad. Marika's golden order is fucked up six ways to sunday, but the blame mainly rests on Marika's shoulders it seems. She's a genocidal homewrecking war-mongerer who threw two of her children in the sewers bc of racism, she's not a good god, but it doesnt portray the problem as her being a god, just her being a mess. The game provides several "solutions" to unfuck everything :

Ranni's ending has you completely throw the system in the trash. She says, fuck it, godhood's the problem, im out of here. She is kinda right, but the lands remain fractured and the power vacuum left behind is going to be immense. We're on the right track but could be better.

The frenzied flame ending is just pure concentrated nihilism so i think we can move past it for this one.

The bunch of other endings are fairly similar : you beat Marika/Radagon's ass and you impose yourself as Elden Lord to keep her in check and fix the issues you see as most important. This doesnt fix anything long-term, the god in power is still the exact same fucking mess but with a chaperone now i guess.

None of these endings are very satisfying, they all leave you with a sense of "it could be worse i guess" (except the frenzied flame one but you get the point). This is where Miquella comes in :

Everything we hear about Miquella sounds great. He's kind, compassionate, against racism, doesnt like violence, etc etc. Cherry on top, he's even one of the characters with a direct shot at godhood, brilliant ! Why cant we just put him in charge, he'll do much better than the absolute wreck we have right now.

And thats where the base game leaves us, Marika is a fucked up mess of a person, and the obvious solution is to put the much better Miquella in her place.

Shadow of the erdtree, on the other hands, aims to set the record straight. The problem wasnt just Marika, the problem is inherent to godhood in and of itself.

In SotE, we see the land of shadow, the realm where Marika came from and ascended to godhood, and the realm where Miquella intends to do the same. And the more we hear about who Marika was before in snippets of lore, and the more we watch Miquella tread the road to godhood, we realise something :

There is no such thing as a good god

It doesnt matter how kind and compassionate you were, what your morals were, who you loved, who you loathed, none of it matters because you cannot grasp the power to become a god without sacrificing who you were before.

In the dlc we see Miquella shed more and more of himself, his flesh, his arms, his eye, his heart, his doubts, his fears and even his love. Miquella has shorn so much of who he was that he formed an entire new person (St Trina) from it. Some of him remains, he still wishes for a kinder world, but he cant sacrifice anymore of himself for it. Now he has to start sacrificing others.

Miquella was always blessed with the ability to charm others, and he sees it as the least painful path to make others do as he wishes. And so he charms his sister, he charms Mohg, he charms Radahn, his followers, Leda, Moore, Thiollier, Freyja, the hornsent, Ansbach, and everyone he can convince to give themselves up for his dream of a kinder world, regardless of the pain they might cause or feel by being enthralled by him.

And oh boy do they feel pain. Mohg is used and discarded like a ragdoll, and his followers and dynasty slowly crumble to nothing as the last pureblood knight watches helplessly, himself entranced by the one responsible after he failed to kill him. Radahn's soul is shoved in a corpse so that he can play consort to a god that is his antithesis, depriving him of his glory and honour as lord of the battlefield. Malenia is left alone to rot after Miquella has no use or help for her, and she endlessly waits for her brother to return. Every one of Miquella's followers has to grapple with those feelings of betrayal, manipulation, and lost memories returning all at once. It is by no means painless.

And so we end up with a god that is not much better than Marika was. On his path to godhood, Miquella has caused as much pain to those along the way as his mother once did, in this very same land that still feels the scars of Marika's ascension.

The only way to gain power is to take it from everyone else, and that cannot be achieved without pain.

the original got flagged with no way to appeal it when every contributor is deactivated but I will never let this post die. it's monday and we are getting on it cunts

Trying to explain Ranni haters the merit of 'Machiavellian' villains who see the only way to fix a fundamental problem to bloody their hands and choose to carry the sin instead of doing Nothing:

Trying to explain haters of Ranni haters that it is fair to still resent a character even if their motivations are understandable if sympathetic because the consequences were still real and deadly and since Two Fingers are not even picky about the terms of an Order, as an Empyrean she most likely had hope to seek compromise instead of nuking everything:

Trying to explain haters of haters of Ranni haters that if Miquella also concluded compromise was not an option perhaps everything was truly fundamentally whack and two from the smartest characters group in the setting would not severe the bond from Two Fingers kicking and crying no matter the cost over something as trivial as "not having enough hope":

Trying to explain that although reasons of Ranni and Miquella must have been very solid if THEY did all this, redirecting living beings fates to a "better" Eldrich Horror force than the current one @ trying to copy Marika's homework as a God but "better" respectively don't feel like very good plans either so both characters are still fair to criticise without being met with hostility:

Trying to explain that it will be a cold day in Hell when Fromsoft abandons their storytelling principles of presenting every single perspective on fixing things as a failure and offering nothing but "hope" that things could be better thanks to the player:

Trying to explain that Elden Ring is also a standalone because in this game there is no "good" ending, whereas for example in Dark Souls or Bloodborne there was an ending including "hope" and uncertainty of what was accomplished, so it is fair to think that Miyazaki is in philosophical crisis of sorts:

Trying to explain that writer(s) meeting sort of a dead end after questioning nature of existence itself in their works for over 15 years is not betrayal of fanbase or losing talent, but instead proves how seriously they take their topics and that they haven't became untrue to themselves just to sell pretty lies to us:

Trying to explain:

Happy 10th bloodborne anniversary everyone ! On a scale of 1 to "sony lost the source code" how are we feeling ?

Fun fact about Emma's fighting style : she has one of, if not the cleanest looking renditions of the Ashina cross anyone ever performs in-game.

Sekiro and the Ashina elites that can do it only relly do the bare minimum that could theoretically be called an Ashina cross : the movement is somewhat there but the two arcs are almost parallel.

Isshin, who has either invented or mastered the technique, has a much cleaner looking version. Where Sekiro and the elites' versions looked like two nondescript slashes, Isshin's actually looks like a cross. But even still, there is a fairly noticeable obtuse/acute angle.

Meanwhile, if we look at Emma's version, it's an almost perfect cross. I'm talking like 75 degrees angle, that shit is almost perpendicular. It is, without a doubt, the most cross like of any rendition performed in the game . And honestly, it's kinda fitting she'd know that move so well.

After all, Isshin does boast it is fast enough to sever a shura's arm...

I need a moment to yell about what a tragic and interesting character Emma is.

Yes, she's been placed in a stereotypically female role as the healer and the guide for the male protagonist. She's a doctor, a caregiver, yes, but there is so much more to her. She is integral to so much of the heartbreak in this story and not because she isn't trying. She just can't escape it.

She's not a fighter, but she has a sword, and the reason she learned how to use it is specifically because she is waiting for a man who means the world to her to turn into a demon so she can kill him.

The Sculptor rescued her from a battlefield when she was a small child and starving. He helped raise her and eventually placed her in Dogen's care.

She visits him often, she asks for his advice on some really difficult, delicate matters.

This is her father in all the ways that matter (and he's actually a good father compared to some other fathers in this story). She clearly respects and loves him.

And she also knows that he is turning into a demon and the only thing she can do about it is make sure she is ready to kill him when the time comes.

Her relationship with Isshin is also tied up in this. Isshin is her lord. He is also her teacher, since he is the one who trained her in swordsmanship.

Isshin's skill with the sword is so fabled they call him the Sword Saint. This guy lives to swordfight. His greatest achievement (according to him) isn't killing a tyrant and freeing his country, it's developing his own fighting style and never stopped trying to improve it (and handing out pamphlets about it).

That's the guy Emma got to train her.

Isshin got a tutor to train his beloved grandson (as is proper), but he trained Emma himself and it doesn't come as a surprise once you learn that Isshin was the one who stopped the Sculptor from turning into Shura before.

Emma must have told him.

Imagine Emma asking Isshin to train her in swordsmanship. Isshin, who fought Shura and lived, must have looked at this small, waifish woman and asked her why. And then he ended up teaching her anyway.

Specifically so she can kill a demon.

(And the beautiful thing about this, in terms of Sekiro being a video game, is that this is not just something we're informed of, but it's reflected in the actual gameplay. If you end up fighting her, Emma's moveset is a slimmed down, slightly less reactive version of Grandpa Isshin's. She has the same perilous attacks (including the same grab), she has Ashina cross, she does that little slash if you stick too close.

Conversely, Genichiro, despite being Isshin's heir, fights nothing like his grandfather. Because he was taught by Tomoe. Actually, the way fighting styles are used for characterisation is another thing that has me raving about this game. Like the fact that Owl is the only enemy in the entire game who can perform a Mikiri counter...).

However, Isshin isn't just her lord and her teacher. He also dresses up as a mythological figure to hunt down spies and those of his grandson's allies he doesn't approve of in his castle. Emma knows this. Isshin knows Emma knows this and she gets away with teasing her about it. They have a cute, friendly relationship.

But more importantly, Isshin is also her patient and they both know he's dying.

There's this inevitableness about all of Emma's relationships. See also Genichiro: Emma and he were childhood friends. They used to hang out with Takeru and Tomoe by the sakura tree. If you share enough sake with her she'll tell you about how she used to sneak out of the castle to watch Genichiro pratice Tomoe's Lightning (and did Genichiro taking his shirt off when he does that move have anything to do with that?)

But she's spending enough time with Isshin to know that Genichiro's days, too, are numbered. And there's that sad memory in which she tells Kuro about the sediment and how people who use it lose their humanity bit by bit.

Oh, and since I mentioned Tomoe ... if you pursue the Purification route, you find out that Emma saw Tomoe attempt Purification (which only failed because she didn't have the Mortal Blade). Emma saw Tomoe, presumably her friend, attempt suicide. To spare Takeru.

And then there's Wolf and Kuro. Who not only act as a catalyst for the Genichiro situation to finally turn to shit. She also soon realises that Wolf and Kuro find themselves in the same bind as Takeru and Tomoe.

And with the knowledge that at least one of them has to die, one of them a small child, she chooses to let the child die and save the man. Witholding the information on how to attempt Purification is one of very few choices Emma actually gets to make in this story. Everything else is ripped from her control (Sculptor's condition, Isshin's condition, Genichiro's condition, the situation the entire country is in). And it's such an interesting choice to make for her.

There's this child, who is convinced that the only way to end the curse of immortality is for him to have his head cut off with a magic sword. And her choice is whether or not to tell the depressed Shinobi looking after this boy that there's an option for the child to live but it requires the Shinobi to cut his own head off instead.

And she chooses to say nothing.

She's making her decision and in doing so, she's effectively taking the choice away from Wolf. And it eventually leads to even more heartbreak, because if you actually make Wolf kill Kuro, Wolf is miserable for the rest of his days, taking the place of the Sculptor and set to eventually turn into a demon himself.

And that's so interesting.

And every day I'm cursing the gaming gods because Fromsoft hasn't made more story games like this.

Break my heart again, I can take it.

Be wary of linguistics rant, Elden Ring ahead

Ok so I just made a different post about this but I need to elaborate: The Elden Ring messaging system is legitimately such an interesting microcosm about how language is used as a tool and shaped to suit the needs it's being used for. I could actually make an entire study about how this can be used to better understand the formation of pidgin languages in the same way that epidemiologists studied the Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft to better understand the mechanics of how disease affects human behavior. Video games as an academic lens into peoples' minds has always been a fascinating topic to me, and by the end of this, you'll see why.

First off, message.

So for those not indoctrinated into the series/game, Elden Ring is a big open world game made by From Software, which won game of the year 2022 among some other awards (if you've played it or know anything about it, just skip to the next header). Each player plays as a Tarnished and explores this massive environment called The Lands Between individually, but if another player is walking in the same area that you are, you can see their "ghost" moving through the world, and you can "invade" or "be summoned" into another player's iteration of the world in order to briefly interact with it before returning to your own iteration. This occupies a weird space in between singleplayer and multiplayer, with these heavily limited and kind of random methods of interaction between players, but that's not the most interesting way of communicating with your fellow Tarnished; that title goes to the messages system. You can write a message onto a small stone, and leave it on the ground, and then that little stone with the message on it will have a random chance to appear in any player's iteration of the world for them to read. This is a tradition which has been going in From Software's games long since before the inception of Elden Ring, although I'm mostly going to be focusing on the message system of that title, because documenting the history of the 13+ years running Soulsbourne franchise is way too much, even for a nerd like me. The point is that messages are a lot more likely to be seen than any other method of player-to-player interaction, and you can even leave little "gestures" to go with them, where the reader can see your character striking a pose while they read the message. What a neat little mechanic, which definitely doesn't have any hidden layers of depth, and certainly wouldn't spawn an entire emergent system of pseudolinguistics, right?

No message ahead, be wary of mimicry

Well, when I said that messages are written by other players, that was a lie. To make a message, you don't type it out with your keyboard, you select what you want to say, from a big list of preset phrases. It works that way for a lot of reasons, foremost of all as a profanity filter, but also to prevent too many spoilers and maintain atmosphere. The sets of phrases are incredibly limiting, famously requiring players to use weird fake old-english diction in order to express a simple thought (Strong foe ahead, be weary of death. Look carefully ahead, visions of item. Suffering, o suffering, why is it always bad luck? etc). This seems like a limitation which would put a serious damper on anyone trying to actually communicate their thoughts, but gamers are a persistent sort, and have a lot of trouble taking no for an answer. They also have way too much time on their hands, and like to solve puzzles, a terrifying combination of traits, and the perfect one to accidentally create a conlang. With the unexpectedly massive audience that this game picked up on launch, millions of people left messages desperately trying to get something across, and if the game's preset vocabulary didn't contain the phrases to express it, they would forge their own path. Any big fans of linguistic history can already tell the direction that this might be going, as we move on into the next chapter:

Teacher, Liar, Lovable Sort

When the game released, there was chaos. The Lands Between are fraught with hidden passages, deception, and blatant bullshit, and the first kind of players leaving messages tried to helpfully communicate what you could trust, and what you couldn't. This is what the message system was intended for after all, giving advice to your peers, and what many people still use it for today. The second kind of players tried to do the opposite, deliberately leading people to their doom, just because they could. The third, and most numerous sort, were simply awestruck at everything the game had to offer, and left a series of remarks on the beauty and humor of the world. The messages left by each group are pretty easy to differentiate to the trained eye, which is the main feature causing me to point out this division of players. Let's call these groups the teachers, the liars, and the lovable sorts. A teacher can be recognized if their messages suggest something within reason, and being backed up by the peer-review of nearby messages to the same effect. If three messages are all sitting on the ground next to eachother, each saying something along the lines of "seek up, look carefully ahead", then a local collage of teachers are trying to let you know about a secret path ahead leading you up towards a hidden objective. However, a single message next to a bloodstained cliff-edge stating "jumping required ahead" is almost certainly a liar, trying to deceive an unsuspecting player into making a dubious leap. Liars sometimes use slightly simpler grammar than teachers do, being less committed to getting their point across. Wait a minute, linguistic variance based on intent? No no, this is just a video game about fighting monsters, surely such an interesting emergent system wouldn't arise from something like that. Lastly, the lovable sorts have the most ranging grammar, spanning from a simple word such as "dog" (a word used colloquially to describe all creatures, from turtles to dragons), to complex sentences requiring the combination of many phrases. However, a lovable sort can be differentiated by the fact that they merely remark upon the world as it is, instead of trying to offer advice to other players, as a teacher or liar might. Some of their most iconic phrases are "Elden ring ahead", used to sarcastically denote a dead end where a player might have been expecting treasure, "you don't have the right, o, you don't have the right" which indicates a locked door, or the world-famous "try finger, but hole", a phrase which explains itself. The most incredible thing about the words of the lovable sort, is that they all require a little bit of thinking to understand their actual meaning, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes like a second language to you! Wait a minute, a second language?

Message? Wasn't expecting introspection

As time went on, the three main groups of message-writers still kept chugging along, creating new works of writing every day, but advancements in understanding of the game's inner workings allowed these messages to become more and more complex. Compound words started to be formed to represent concepts outside of the preset vocabulary, like "skeleton, house" for coffin, "dung, key" to describe the donkeys accompanying traveling merchants, and "edge, lord" being used to refer to the NPC Ensha, a man wearing flamboyant armor made out of bones who takes himself way too seriously. It's worth noting in this section that for a specific period of time, The Lands Between were overtaken by a horde of messages stating only the words "fort, night". Despite the crude and humorous nature of the entire thing, it was clear to see that the linguistic patterns of the Elden Ring community were evolving into their own beast, far beyond the usages that the developers had intended. Words had shed their original meaning, to instead take up contextual meanings based on how players used them, effectively becoming different words entirely. Depending on how you define this, it's either a microcosm of incredibly fast and severe linguistic drift, or the emergence of a new pidgin or conlang entirely. If you really stretch things, you could almost call the message system of Elden Ring an entirely new language in and of itself.

Well done, victory ahead!

I think that video games are an excellent way to observe human behavior under conditions which are controlled, accelerated, and completely recordable, and this is the closest that we've ever seen to an entire language growing completely from scratch. People are always the same, whether you want to call it instinct or just cyclical tendencies, but normally the formation of a new language can take incredible periods of time, hastened only by tragic events like diaspora or massive losses of cultural knowledge (research what's been happening to Gaelic as a spoken language for more info about this sort of thing, it's kind of depressing but is also important to learn about, and there's a lot of people on this site talking about it who can do the topic way more justice than I can). Even for other topics which either require great passage of time, or great tragedy in order to research (I.E. geology or epidemiology, respectively), there are a lot of simulations and predictive models which can tell us how these systems behave without actually experiencing them. Linguistics has never had this sort of thing...until now, perhaps. Obviously there won't be any academic breakthroughs based on a bunch of people online all writing "rump ahead", but it's an incredibly interesting thing to see happening for a field which is so hard to actively advance, and it could lead to actual scientific methods of generating new languages via human interaction for research purposes. Of course, there's always the sizable chance that this goes nowhere and I just wrote this insane rant because I like to type, but if nothing else, I at the very least exposed some of my mutuals to "try finger, but hole".

I just got transporter trapped into a mine that i am. Fairly certain im underleveled for.

The most interesting part with Leda for me, is that for all of the murder she does, she doesnt seem to enjoy it in any way. When she fights Ansbach, the Hornsent, Thiollier or you, she always seems to express some form of regret at having to kill you. Of course, she doesnt actually have to kill anyone, she is just very quick to use murder as a solution, but it doesnt seem to stem from a desire to hurt others, it feels like she genuinely believes this is the only way forward.

She says she is mistrustful of others, and while that convo is kinda funny, it really does feel like she has lost all trust in mankind. In the dialogue about Hornsent's crusade, while most people remember the "they were never saints" part, I mostly remember "Man is by nature a creature of conquest". It really does speak to how she views people, and it seems like she believes Miquella's forced age of compassion is the only way to change things for the better, that without his control, everyone would just constantly be at each other's throats. It almost makes me wonder about the needle kights. Did she kill them for the same reason ? Were they actually disloyal to Miquella ? Was there already infighting before she came along ? Whatever the case, Leda is now utterly convinced of Miquella's cause, and is ready to do anything to bring him to power.

It's a very interesting dynamic with Miquella, who is always portrayed as a very hopeful figure, always trying to create a kind and compassionate world, while Leda is a very pessimistic one. She seems to almost embody his "through whatever means necessary" philosophy. Had Miquella succeeded, i could almost see her taking on a role similar to the one Messmer took for Marika, an enforcer, someone who does the dirty jobs so their god can keep their hands clean. Hell, she's almost started to do it by herself, Miquella wouldn't even need to ask her.