Literature-and-screaming-blog - Gender Is Dead I Eated It

Vent piece because I'm having a rough time getting top surgery.

OMG?!???!!

dam…….. that website “you feel like shit” (it’s like a questionnaire / troubleshooting guide for when you feel like shit) really works………………….. im not even all the way thru it and i even half-assed a lot of the suggestions and i already feel loads better

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.

I'm sorry but it was too good to disable RBs for so I'll take this hit personally

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

Time for

Revelations with Res

(Regarding: Godfrey, Marika, and the Hornsent)

The Secret Rite Scroll says: "A lord will usher in a god's return,

and the lord's soul will require a vessel."

Based on Miquella's interpretation via the stuff with Radahn and Mohg, it means that the Lord and another must be sacrificed, and then the Lord's soul needs the body of the other one sacrificed to return, with the God in tow.

At first I thought that this being a "Secret Rite Scroll" means that Marika didn't have anything to do with it, that it's some Secret Third Way to use the divine gateway to ascend. But no, now I think Marika did use it.

On Godfrey.

And she sacrificed a random, nameless Hornsent to put his soul into.

Now, my first thought was "why would someone who played such an important part have no name or mention", but then I remember... Mohg is basically a "random nameless nobody". Gideon doesn't know his name, or even that he's an Omen, just that there's a shardbearer calling himself the "Lord of Blood." When Morgott is naming demigods at the thrones in Leyndell, he says nothing about Mohg at all. It seems everyone knows more about Ranni, and Ranni's entire thing is keeping a low profile. Mohg is basically a ghost, and maybe that works out, because then, presumably "no one" would miss him or notice he's gone.

Furthermore, for Marika's part, why would a sacrifice - and a Hornsent, at that - ever be enshrined in a history Marika controls the narrative of?

This could very well be the "seduction and betrayal" it was talking about in the trailer. She suckered some poor Hornsent into getting close to her. We know not all the Hornsent were down with all the shady shit that was going on in the gaols, etc. After all, the Greater Potentate's Cookbooks talk about it, so one of the would-be sacrificial shamans manipulating a Hornsent into becoming a sacrificial goat in turn isn't farfetched. Especially via "seduction" - which also would explain why the Hornsent grandam calls Marika a "strumpet" (an old timey word for "slut" for anyone who didn't look it up). The fact she's so focused on Marika's sexual proclivities, instead of Marika's bloodthirsty genocide-war is kind of telling, in that regard. Almost like what Marika slept with... might have been a Hornsent. It might have even been one of the Sculpted Keepers, considering Godfrey's later affinity with lions, or that could just be a happy coincidence with Serosh just happening to be a storm lion.

Note: She could just be a cantankerous old woman and calling Marika a slut a gendered insult, because old lady and inter-women aggression, but I still feel like there are better insults to call the bloodthirsty despot that's murdering and oppressing your people than a "slut". The line from the trailer could be metaphorical, still (Marika was "seduced" by the power the Greater Will offered her.) But this feels direct and personal, like the Hornsent Grandam was privy to some kind of information.

Anyway, she killed the hornsent, and Godfrey, and returned as a God.

And because Godfrey's body is now a Hornsent...

It explains why he has the Crucible Knights. It explains why his children with Marika ended up developing aspects of the Crucible. (I don't think Godwyn is an exception, actually, considering his piscine appearance. His traits either were suppressed or manifested after death. The DLC is clear that horns, wings, and tails are NOT the only Crucible aspects that people can develop; there's frog tongues, and flower blooms, and whatever Devonia's weird taur-form thing was. Fish scales and gills and weird clam-faces are not out of the question.)

It explains way too much about what happened with that first generation of demigods.

Yes, Godfrey doesn't have external horns, but I think I can explain that, too:

Not all the Hornsent develop huge horns. In fact, given the Tanglehorn Bairn description, it sounds like a lot that would just die in infancy. Most of the little Hornsent commoner dudes you see just have a few small horns poking out of their heads. Mohg definitely developed a grandiose "tanglehorn" sort of look, but when Radahn took over his body, all that remained were a few poking up around his arms and legs. Would make sense that a "lesser" hornsent's horns would disappear entirely. But that doesn't mean the effect is gone, something that people with no concept of "DNA" or "alleles" could know about.

Speaking of which: The Hornsent think tanglehorns "invoke divinity" which makes me think the choice of Mohg as the sacrifice was deliberate - He is very, VERY evocative of "tanglehorns". Therefore, according to Hornsent culture, he'd probably be a very spiritually powerful Hornsent. And there seems to be some truth to their claims.

The most powerful Hornsent to be sacrificed, to host the soul of the most powerful demigod as a Lord, to usher in the most powerful Empyrean as the - presumably - most powerful God.

I don't think any of that was an accident.

- - -

Side note: I know this doesn't help the Miquella accusations, but Radahn coming back with visible horns might have actually been part of the plan. I do think Miquella intended to uphold the promise he made with his Hornsent follower, and an Elden Lord with visible Crucible traits could have been seen as part of that - he was honoring their idea of divinity in the form of a "tanglehorn".

Furthermore, by using a horn-encrusted Radahn to fight Messmer's Inquisition, it might look like some kind of repentance for Marika's aggressions. A son of Marika fighting another son of Marika with a horned Lord could elicit a positive response from the Hornsent... and Radahn would get the "endless war" he wants against Messmer. There's not actually a reason to mentally manipulate the inquisition, since they were all there voluntarily; they're not the ones suffering, and they weren't fooled into being there.

thsi is literally fucking killing me