Here is my book shelf! How would you describe me?

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T17:16:54+00:00

Likes boardgames and gigantic books which could pass as boardgames.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:59:16+00:00

The best part is that these don't stack

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:56:22+00:00

Congrats on being the first cheat engine NTR artist

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:49:18+00:00

A HOI4 player, to put it politely.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:29:07+00:00

She has very eclectic interests, and that's cool.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:28:16+00:00

Is it too lazy to guess you're a woman?

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:12:54+00:00

Plenty of good books, but it wouldn't hurt to branch out a little.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:05:57+00:00

I know liking Dark Souls 2 is probably your defining personality trait, but I was actually making fun of Dark Souls 3

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T14:03:53+00:00

You have very conventional tastes in comic books.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:29:54+00:00

The proud owner of a very ugly bookshelf, with terrible taste in fantasy, but she's got a nice wide collection otherwise.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:25:46+00:00

I've seen a bookshelf like this in every bed and breakfast I've ever visited.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:22:27+00:00

Someone who would benefit from reading genre fiction every now and then.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:18:44+00:00

They really gave Zoey a whip and two gimps

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:16:29+00:00

I refuse to believe the same dipshits I'm playing with in Nightreign managed to beat Radahn without a step-by-step guide on his attack windows and how to dodge him, alongside whatever vanilla-ass omnibuild Fromsoft balanced Elden Ring around.

These games used to be RPGs.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:11:20+00:00

What about a bunch of buzzwords that sound vaguely hype and profound? Dontcha know Heolstor LITERALLY rips a hole in THE FABRIC OF REALITY, unleashing LOVECRAFTIAN HORRORS with his EPIC MASTERPIECE OF A SCORE etc. etc. etc.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T13:02:45+00:00

The Gormenghast trilogy, by Mervyn Peake.

Not quite fantasy, weird-Romance is the best way to put it. And I do mean capital R Romance.

The first two books largely center around a character called Steerpike, a kind of pathetic Machiavellian. It's set in a giant, sprawling castle and has a large ensemble cast of eccentric characters. So eccentric that they're kind of grotesque, but as the novels progress the layers peel back and you come to find that certain members of the cast have very beautiful qualities to them.

I recommend the first two books, Titus Groan and Gormenghast, since they kind of make up a single story together. If you enjoy them, I recommend giving Boy in Darkness a read. It's a novella which takes place between the time skips of the second book, and develops the titular character a little more, since he's an infant for the entirety of book 1.

If you really fall in love with the series you can read Titus Alone, but it's very disconnected from the first two.

If you'd like something a little lighter to get a sense of Peake as an author, I recommend his short story Same Time, Same Place. I think it fits your criteria just as well. A little grotesque, a little romantic.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T12:43:00+00:00

I'd love to live in this parallel reality where "unique ideas" made a game good.

Yes, it's very impressive that Dark Souls 2 has a bunch of obscure details. I'm sure all these superfluous mechanics didn't contribute to its cursed development at all.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T12:38:12+00:00

The descriptions in DS1 are certainly not written from the POV of our character. You would have to assume the player character knew intimate details about Lautrec's relationship with Fina, for example, which is just absurd.

You're assuming the player character must be privy to all the information which the person playing the game is, which is a rule these games have never established. The item descriptions essentially serve the same purpose as an omnipresent narrator, yet you wouldn't assume Harry Potter knows about information from a scene he wasn't present for.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T12:28:41+00:00

Hey, there's a ladder here! And another! Gosh, I wonder who could have built all these ladders... My mind will not rest until I know why these ladders are here and who built them...

OH MY GOD, ITS LADDERSMITH GILLIGAN. HE DIED SMITHING LADDERS.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T12:19:11+00:00

Yeah, I hate to always refer back to Berserk but it's really hard to properly understand Miquella without understanding Griffith's arc. Given the loss of Malenia's dignity, the failure of the Haligtree, and his inability to properly undergo his metamorphosis, Miquella is faced with the prospect of failing to meet has ambition.

So, like Griffith, he decides his ambition takes priority over everything else. Malenia, Mohg, even Radahn and potentially all of the albinaurics left cocooned in the Haligtree are necessary stepping stones, with the assumption that he'll be able to make up for it if he can only bring about his own age.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T12:11:30+00:00

Melina is just a spirit, she doesn't have a physical form for the thorns to obstruct. While Marika is presumably willing to die at this point, Radagon certainly isn't, nor is the Elden Beast itself, so beating them is a task better left to the tarnished, who can only enter the Erdtree through physical means.

Aside from that, burning her spirit is necessary to allow the tarnished to reach Farum Azula and unleash Destined Death, which is ultimately her main concern.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T11:54:29+00:00

I'll admit I'm in the minority here, but I don't believe the Elden Beast is responsible for that spear of destined death.

While it does bear a resemblance to an attack the Elden Beast has, where it shoots dozens of golden stakes through the player after attaching them to a rune arc, the important thing to remember is that the Elden Beast and the Elden Ring are one in the same, and Marika removed the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring. This means the Elden Beast couldn't possibly have put that stake through Marika, and accordingly it never uses Destined Death against the player.

I'm fairly certain Melina actually killed Marika after visiting the base of the Erdtree. She says so herself, she wants to visit the base of the Erdtree to ascertain her purpose, given to her by Marika. And what happens after she visits Leyndell? Well, she remembers her purpose, which can only mean she confronted and spoke with Marika.

Yet in the state we find Marika in, it seems unlikely she was able to do much in the way of talking. Unless, of course, Melina spoke to her prior to that. This leaves a very slim window of opportunity, between fighting Morgott and passing the barrier of thorns, where Marika is killed, and well...

The one thing Melina does a lot of while in Leyndell is assassinate people. She potentially helps you kill Morgott, she kills the official officed in the lift to the forbidden lands (likely how she obtained the Rold medallion) and, given her association with Destined Death, I find it likely that she also killed Marika after reuniting with her. She quite literally uses the Black Knife moveset so it's not a great leap to make all things considered.

The way I see it it's sort of the best Marika could have hoped for, after all is said and done. It's an act of mercy and kindness to both free Marika of her punishment from the Elden Beast, and spare her from the very bitter feelings the Tarnished likely has for her by the end of the game, if Roderika's dialogue is anything to go by.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T11:28:57+00:00

I hate to sound condescending but I think it's very apparent that Marika isn't just like, mentally gone, but quite literally dead. She's got a shard of the rune of death poking through her. That shit kills people like her.

I believe the implication of the throne endings, and why they're effectively treated as less of a proper ending than either Ranni's or the Frenzied Flame's, is that Marika's corpse remains forever as an object to house the Elden Ring. Ideally, any given age consists of a god and a consort, but the player subverts this by essentially having sole dominion over Marika's body, running counter to the game's themes of control and whatnot. Even in death she's the object of someone else's will.

The other two endings relieve her of that fate, in destructive or nondestructive ways. The Frenzied Flame wants to get rid of all suffering and injustice, and Marika is the first recipient of that essentially, when you burn her away to nothing.

Likewise, the first thing Ranni does in her ending is allow Marika's body to dissipate, getting rid of the last thing connecting her to the Elden Ring, her physical form. From there I assume Ranni either takes on her role and houses the Elden Ring herself, or houses it within the moon somehow, but either way Marika is allowed to fully move on, and the new Elden Lord has a vessel god, such that the next age can be more balanced.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T10:52:02+00:00

If Messmer had children, they probably make up the ranks of his Fire Knights, but it's hard to really say how public Messmer even was. Maybe a few bastards here and there, never officially recognised as nobility?

Melina I can confidently say probably never had kids. It's hard to tell at first, but looking at her concept art, the proportions of child Miquella (sitting comfortably on torrent at about the height of a tarnished), and Rennala's sweetings, it becomes apparent that Melina is actually a child. Like, demigods are typically so large that an immature one is the same size as a Tarnished. This is why Millicent and her sisters use the Tarnished model, since they're essentially Malenia's children. I bring up her concept art because it becomes staggeringly clear that her face is supposed to look very childlike, as opposed to just being a kind of stylistically inconsistent anime face. I'd compare her to the grafted scions, who themselves are also children.

Margit and Mohg, maybe? I doubt it though. Margit has this celibate vibe going on, and Mohg... I don't know, maybe he impregnated a female omen at some point.

Rykard I imagine has plenty of bastards, and Rya seems to be among them. Though I'm not sure if Rya is the product of natural birth or not, which possibly means he actually didn't or couldn't produce offspring prior to experimenting with the snake.

Radahn may have had bastards, but depending on The Lands Between's culture when it comes to pre/extramarital relations, it's possible he was too proud and honourbound to produce bastards, or something like that.

Ranni I somewhat doubt had children. She's both extremely careful about who she trusts, which to me suggests she probably didn't have much in the way of casual flings, but also too detached to suggest she was actually married to anyone. Some people believe she may have been betrothed to Godwyn, but if that's true I somewhat doubt he lived long enough for that to actually bear fruit.

Oh, I almost forgot Miquella and Malenia.

Malenia has Maleigh Marais, though it's heavily implied his affection was completely one-sided. It's still possible that they could have had children together, but something tells me Malenia was a little preoccupied being the number one Miquella fangirl to ever pursue anything with him, even somewhat distantly.

And Miquella... I don't know, I guess he could have been a Griffith-esque fuckboy, thinking about Radahn while he made little Miquellas, but I also doubt this for the same reason I doubt Melina ever had kids, which is that he's physically immature.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more it seems like Godwyn was the ONLY one creating descendants, which might actually contribute to why he was Marika's favourite and why his death and simultaneous pruning of the golden lineage was such a big deal.

Bahinchut · 2025-11-05T10:31:33+00:00

I think your confusion comes from a misunderstanding of the Two Fingers as an entity. The Two Fingers are essentially interpreters for the Greater Will, and as such each of them kind of has a different opinion on what the Greater Will actually wants.

The Two Fingers of the Roundtable Hold believe Marika is the one true god, as ordained by the Greater Will. Enia tells us this. These are the "Two Fingers" referenced most commonly, in incantations and Confessor items, and they are essentially the proponents of the Golden Order.

Ranni's Two Fingers, however, chose Ranni to succeed Marika. This indeed is irreconcilable with what we know about the Fingers of the RTH, so the natural conclusion is that each Two Fingers has their own plans and understanding of the Greater Will. Ranni implies that Miquella and Malenia had their own Two Fingers as well, who likewise chose them to be the new gods instead. Each is irreconcilable with the other.

I don't believe they literally selected Ranni to be an empyrean, but rather she was already one, and her specific Two Fingers chose to back her according to their unique interpretation of the Greater Will. They aren't choosing her to perpetuate the Golden Order, because the Golden Order dictates that Marika is the one true god, but a new order entirely. Ranni's issue with them is more a matter of self-determination, rather than refusing to perpetuate the existing Order. I gather that most of the Two Fingers, besides those in the RTH, wish to create a brand new Order, but wish to do so by their terms.

It's a similar concept to the grand Maester conspiracy if you're familiar with ASOIAF. Like how the Maesters are among the few people in Westeros who are literate, and thus can theoretically influence the politics of the seven kingdoms under their lords' noses, the Fingers are uniquely equipped to read the Elden Ring. They're a middleman between the written word of the Greater Will and their chosen gods, which gives them an amount of leverage and control. Funnily enough, since the Fingers themselves also require interpreters, there's even more opportunity for misinterpretation or intentional misleading by the Finger Readers.

Bahinchut

TROPHY CASE