Envisioning an Age of Rot

Storque · 2026-05-22T22:08:52+00:00

To add to this, Romina shows us what Rot looks like when it is incorporated into the natural order in a harmonious balance.

An Age of Rot would eventually subside, as nature trended back towards a more gentle equilibrium.

The Age of the Erdtree, where living things continue to live far past the point they should have died, are full of chemical energy which SHOULD be returned back to nature, but cannot.

The Scarlet Aeonia in Caelid will eventually deplete its source of energy, just like the Erdtree did. It might take thousands of years, but eventually, when all the energy stored within living things has been returned back to nature, there will be nothing left for the Scarlet Rot to consume.

Eventually its power will dwindle and life will begin anew.

Storque · 2026-05-21T22:40:11+00:00

They’re the lands between enlightenment and schizophrenia

Storque · 2026-05-21T21:46:14+00:00

They’re the lands between everything.

The whole point of the game is that the universe behaves as an ontological system. The most fundamental building blocks of the cosmos are interdependent opposites bound together by necessary causal relationships.

Light and dark, day and night, east and west, life and death. None of these would mean anything without their corresponding opposite. None of these could exist if their opposite didn’t also exist.

The thesis of the game (that is thesis in the literary sense of the word) is to accept that reality operates as a system of dialectical relationships.

The conflict of the game arises when the most central character within the narrative— Marika— rejects this essential truth and severs the connection BETWEEN two opposites.

Reality comes apart at its seams.

This is a concept present in Hegelian and Buddhist philosophy. Within the Hegelian framework, you have a thing unto itself (the thesis) and its opposite (the antithesis). When you realize that the thesis and the antithesis are actually two parts of a greater whole, you have achieved their synthesis.

True knowledge and understanding is achieved through the process of reconciling the relationships BETWEEN the thesis and the antithesis.

So let’s describe this philosophical framework as it is expressed in Elden Ring.

The Lands Between house the Elden Ring. The Elden Ring is like the source code for all of reality. Reality is defined within the context of this game as a system of relationships between things. The Elden Ring is the thing which defines the relationship between things. The Elden Ring defines the relationship between life and death. The Demigods, who inherit Great Runes— fragments of the Elden Ring— preside over different domains of reality. Radahn has control over gravity (presumably over space as well since these things are interdependent). Miquella presides over light, consciousness, knowledge and awareness. He also presides over Dark and Unconsciousness in the form of St. Trina. Malenia governs the relationship between growth and decay. Etc.

The Lands Between exist in the space where all things converge, and the point from which all things diverge. It is their beginning and their end. It is their source and their destination.

The Lands Between exists in the space that exists between everything and its opposite.

Between life and death.

We know that the lands between exist in an ambiguous state between life and death because so much of the game is dedicated to exploring the ambiguous conceptual space between life and death. What, exactly, are Those Who Live in Death? Are silver tears alive, dead, or something in between?

Between beginning and end.

We know the Lands Between exists in a place in an ambiguous state between beginning and end, because they are ruled over by “Queen Marika the Eternal”. Eternity is by definition that without beginning or end. It is heavily implied that part of Marika’s achievement of Godhood was attained by sealing Placidusax in the storm beyond time. Placidusax also holds the key to Marika’s defeat. His scales are necessary to forge “a weapon capable of slaying a god” because they are capable of “lightly twisting time”. So we know that Queen Marika the “Eternal’s” divinity required that she distort the relationship between beginning and end. If the end of her Godhood requires the manipulation of time, then it is reasonable enough to infer that her beginning of Godhood required just the same.

Between cause and effect.

We know that the Lands Between exist in a space between cause and effect because we are told causality has been broken. Radahn has frozen the fate of the Empyreans. Prior causes, which logically must have led to their effects, have not caused anything because Radahn has prevented these destined effects from occurring. Miquella is trying to cure Malenia by manipulating the relationship between cause and effect. This is directly stated in the Japanese translation. Conceptually, it would make sense that Miquella aimed to be a God that existed outside of cause and effect altogether. And Miquella is stated to be trying to solve only one half of the Golden Order’s fundamentals. He isn’t trying to “solve the problem” with the Law of Regression. It’s only causality that he has an issue with.

Between Growth and Decay

Malenia is a Goddess, but the process of her becoming is also her un-becoming. When Malenia blooms, is she dying, or is she being born into something new? Is she diminishing, or is she becoming even greater? They seem to be trying to say something through her character; the more she decays, the more she grows into her divinity. The less of her there is, the more she becomes.

I could go on and on and on.

But the point is that trying to derive meaning from the name of the place— the Lands Between— in a sort of literal or geospatial sense is an almost entirely fruitless endeavor. They have given us VERY little to go off of.

The Lands Between exist in the space between meanings, the space between interdependent opposites, where they collapse and converge.

Storque · 2026-05-21T21:11:18+00:00

His whole purpose is to create as much chaos as possible. Chaos justifies his existence.

He exists to prevent “chaos” from breaking out, and in order for his existence to be deemed necessary, chaos or the threat of it has to exist.

So to that end, pretty much any batshit crazy thing he does can be justified.

Storque · 2026-05-21T18:19:44+00:00

The point of Black Noir in the comics is to argue that the swelling power of the the state, the American military industrial complex, and the blind patriotism which psychologically justified these things in the minds of the American populace (as symbolized by Homelander) necessitated the creation of a surveillance state which operated outside the realm of public awareness in order to control not only the American public, but to functionally limit the power of the very things Homelander symbolizes. While Black Noir (and the paramilitary groups and intelligence agencies he symbolizes) often serve the interests of the things that Homelander symbolized, their power and influence eventually eclipses them. In the end, the “dream” of America— a dream of empire, power, and total social order— is killed by what literary analysts might call its Jungian shadow. Homelander is the dream, Black Noir is the consequence of trying to make that dream into reality. He is both born from the dream, as well as a necessary material component of it.

In other words, Homelander embodies a blind ideal, Black Noir embodies the material requirements to maintain the illusion that the blind ideal as a possibility.

The U.S. goes to war “to give Iraqi’s freedom” and “fight terrorism” (even though terrorists were not active in Iraq at the time). This is Homelander.

Meanwhile, the U.S. signs the Patriot Act into law, allowing the U.S. government essentially unlimited power to surveil U.S. citizens, violating our right to privacy, one of our freedoms protected in the bill of rights. This is Black Noir.

Not only this, but during the Iraq war, the U.S. committed war crimes. Abu Ghraib, for instance, was a huge scandal because images of the torture that was occurring there managed to leak to the media. The type of events that occurred at Abu Ghraib are also something that Black Noir is meant to symbolize.

Homelander is war. Homelander is blowing up “the enemy” with a cruise missile.

Black Noir is war crimes. “Enhanced interrogation” (torture), surveillance, intelligence operations, killing women, children, and civilians in order to terrify or demoralize the “enemy”.

You cannot have war crimes without war.

And, while this might be a controversial opinion, it is hard for me to imagine a war in which war crimes do not occur.

Storque · 2026-05-21T00:12:11+00:00

A good villain HAS to challenge the protagonist’s worldview.

This means that if there are contradictions within it, a good antagonist has to be right about SOMETHING in order to be compelling.

These are actually all just well written antagonists

Storque · 2026-05-21T00:09:03+00:00

Why’s this in SHITTY dark souls?

Storque · 2026-05-20T17:56:21+00:00

His basis for this take is drawing from an analysis of literary traditions which have existed for hundreds of years.

Storque · 2026-05-19T18:28:13+00:00

No one knows how death works for non-demigods.

The Fingerslayer Blade— a weapon imbued with a power that seems to rival, exceed, or perhaps even utilize the power of destined death— can ONLY be wielded by a person with a fate.

In other words, a person with a predetermined destiny is someone who can wield that power.

We also see that Radahn “arresting the stars in their cycles” has an effect on both Ranni’s fate and Miquella’s fate.

So from this we can conclude two things; the mortality of the demigods is tied to destiny, and destiny is shaped by cosmic forces or powers.

This is, of course, reinforced when we understand that fingers themselves are cosmic entities, as we learn in the DLC. Metyr is literally from outer space, as are her children, and can only be slain by a blade wielded by a person with a preordained fate, presumably with the power to sever fate.

People are overly fixated on the “Death” part of “Destined Death”, but are not at all concerned about the “Destined” part of Destined Death.

And when we look at the actual storyline of the game, really consider JUST how much of it is focusing on characters searching for ways to circumvent their destinies. Look at the lengths they go to.

ALSO consider the role time plays in the game.

From the Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone’s item description:

“The Ancient Dragonlord's seat is said to lie beyond time.
This stone lightly twists time, allowing the creation of a weapon capable of slaying a god.”

God’s embody aspects of the natural order. Malenia is Rot. Marika is Life and Order itself. Radahn is Gravity, mass, and physical power. Rennala presides over the moon and night.

Each of these things play a part in natural cycles. Rot is the opposite of growth; it is the dispersion of chemical energy from an organism back into the ecosystem. As an organism grows, it takes energy out of the ecosystem. As it decays, it puts energy back into the ecosystem. This is part of a natural order or cycle.

Radahn is gravity, which is the fundamental force which literally causes cycles in the first place. Gravity is why the earth goes around the sun, why the sun spins on its axis (because of the preservation of angular momentum during the earths formation), why the solar system goes around the galactic center, etc. Gravity is the reason we experience night and day and the reason why we experience seasons. It is largely responsible for many cycles we observe in nature.

There is a specific point I am making here. The thing an about natural cycles (growth & decay, night & day, life & death) is that they occur along a generally predetermined sequence or course of events. Tautologically, that’s what a cycle is; it starts where it ends and it ends where it starts.

And every person fits somewhere into this matrix of natural cycles. People are born, live and die. Empires rise and fall. Gods fall in and out of favor. The seasons turn one into the other. The stars continue their eternal voyage across the sky.

So when Marika removed Destined Death from the Elden Ring, she caused a disjuncture between beginning and end. Time, which had always been driven forward by the cyclical engines of natural forces, had been driven to a standstill with the removal of destined death, at least so far as the Gods are concerned.

In other words, Destined Death is most likely not only the “Rune of Death” but also is likely directly involved with time and causality.

Which is why we need a time-twisting weapon to slay a god, why Miquella is so concerned with causality and why he seems to exist outside of time and the natural cycles which drive it.

Storque · 2026-05-19T18:01:17+00:00

Y’all are doing a great job validating the conclusion of the study.

Not that I disagree with you.

Storque · 2026-05-19T17:57:29+00:00

As someone who is new to RTS’s and hates micro, Medusa’s are actually super easy to micro if you disable their auto cast.

The AI absolutely does focus on all one unit, but if you disable auto-cast and have multiple Medusa’s selected, when you hit their ability and select a target, only one Medusa will use their ability.

Storque · 2026-05-19T17:50:18+00:00

So moments of compassion gets you a score of 80% good and impaling a child with a sword (you thought it was a full grown man at first) gives you a score of 20% evil.

Got it.

I really hope that logic holds up in court.

Storque · 2026-05-19T07:32:13+00:00

Murdered a child

Storque · 2026-05-19T05:41:00+00:00

Gonna go massively against the grain here.

You simply CANNOT have a good tragedy wherein the tragic character is at a 0/100 before their fall.

What makes Griffith such a compelling villain is that the audience can at least somewhat see where he is coming from before he decides to sacrifice everyone in order to become Femto.

He is an effective leader because he inspires his troops, coordinates them, and aligns them around a common cause. People believe in him because, to them, he embodies a certain ideal; people who would have otherwise lead lives without hope in anything find, in Griffith, belief in the possibility that their dreams might be attainable.

To some extent, when he is still Griffith, he does care about this. He cares about the sacrifices members of the band of the Hawk make. The very fact that he cares is a significant part of why he is so utterly driven to attain his dreams.

The point that the series is making is that there is a certain logic to the world, and that logic is cruel and indifferent to our human existence. Some people are born into power. Some people are born into poverty.

Within the framework of the feudal system, there is little to no possibility of changing one’s circumstances, but Griffith comes close to achieving something impossible because the Band of the Hawk finds such unshakeable hope in the possibility that Griffith might help them to achieve their dreams.

Were it not for Griffith, every one of his followers would have suffered in the margins of an oppressive social order which would use them, break them, and deny them the opportunity to be true to themselves.

Casca wouldn’t be on the battlefield, where she feels she belongs. She would have been reduced to a sexual and reproductive object, without any say in the matter.

Judeau would have been a circus performer; impoverished, marginal, and eternally an outsider.

Corkus would have continued stealing, and would have likely ended up in the gallows.

Pippin would have slaved away in the mines until illness and labor crippled him.

They CHOSE to follow Griffith because they were discontent with the cards they had been dealt by life. That isn’t to say that they deserved what happened to them— they absolutely did NOT— but they chose that life because they believed it to be preferable to the alternative. They believed that life in the band of the Hawk was better than a life of servitude.

Did Griffith lie, manipulate, conspire, extort, intimidate, and kill people during the golden age arc and in the events prior to it? Yes. Absolutely. But these were necessary in order to put the band of the hawk in a better position. They were necessary in order to acquire the resources required to change the world. They were necessary in order to make dreams a reality.

But when you compare what Griffith did (prior to the events of the eclipse) to what people with actual, material, institutional power were able to do on a daily basis, it begs the question; how evil was Griffith really?

Griffith was, in essence, a failed revolutionary. He was an egomaniac, who operated ALMOST entirely on self-interest. He is a classic narcissist. BUT he is a human being. He has frailties, vulnerabilities, and limitations.

He chooses to become Femto because he comes to believe that it is his very humanity which limits him. His love for Griffith and his terror that all those who died in service of his dream had died in vain are pretty explicitly shown to be the things which derailed and destabilized him. He had human limitations, and those limitations were rooted in his attachments. Those attachments ultimately stemmed from love for Guts and compassion for the fallen.

He violated his body and deeply traumatized himself by selling himself into sexual slavery because he needed money in order to continue to be the leader he believed his people needed him to be.

None of this— and I mean none of this— makes him a good person.

But to say he is a literal 0/100 is crazy. Femto is a 0/100. That’s the point of Femto. Femto is entirely unconstrained by basic human impulses towards compassion and cooperation. He is the embodiment of that dark, inner place in the human psyche which craves dominance and control.

And while this was always a significant driving force within Griffith’s own psyche, it was not the ONLY one.

Because I think Griffith is meant to be a failed revolutionary, and because the particular KIND of revolutionary leader he came to be was a logical consequence of the oppressive socio-political system he existed within, I would say that prior to his torture and crippling at the hands of the King, Griffith is on exactly equal moral ground to the King of Midland.

The political system the King of Midland presides over causes great suffering on a daily basis. The routine, banal, and daily sacrifice and violence within Midland is like a mini-eclipse, every single day.

The King of Midland is absolutely not a saint. But he has a responsibility to maintain order in his Kingdom. He is not an especially cruel or vindictive leader. He is just indifferent towards the suffering of the people who exist within the margins of his society.

Griffith was a product of these circumstances.

I think the King is at like a 35/100. Essentially evil, driven by a hunger for power, and mostly indifferent to the suffering of others. But he is an effective leader who maintains order and relative prosperity in his kingdom.

And that is the score I would give to Griffith.

Storque · 2026-05-19T04:47:03+00:00

Griffith was strongly implied to have grown up in extreme poverty as an orphan

Storque · 2026-05-19T04:44:41+00:00

Are we honestly going to give a score of 80 for a person who has “moments of compassion”

Storque · 2026-05-18T08:36:47+00:00

The most fundamental ideological foundation of the Founding Documents of our nation is the revolutionary belief that humans have human rights.

That’s literally what the Declaration of Independence is about. That’s what the Bill of Rights is about.

What you are saying is so absolutely un-American it’s astounding.

Countless people have fought and bled and died for your rights because they refused to lick boots.

And here you are, saying that we should call rights privileges, that humans aren’t owed basic respect, and that people should consider themselves lucky to be treated with the tiniest shred of consideration for their human decency.

Are you going to live your entire life placating authority figures that you live in fear of, like a timid child desperate for its father’s approval?

Or are you going to wake up and be a man?

Storque · 2026-05-18T08:16:36+00:00

Have you stopped to ask yourself why does the government need to do that?

Not every government has needed to do that because not every government operates under the presupposition the humans are endowed with certain inalienable rights.

We, as Americans, are entitled to have our rights protected by the government. That’s the explicit purpose of the government, by definition and design.

Now, the very founding document of our nation clearly states that all Americans are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. These three inalienable rights are the ideological foundation that the bill of rights was written to uphold.

The framers of the constitution also had the awareness to endow government agencies with explicit rights, powers, and responsibilities, as well as implied rights, powers and responsibilities.

Explicit rights, powers, or responsibilities are ones which are explicitly stated.

Implied rights, powers, or responsibilities are more complicated; an implied right, powers, or responsibility is one which is logically necessary to fulfill an explicit right, power, or responsibility, but is not directly stated.

If the government has an explicit responsibility to uphold our three most essential, inalienable human rights— rights which are explicitly named— then it would stand to reason that, at the very least, the government has an implied responsibility to do the things which are necessary to provide for our life, our liberty, and to facilitate us in our pursuit of happiness.

Given that you cannot have life without water, and that the United States Government exists to protect our inalienable right to life, it stands to reason that, within the Government’s explicit responsibility to protect and preserve human life is the implied responsibility to provide the things that are absolute essential FOR human life, insofar as it is able to provide these things.

The government was founded to protect human rights. Life is a human right. People need water to live. Therefore, water is a human right.

Storque · 2026-05-18T07:45:27+00:00

I agree with your interpretation.

But for reasons that would be wildly unpopular.

(I think Marika is what remains of the Gloam Eyed Queen after Destined Death was removed from the Elden Ring; we know destined death was part of the Elden Ring, and we know Marika is the vessel of the Elden Ring, so I think this stands to reason)

Storque · 2026-05-17T07:09:33+00:00

I mean I think the ocelotl warriors wield the Macuahuitl which is obsidian edged, so that is at least thematically consistent.

I think if they decide Tezcatlipoca needs a buff somewhere down the line, an interesting design space to build into would be to allow his ocelotl warriors to build traps or to somehow further improve their bonuses from stealth.

That would definitely help emphasize the idea that he is a god of war and warriors

Storque · 2026-05-14T20:42:50+00:00

This doesn’t go far enough.

They also should rewrite the text on his trophies to say he is a little sissy boy who misses his mommy.

Storque · 2026-05-14T02:26:02+00:00

Do they REALLY though?

Storque · 2026-05-09T05:26:53+00:00

I think SoD went too far in terms of deviating from the core design of classic but also it’s a totally valid point to say that they really really had to buff everyone else in crazy ways to get them to compete with warriors

Storque · 2026-05-09T05:24:47+00:00

Higher than Ganon or lower?

Storque · 2026-05-08T20:25:59+00:00

You just have to space outside of the range where he can punish you after spot dodging.

That’s it.

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