Mohg Supporters Just Keep Winning
Jul. 23rd, 2024 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingJust to be clear, Mohg Lord of Blood is not a good person. He's not a well-developed character by any stretch of the imagination, and the conceit behind his design is "What if we took the concept of 'random PvP murder' and made it into an optional endgame boss." It's more complicated than that, but not by much.
Still, I find discourse around the relationship between Mohg and Miquella to be tedious. Whether it's "problematic" or "child abuse" for someone who is 1,000 years old to be in a relationship with someone who is only 750 years old is not a real question. "But Miquella has the body of a child," you might say. To which I would respond that Miquella is a withered, nine-foot-tall corpse inside a giant magical cocoon.
To me, the demigods of Elden Ring don't read as human characters, and I think it's frustrating to interpret them as such. Although some of the demigods cling to remnants of their former humanity, any attempt to tease out their personalities and motivations is always going to be in the realm of fanfiction.
Instead, I find it much more satisfying to read the demigods as expressions of metaphysical concepts. Miquella, for example, seems to be an expression of the hopeful optimism of youth. He represents the idea that maybe, if you're smart and talented enough, and if you work hard enough, you can fix a broken system. Miquella is a personification of the idea that, if people could only be good and kind, then there would be no conflict in the world. For the sake of argument, let's call this mindset "innocence."
So, if Miquella is dead and gone, and Mohg is keeping his corpse "alive" by watering it with the blood of unwilling sacrifices, what does that mean? There are multiple ways to interpret this, but I see Mohg's delusional attachment to Miquella as an illustration of the concept of someone who clings to "kindness" and "love" and "purity" even as they actively hurt other people. To zoom out a bit, is this relatable? Are there circumstances in which it's justified? Why would someone like Mohg, who has been the victim of horrible prejudice for most of his life, be particularly susceptible to this type of toxic thinking?
To me, those are much more interesting questions than "Is Mohg a pedophile." You can't go to the FromSoft store and expect them to sell you Disney.
Still, I find discourse around the relationship between Mohg and Miquella to be tedious. Whether it's "problematic" or "child abuse" for someone who is 1,000 years old to be in a relationship with someone who is only 750 years old is not a real question. "But Miquella has the body of a child," you might say. To which I would respond that Miquella is a withered, nine-foot-tall corpse inside a giant magical cocoon.
To me, the demigods of Elden Ring don't read as human characters, and I think it's frustrating to interpret them as such. Although some of the demigods cling to remnants of their former humanity, any attempt to tease out their personalities and motivations is always going to be in the realm of fanfiction.
Instead, I find it much more satisfying to read the demigods as expressions of metaphysical concepts. Miquella, for example, seems to be an expression of the hopeful optimism of youth. He represents the idea that maybe, if you're smart and talented enough, and if you work hard enough, you can fix a broken system. Miquella is a personification of the idea that, if people could only be good and kind, then there would be no conflict in the world. For the sake of argument, let's call this mindset "innocence."
So, if Miquella is dead and gone, and Mohg is keeping his corpse "alive" by watering it with the blood of unwilling sacrifices, what does that mean? There are multiple ways to interpret this, but I see Mohg's delusional attachment to Miquella as an illustration of the concept of someone who clings to "kindness" and "love" and "purity" even as they actively hurt other people. To zoom out a bit, is this relatable? Are there circumstances in which it's justified? Why would someone like Mohg, who has been the victim of horrible prejudice for most of his life, be particularly susceptible to this type of toxic thinking?
To me, those are much more interesting questions than "Is Mohg a pedophile." You can't go to the FromSoft store and expect them to sell you Disney.
