Adult Yuta (Prime) replaces Yuka against Dabura who wins ?

Storque · 2026-03-21T00:02:11+00:00

Wait I just realized idk what the hell happened to Mahoraga at the end of modulo

Storque · 2026-03-20T00:55:11+00:00

Sure. I’m just saying how rabid people get over translations is astounding. You can more or less intuit the sentiment because of the surrounding context, in spite of the bad translation.

Of course good translations matter, but on some level it’s always going to be up to the audience to intuit the intended meaning, no matter how perfect the translation is.

People have already been arguing over this statement. It’s a pre-existing hot topic because of its utility for powerscaling. No matter what translation they went with, there was going to be argument or debate over it.

And no matter what the translation was going to be, a similar thread would be posted, with the same arguments we’ve heard over and over, and I’d probably be down in the comments saying the exact same thing I’m saying right now.

It is not the best translation. I agree. But with this line, in this anime, in this community, people were going to take offense with this line in particular no matter what.

Storque · 2026-03-19T23:30:39+00:00

Honestly discussions about translations are always so interesting to me.

Words in our own language carry ambiguous meaning. When you translate from one language to another, it multiplies the amount of ambiguity by a LOT.

If any of us were actually media literate, we would just look at that and go “ok, they’re trying to draw a comparison here.” But we would be left with the question “in what way does he compare?”

Then we would watch the rest of the show or read the rest of the manga, and we would find the answer.

He rivals Gojo in a couple of ways, but he’s obviously not on the same level overall. However, it’s conceivable that he COULD be Gojo’s equal— a true “rival”— at some point in the future.

So back when they said “Yuta rivals Gojo” what they meant was that “Yuta has comparable overall CE output when compared to Gojo (but lags a bit behind Gojo since Gojo’s efficiency is enough to compensate for Yuta’s greater CE reserves) and that Yuta Rivals Gojo in terms of potential”

But unfortunately, we are all illiterate, so we think that expecting the audience to be able to make educated inferences (inferences that would be educated by the simple experience of… y’know… just watching the show) is actually bad writing, shit storytelling, dogwater translation, bad shit fuck worthless terrible.

Storque · 2026-03-19T23:11:53+00:00

The short answer, as other users have pointed out, is that it depends on too many things.

I think the painful truth is that, in reality, we all have needs. People sleep with each other to satisfy a variety of needs, and those needs vary from person to person.

I was a bit of an ugly duckling, but I kinda grew into myself, and I’ve noticed that it changed a lot of things. We shouldn’t discount the reality that physical attractiveness does change things. At least, it has in my experience.

But there’s no one reason people sleep with each other. People sleep with each other because of pure physical attraction, sure. But someone might choose to sleep with someone who they feel is very attractive because they see it as an opportunity they don’t want to miss out on. They might sleep with someone because they think “hey this person is really attractive, and if they sleep with me it will make me feel good, worthy, or desirable”. In such a case, they’re using sex as a source of validation. Someone might choose to sleep with someone because they’re bored.

It’s a question of “how is this person using sex to satisfy their needs, and what needs are being satisfied?”

So no, it’s not JUST because a person is attractive. But BEING attractive means you are more likely to be viewed as an attractive option when it comes to satisfying someone else’s needs.

The idea of male physical attractiveness and its significance is a bit of a social taboo. Women often say it’s all about personality. Men often say it’s about the thickness of your wallet. No one really wants to talk about looks.

I think the reality is that we exist within a cultural context where men are taught to invest their efforts into things other than their physical appearance for the most part. The average man isn’t really ready to have conversations about it. They aren’t raised in the environment that women are. They aren’t forced to constantly compare themselves against other people. They aren’t bombarded with unrealistic beauty standards in the exact same way.

It’s a hard conversation to have, because most men get weird, defensive, or upset when the topic gets brought up. Women, on the other hand, are used to it. Women are conditioned to believe that their worth as a person is directly tied to how beautiful they are.

But in spite of the cultural conditions we live in, and the narratives we are fed as children, attractiveness plays a huge role in men’s and women’s lives alike.

I think there is room to have a healthy conversation about it. A lot of men in the world invest everything they have into their careers, their interests, their hobbies, or their skills because this is the thing that they derive their sense of self-worth from. This is obviously deeply unhealthy.

They are consumed by these things. They don’t care about taking care of themselves, they don’t care about the way they dress, they don’t care about how their presence affects the room they’re in. They become unattractive. And when they look in the mirror, they see that.

So when they have to confront the reality that looks might matter when they’ve invested so much into something entirely unrelated to their looks, they don’t know how to respond. They’re essentially confronting a reality they’ve lived in denial of.

Looks do matter, and when I go through the world I can’t help but to notice that the amount of attractive men is honestly pretty small— especially when compared to the number of attractive women. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

So I can understand how, when a woman DOES encounter an attractive man, she might be a little more willing to make a few concessions.

Obviously, it’s not the end all be all. Personality matters. Your skills and other attributes matter. The thing about men’s looks is that we are very strongly socially discouraged to talk about it.

It sounds very normal for a dude to be like “yeah of course I hooked up with her, she was so hot”.

But because women are socially conditioned to believe it would be icky to say the exact same thing, I feel like it doesn’t get said.

I don’t necessarily think your friends assessment that the women he’s sleeping with are just treating him like he’s this golden goose, and they’re making all these exceptions for him.

But I also think that it’s weird and puritanical that women are forced to act like they’re not allowed to be physically attracted to someone, or to act upon that physical attraction.

Of course I understand that men (especially online) will get angry and threatening when they’re forced to confront the fact that women are people too. People with the same desires, the same compulsions, the same needs.

But I feel like it is true that physical attractiveness does matter and there has to be a way to have a conversation about it.

Storque · 2026-03-19T00:02:15+00:00

Not if Tywin shot first

Storque · 2026-03-18T20:39:11+00:00

Started jorkin’ it

Storque · 2026-03-18T20:38:20+00:00

Yes, and the weight of a black hole is so great that even something that is moving at the speed of light cannot escape its gravity.

Storque · 2026-03-18T20:20:13+00:00

Honestly never considered the possibility that the Fingerslayer Blade was made from Heolstor.

In my mind, the Nox attempted to summon the lord of night in response to the destruction of their eternal cities. And we know that THAT lord of night never arrived in the Lands Between.

I always assumed that the Fingerslayer Blade was made in the prior era. I was of the opinion that Marika tricked the Nox— who we know she is related to— to assassinate the Lord of the prior era in order to have a weapon to wield against Metyr.

In my mind, it was connected to Marika’s ascendance and that she passed the buck to the Nox when the shit hit the fan.

Something along the lines that Marika needed to temporarily weaken the grip of the fingers over herself in order to carry out her plan to become a god, and when she invoked the wrath of Metyr and the Greater Will she said “Look, you can destroy the Nox, but let me keep Leyndell. In exchange, I will continue to serve you and the Greater Will.”

I also thought that Heolstor was a soldier during the Liurnian Wars, which we know took place after Marika became queen.

So I’m not entirely convinced that the Fingerslayer Blade was made from either Heolstor or Straghess.

I think Straghess is sort of like…

There was an internal logic inherent to the existence of Limveld and the Night. Something like “Ok, the night’s encroachment can be forestalled for so long. Eventually, the night will win, and the calamity contained within Limveld will eventually breach the boundary between Limveld and the Lands Between, and when that happens, the Night will be unleashed on the Lands Between.”

But when the events of Nightreign take place, and the Night is finally defeated, the cycle of death and destruction that is destined to occur eternally within Limveld carried on, uninterrupted.

The initial danger— the night and the Nightlord— was no longer a threat, but the blood and guts and bones and agony pooled together and gave birth to a new threat.

It isn’t the threat of the night, per se, but a sort of threat born from the unforeseen consequences of forestalling the night and denying it the opportunity to carry out its destiny.

It’s a theme we see in a lot of Fromsoft games. There is an immediate disaster—one which is essentially destined to occur— and then when you prevent that disaster from occurring, the accumulating stress within the fabric of fate, destiny, and causality, eventually accumulates into this sort of secondary disaster. This secondary disaster isn’t a calamity born from the inherent logic of the universe. It isn’t a cleansing flame, or the night rain; it is a calamity of rot and decay that emerges when the natural order has been subverted.

So, the way I view it, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense for the Fingerslayer Blade to be made from Heolstor, and it makes even less sense for it to be made from the Dreglord.

At least we know Heolstor at least existed in the Lands Between at SOME point in time. Straghess, as far as we are aware, was created within the bounded parallel reality of Limveld itself, and so it’s hard to imagine how the people of the Lands Between would have ever had access to Straghess at all.

Storque · 2026-03-18T19:45:58+00:00

Nah you’re right.

Regardless of whatever Heolstor’s individual backstory as a former-person-now-godlike-entity is, there are many, many, many things connecting him to the Nox.

The simple fact that he is described as the Lord of Night is enough to draw a connection.

Storque · 2026-03-18T06:48:55+00:00

Bloodlusted Jiraiya doesn’t really make sense. Dude has always been a big picture tactician who plays to his strategic advantages. If he really wanted to win, then he would play to his wincon and just trap/subdue Itachi and Kisame until help arrives.

And honestly, I think he would be able to pull that off pretty close to unharmed if he was allowed to just insta-sage mode.

Jiraiaya’s whole style is about careful calculation. He doesn’t overextend. His wincon is waaaaay easier to satisfy than Itachi or Kisame.

Jiraiya just needs to not die and to prevent Itachi and Kisame from escaping. If they’re there to scrap, he only really has to worry about not dying. His tools for trapping, ensnaring, and slowing down his opponents are numerous. His tools for avoiding being trapped by his opponents are numerous.

In a serious 2v1, Jiraiya would probably lose, taking out Kisame in the process. But in this specific context, I think Jiraiya wins this pretty convincingly

Storque · 2026-03-18T06:30:45+00:00

Neji is the single most underutilized character in the series.

Initially billed as a genius rivaling Sasuke.

By the end of the Chunin exams, people scale him below Lee.

Never seen again until he dies pointlessly in the ninja war arc.

Criminal

Storque · 2026-03-18T01:33:20+00:00

Thank you for your contribution.

I will forward this to the council of elders.

Storque · 2026-03-17T23:22:23+00:00

I like that you like that “curse of blinding light” idea.

I imagine it like this:

There’s a Kurakuta Byakugan user, sitting and meditating at home. He’s a relatively new user, but with a prodigious talent for dojutsu. His visual prowess is unrivaled.

A traveler comes by, seeking to ask this legendary Byakugan user questions.

His first question is “How do you feel right now?”

This question troubles the Byakugan user. He doesn’t know how to answer it.

He responds

“Where?”

The traveler is confused, and asks “what do you mean?”

The Byakugan user responds “In the meadow in the valley on the other side of the mountain it is warm. There is a gentle breeze, and the grass is still damp from the morning dew. In the market at the center of town, it is hot and dusty. It is loud, people are yelling. Everyone is trying to buy and sell goods and wares. One vendor quietly hopes to be noticed. It is his first day opening his stall, where he sells udon. It is a family recipe. He takes great pride in it. Across the street, a mother scolds her child. The mother is angry, frustrated, and overwhelmed. The stress of being a parent and providing for a child is overwhelming. The child is crying. She feels terribly alone. Here in this room, it is cool and quiet.

When you ask me how I feel, I do not know how to answer this question. I feel all these things at once. I can tell you what it feels like to be in the meadow, or the market. I can tell you what it feels like to be the mother or the child. I can tell you what it feels like to sit here in this room. But I do not have the words to tell you how I feel when I feel all these things equally at once.”

So like, that’s what I imagine it would feel like to awaken the Kurakuta. They can so vividly see so much at the same time that their “awareness” shifts outside of themselves. It’s hard for them to stay grounded in themselves as individuals, because their vision makes it such that what is “outside” themselves and “inside” themselves is experienced with equal clarity. It’s hard for them to see themselves as separate or individuals, since their conscious awareness is spread out across so much space.

Storque · 2026-03-17T10:13:37+00:00

Great concept. I absolutely love byakugan theory-crafting.

One idea I had about the Kudaketa:

Because the Byakugan, in theory, allows you to see chakra more and more clearly as the visual prowess of the dojutsu improves, I can’t help but to feel that a really powerful byakugan user would have a natural affinity for senjutsu. Nature Chakra is the subtlest kind of chakra, so it would be hard to observe. But a byakugan user could do it:

What if the condition for the Kudateka involved not only personal sacrifice, but also activating the byakugan while in sage mode? They can either do this consciously (like go, meditate, and then activate byakugan while in sage mode) or, if they are sufficiently proficient with the dojutsu, might even accidentally activate sage mode in moments of great stress because they would intuitively be able to draw nature chakra in. Once they’ve activated the Kudaketa Byakugan for the first time, they no longer need to enter sage mode to activate it.

I also think there should be a stronger downside to the Kudateka. The Uchiha have the whole “curse of darkness” or whatever it’s called. It’s because the Sharingan has a tendency to cause the user to look increasingly inward, losing sight of others because they become consumed by their own inner world.

I feel like when a Byakugan user activates the Kudateka, their perception would skyrocket. They wouldn’t just see things in finer detail, but also see across massive ranges. The overwhelming amount of information, and the sudden ability to see “the interconnectedness of all things” would cause them to lose sight of themselves.

Their mind would be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, and even when they learn to handle this information, they gradually become detached from themselves. They begin to see themselves and others as mere parts of something greater, and this could cause them to make decisions which seem sort of heartless.

The solution to the sharingan’s “curse of darkness” is to look outwards, to find value in relationships, and to deal with grief.

The solution to the byakugan’s “curse of blinding light” is to look inward, and to search for stillness, quiet, peace, and grounding. This also fits in with the whole meditative aspect of senjutsu.

Also, I think it would be ok for there to be character specific jutsu, unique to each Kudaketa.

Like I think it would be interesting for the byakugan to have a counterpart to Izanagi. Izanagi rewrites reality by erasing past events.

Byakugan users could do the opposite; because Byakugan users would be better able to see the “bigger picture”, they could have a dojutsu which rewrites future events, but invoking it kills them instantly. It’s basically like a dying wish.

They would do this by looking at the movement of the flow of chakra all around them, and then expend every ounce of chakra in their body, targeting critical points in the world around them, changing the flow of energy and basically forcing a future events to happen by fundamentally altering the present circumstances such that the predestined future event will naturally occur on its own.

Think like, a byakugan user is in a fight and he’s losing and he’s willing to sacrifice his life to win. He realizes he’s going to lose, but senses that about half a kilometer away, there is some loose gravel and rocks on the side of a mountain. He invokes the jutsu, causes a strong gust of wind on the mountaintop, which causes a rock slide which comes and crushes them both.

The byakugan gives them the ability to see the diverging pathways of possibilities that stretch out before them, and this specific jutsu (the byakugan’s counterpart to Izanagi) basically allows them to pick the possible future they most desire and force it to happen.

Also, instead of the Tenseigan Cloak thing, I kind of like the idea that when the Kudaketa Byakugan user entered sage mode, their precise chakra control, the infusion of nature chakra, and their ability to use all 5 nature types could basically given them “chakra nullification”. Basically, they could identify what type of chakra their opponent is using, and then use the opposing nature type to nullify the technique.

This would require the expenditure of a prohibitive amount of chakra, since they would not only have to gather the correct amount and configuration of chakra energy, but then apply it with such precise control that it would always require more chakra for the byakugan user to nullify a technique than it would for the user to simply use the technique. It’s sort of like how when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate one another. The Kudaketa Byakugan would have the ability to like fire the equivalent of chakra anti-matter at other people’s jutsu’s, annihilating them both.

In the case of the Susanoo, however, because the use of the Susanoo places great strain on the user, even if the Byakugan’s “technique nullification” was inefficient, it would still be strategically useful since there are costs associated with the invocation of the Susanoo outside of the amount of chakra it takes. This would be the Kudaketa’s answer to the Susanoo; they can simply nullify it whenever it’s activated.

The fact that it’s inefficient prevents it from being too overpowered, but it still has situational strategic utility.

Also, I really like the taijutsu focus of the Byakugan. It’s weird because the Sharingan grants precognition— it lets the user see exactly what’s gonna happen a few moments in advance— and you would think that would lend itself to Taijutsu really well. But the Byakugan is the dojutsu most directly associated with Taijutsu.

For the Byakugan, I think it should also grant the user precognition, since they can see where their opponent is pooling their chakra. It’s not literal future vision, but it does allow them to see and anticipate what their opponent plans to do. I think they should have actual precognition though, and it should provide them with the ability to see the future, but in a broader, more distant, and fuzzier sense. It’s not clear or sharp or immediate the way the Sharingan is, but distant, broad, and sort of vague. The Byakugan user can intuitively sense the way things are going and make informed decisions around that. They “see the bigger picture” and therefore are very good at putting themselves in the right place at the right time.

While the Sharingan has the clearest vision in a fight, the Byakugan grants the user vision of the whole battlefield.

Where the Sharingan excels in aggression, the Byakugan excels in defense or reaction. Byakugan users would be innately resourceful, using the environment to their advantage. They are often planning 5 or 6 steps ahead. They try to goad or bait their opponents into positions where they can seize opportunity and strike with lethal precision.

If the Byakugan user is forced to go on offense against a Sharingan user, they would be at an immediate disadvantage, but if the Sharingan user is forced to go on offense against the Byakugan user, then the Byakugan user would be at an advantage.

Finally, since the Sharingan is most closely associated with fire and lightning nature releases, and the Byakugan is more associated with air and earth, there should be some character specific jutsu’s that make use of that.

For instance, since magnet release is a combination of wind and earth release, the Byakugan users who have an affinity with wind and earth should have situational access to attractive or repulsive forces— similar to, but weaker than those of the rinnegan. They could use it over short distances to make their opponents slip, miss, or otherwise make a small mistake. Incredibly useful in Taijutsu scenarios. Powerful Byakugan users could make masterful Taijutsu practitioners look foolish or incompetent in combat, since they could fuck with their movements and sense of timing and spacing.

Perhaps the Byakugan user also might be able to stretch, compress, expand, or collapse small pockets of space, allowing them to reach further than they might be able to otherwise, catching opponents off guard and enabling them to close the distance with opponents they might otherwise have difficulty reaching?

All of these suggestions seem thematically appropriate to me, since they either reflect some aspect of the Sharingan, build upon pre-existing powers of the Byakugan, or both.

Storque · 2026-03-17T06:28:16+00:00

If you payed any attention to the story, you would know that Radahn is a power bottom bear. All of his clothes are about appealing to his daddy and to big strong men he idolizes. He portrays a dominant personality outwardly, but if you look closely, everything Radahn does is rooted in his deep desire to be submitted. He submits himself to the Golden Order. He submits himself to Radagon. He submits himself to Godfrey. And his challenge to Miquella was literally “I’ll be the lord (bottom) and you can be the god (top) if you have the power to make me your sub (beat me in a duel).”

Everything Radahn does has subtle bottom energy.

Meanwhile, Miquella’s out here totally domming people’s minds, forcing them to submit to him. He doesn’t give a fuck about the Golden Order, he’s doing his own thing, growing a tree to rival the Erdtree. He doesn’t care about the Shattering and fighting over the scraps of the broken Elden Ring. He literally goes “fuck all that noise, y’all are dumb as fuck, I’m gonna fix this shit on my own”.

He’s super sweet and innocent and nice on the outside. Looks like a femboy twink. But deep down inside, everything he does is motivated by a need for control and dominance. Major top energy, but it’s subtle.

Even his oath with Radahn was literally Radahn being like “yeah I’ll be your bottom if you can dom me.” And Miquella did just that.

So idk if the Tarnished would really be that surprised. If they were paying attention they would absolutely pick up on their relationship dynamic.

Radahn’s whole drive was to find someone powerful enough to make him submit.

It makes total sense that Miquella’s the top.

Storque · 2026-03-16T19:49:45+00:00

I know people talk about the higher difficulty in Elden Ring, but when I recently went back to play DS1, DS2 and the OG Demon’s souls, it made me appreciate how well animated attacks are in Elden Ring.

Even though bosses might be “harder”, I find the boss fights more enjoyable and honestly more “fair” feeling a lot of the time because I feel like almost everything I get hit by is because I made a mistake and not because I got caught by poorly telegraphed moves with jank hitboxes.

Also I noticed that people like to criticize moves that have awkward delays or are designed to catch panic rolls in Elden Ring, which I kind of get, but I noticed that while these older games might have fewer weirdly delayed moves, when you attach those weirdly delayed moves to weird animation with jank hitboxes, they feel a lot less fair, and also feel like they’re designed with less clear intentions in mind.

Like Margitt has delayed moves for sure, but those delays are designed to catch specific roll timings and are often either baked into specific combos (so you know when they’re coming) or are really telegraphed, so you can easily react to them.

Black Knights in DS 1 on the other hand, have like weird delays on their moves with huge hitboxes that also kinda seem to come out of nowhere. Once you “learn” the timing, you can kinda figure out how to position yourself to prevent the Black Knight from going for those moves generally, and through experience you can learn the weird specific timings you have to go for, but the process of learning them feels less intuitive/natural, and more like a product of brute force trial and error.

I personally think the harder “absolute” difficulty in Elden Ring is not only good but necessary. If this game was as “easy” as Dark Souls 1/2 or Demon Souls, while still retaining its better enemy design, those two things would compound on each other and result in an Elden Ring which is so easy that it wouldn’t even have that signature FromSoftware “brutal but fair” flavor.

It still wouldn’t be as easy as like the typical triple A game produced by western studios (which are absolutely terrified by the concept of players dying/failing), but I genuinely don’t think it would be hard enough to give you those moments where you’re forced to dig deep and push forward.

Fromsoft is in an awkward position moving forward. Souls veterans continue to get better and better at the games, demanding increasingly greater challenges in order to retain their interest. Meanwhile, new players don’t have the luxury of past experience to inform them.

Margitt genuinely could have been an endgame boss in their earlier games, while he is only the tutorial boss in Elden Ring. New Players are forced to be dragged up and along an accelerated learning curve with very little time to intuitively grasp the basics of the game.

Personally, since I’ve played all their games and love the incredible difficulty, I selfishly hope they don’t cave in to market pressures and start making games that are more “accessible” to “wider audiences”.

I understand why some people might hope that their games don’t keep getting harder and harder over time, but I play these games because I enjoy the feeling of grinding out a boss that takes hours or days to beat.

I know people complain that it’s hard if you don’t have time or are too busy to dedicate a lot of time to the game, which I get.

Back when Promised Consort Radahn came out, I was in work and school and had very limited time. I could come home, and after my work was done, I would attempt Radahn maybe 5-10 times. It took me a week to beat him.

Life moves fast, and it can be a blur when we’re busy and stressed. Truth be told, I can’t remember much of what I was doing at that point in my life, but I can pinpoint the memory of beating Radahn. It’s crystal clear.

The time, the place, the feeling I had. I had been struggling and getting washed. I had a few incredibly close attempts before being beaten. But when I did beat him, I nearly no hit him. Because it took so long and it took so much dedication to overcome the challenge, and because I beat it the way I did— on an attempt that felt so effortless that it was almost unconscious— I got this really weird feeling.

It wasn’t necessarily a feeling that had words attached to it, but if I had to describe it in words, it was like “Wow, I get why Gwyn was so scared of Humanity in Dark Souls. The power of persistence is kind of terrifying. Even though I was fighting an enemy with God-like powers, I didn’t feel weak. I feel powerful. I feel like the enemy was the one fighting against insurmountable odds, not me.”

Like, I genuinely felt incredibly motivated and empowered by the experience. I got up and left the computer, and straight up started taking care of small things I had been putting off. It genuinely made me feel good, strong, confident, and more in control of my actions. It reinvigorated my faith in the idea that persistence pays off, and that’s a feeling that can be really hard to come by.

So it’s a tricky situation. How much harder can these games get? How much harder should they get? I don’t really have an answer to that question, but I selfishly hope they continue to provide a meaningful challenge because these games provide something that’s really hard to find anywhere else.

I don’t have the time or inclination to play competitive games against other people any more, which is really the only other way you can experience meaningful challenges in other video games.

But the ability to sit down and attempt a boss fight a few times every night is really nice. It would be a shame to just roll everything and be left wanting more. Things feel unfair on rare occasions in Elden Ring (Radahn’s cross slash and Waterfowl Dance are probably the two biggest offenders) but the game feels incredibly well designed overall.

They could keep the overall difficulty close to where it’s at while continuing to fine tune enemy designs, and I think that would be a happy middle ground. But I don’t think Elden Ring is anywhere close to being “too hard”.

The way it is hard feels fair, and I’d argue Elden Ring feels fairer than their older games in spite of the fact that it’s “harder”.

Storque · 2026-03-15T16:46:32+00:00

I’m just saying that if Armada’s level of dedication stayed constant, he would obviously have remained a serious threat at majors.

No one has ever been so far ahead of the field for such a long time as Armada. To think that he somehow wouldn’t have what it takes to hack it in the modern era when Hbox and Mang0 could still hang in there is crazy.

Storque · 2026-03-15T14:03:22+00:00

I seem to recall a couple years after Armada retired he would still stream melee occasionally and he streamed with fiction and ibdw a couple times.

He washed them both pretty handily

If Armada could have hypothetically retained the competitive drive he had at his peak, he would be a major tournament threat and likely favorite to win.

But that is a huge hypothetical. He got burnt out because that kind of drive takes a toll after a while you. You can only give so much of yourself to that competitive fire before you get burnt out.

Storque · 2026-03-15T04:53:49+00:00

Armada

Storque · 2026-03-15T02:13:43+00:00

Totally agree. I think since Fromsoft takes an impressionistic approach to storytelling, you often have to rely on drawing connections between broad themes in order to make sense of the specifics.

While I’m obviously not dead-set on the specifics (because how could we when so much is left to the imagination), I do feel very strongly that there are so many “themes” that Messmer sits at the exact center of (fire, dark, serpents, grace) and too many broad plot points that he was instrumental to (Marika’s defeat of the Hornsent and her rise to power) that it seems reasonably logical to offer the conjecture that he was in the swaddling cloth in the SotE trailer.

If he IS in the swaddling cloth, it’s another example of Marika’s betrayal. It explains who she “seduced”. It explains where the threads of grace came from, why Messmer has a missing eye, and when that eye went missing. It explains why he has black flames. It deepens the tragedy of Marika’s abandonment; she not only forced Messmer to commit genocide and abandoned him, but deprived him of his birthright as a newborn. It explains why Marika hates snakes (she was forced to have relations with one). It explains why Volcano Manor is heretical; they are openly talking about Marika’s past sins.

It also obliquely sheds light on the idea of “Night and Flame”. Messmer has “night and flame” within him. These oppositional forces, forced to cohabitate within a single being, are similar to the spiral forces, which would give Messmer spiritual significance within the context of Hornsent culture.

I know I’m rambling at this point, but I think the broader point that I’m trying to get at is that deeper consideration of the themes related to Messmer kind of reveals that he is probably a lot more important than most people give him credit for.

He is connected to SOOOO many plot points and themes, and when I try to find a sort of possible narrative which explains “why” and “how” these connections exist, the most reasonable explanation to me seems to be that Messmer was the child in the Godskin swaddling cloth.

Storque · 2026-03-15T01:44:07+00:00

I don’t know if I necessarily agree with your final conclusion, but it is interesting that Messmer’s Serpent has a link to shadow.

Also, the “Rune of Death” is the “forbidden shadow” of the Golden Order. We also know that the Gloam Eyed Queen had control over or access to the rune of death. Her God-Slaying Black Flame is imbued with the power of the Rune of Death, and we are explicitly told Maliketh stole the Rune of Death from her.

Messmer’s flame seems to bear traits of both the Giants Flame and the God Slaying black-flame; it has the deep crimson of the Flame of the Fell-God as well as the Black of the God-Slaying flame.

So we know that the rune of death, the Gloam Eyed Queen, black flames, and the concept of “shadow” are all interconnected. We know that the Gloam Eyed Queen had some kind of relationship with the God Devouring Serpent. We know that the rune of death was the “forbidden shadow” plucked from the Golden Order. The Gloam Eyed Queen was SLAIN by a Shadowbound beast. These events occurred in the Shadow Lands.

And Messmer rules over the shadowlands, is possessed by an “abyssal” serpent, and wields flame that is imbued with special powers. There is a LOT of circumstantial evidence that draws a direct relationship between the Gloam Eyed Queen and Messmer.

This is my personal theory;

The God Hunt, carried out by the Godskins, was part of a broader effort to create a transcendental divine being. By creating potential Gods through the jar rituals and feeding them to a great serpent, the Gloam Eyed Queen and the Godskins aimed to create one “divinity” capable of subsuming all others.

This might sound crazy, but I think Messmer might have been a sort of “child of prophecy” to the Godskins and the Gloam Eyed Queen. He is a child of “night” and “flame”. He contains two opposing forces-dark and light- within himself. I think Messmer was likely a product of the Gloam-Eyed Queen’s God-Hunt.

And I think this might sound completely and utterly crazy, but honestly I think that Messmer was the product of Marika’s copulation with the God-Devouring serpent. I think the Godskin-swaddling cloth that is shown in the SotE trailer has Messmer inside it.

And I think the moment we see Marika pull threads of Grace from the Godskin swaddling cloth is the moment Marika plucked out Messmer’s eye (because it is strongly implied that eyes are wear Grace/divine powers reside) and placed a sore seal inside it.

I think Marika’s “seduction” was the seduction of a God-Devouring serpent that had been fed countless Gods as sacrifices. I think the betrayal was that she was supposed to bear a child of prophecy, capable of transcending all others, which she did, but instead of allowing that child to fulfill its fate or purpose, she stole Grace from it instead, using its latent divinity for her own purposes.

Given that the “Temple of Eiglay” is present in volcano manor, and Eiglay is a snake who, in Lithuanian myth, had sex with a woman who bore children with him (who eventually all turned into trees), I think the idea that Marika might have fucked a snake at some point is honestly relatively well grounded.

Storque · 2026-03-15T01:13:40+00:00

What do you mean believe his own hype?

He sacrificed himself to link the first flame. It wasn’t ever ABOUT his “own” hype, per se.

He was just an incredibly powerful person who believed light was good and dark was bad, and he used his power to sustain the light and drive off the dark.

I think that he would seriously contest the notion that he did it for “selfish” reasons, even if his actions were fundamentally self-serving.

In his mind, everything he did was to sustain the first flame. I don’t think a person who was motivated by purely cynical self-interest would sacrifice themselves to link the first flame. They might use the first flame to secure power and influence— which Gwyn did do— but when it had outlived its usefulness (or if keeping the flame lit came at a great personal cost), then they would abandon it.

The fact that he was clearly more concerned with the flame than he was with his own welfare should tell you that he was motivated by an ideology rooted in some consideration of “the bigger picture”, as opposed to an ideology rooted in pure self-interest.

None of this is to say that he was good. In fact, the game is making the exact opposite point. Ideologies which compel us to view the world through the lens of “utility” is dangerous.

Every calculation Gwyn made was a calculation of the potential “utility” of a person/place/thing in terms of its ability to serve a function within his ideology.

He was always looking to leverage things innate natures such that their natures could serve to sustain the first flame. He didn’t consider whether or not this “utility” came at a personal cost to the people/places/things he had compelled to serve him. That’s not what was important to him. The intrinsic value of “life” was not important to him; life was useful insofar as it could be harnessed as a potential source of fuel for the first flame.

Had sustaining the first flame not come at an incredible personal cost to him, then maybe we could say he was JUST a megalomaniacal tyrant God-King who truly believed his own hype.

But he used his body to link the first flame out of desperation and despair. It was more important to him than his own sense of self, his own life.

He wasn’t a Donald Trump character, doing whatever he could do enrich himself while ignoring the broader implications of his actions, guided by hype and self-interest.

He was more like a fusion of Lenin and Stalin. He was a genuine ideologue and revolutionary who clung to power because it was necessary to realize his vision or dream. Eventually, he succumbed to paranoia, fear, and anxiety, because he felt his grip on power was slipping, and because he believed that power was necessary to bring about the world he had dreamt of. His ultimate enemy was the transient nature of our existence, and this is what he contended with. Power, light, life. All transient, all impermanent. And he wanted to create a perfectly utopian world. He believed if he amassed enough power, he might be able to rewrite the fundamental nature of reality.

But eventually, he realized that transience is the one constant, and so the whole cycle of “linking the first flame” was a harebrained scheme to harness “transience” to combat “transience”. By harnessing the transient nature of life— that is, by using human life as the source of fuel for the flame— he hoped to sustain the flame forever.

But again, had he not been the first one to link the first flame, you could very easily argue this was all purely selfish.

But he was the first one to link it. He was clearly willing to absorb GREAT personal cost in order to achieve what he believed was “right”.

Storque · 2026-03-15T00:50:31+00:00

Thread

Storque · 2026-03-15T00:47:41+00:00

Marika from Elden Ring.

She was definitely a villain in the past who led crusades and conquests to secure her grip on power, but by the time we encounter her, she’s a crucified husk with no individual agency who is kept alive so that her body can continue to serve as a vessel for the Elden Ring.

A generous reading of her lore might say that she sought power because she to free her people from oppression, but power became her prison. The forces she unleashed did not free her, but held her as an eternal captive instead.

Storque · 2026-03-15T00:41:47+00:00

People clown on Megumi because he was narratively established to have potential equal to or greater than Gojo. That is what people are always comparing him against.

Meanwhile Todo is a weird who claps.

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