#‘bellumbeck’s design is a little off/silly’ cool heres how you lean into it. also read berserk. dont read berserk actually

[waywardsalt]

on my knees gripping my head hnngggg i thought abt bellumbeck too hard

tag ramblings are fun and on brand but i have too many disorganized thoughts and tags are limiting.

anyways thinking too hard abt him is an extremely good and fun thing but i cannot draw the way i wish and can't really put my thoughts into fic form so this is very much going to be a fun ramble.

bellumbeck drives me insane we all know this. he showed up in my dream last night as of writing this sentence so he is on my mind, which is surprising bc fictional stuff doesn't usually show up coherently in my dreams but there it was.

it's so incredibly fun to think about bellumbeck. he's such a black sheep of a loz final boss, there really isnt another loz final boss like him in concept or even in 1:1 tone imo. it's so fun to take bellumbeck incredibly darkly seriously.

to be fair bellumbeck is kind of objectively a fairly dark and disturbing final boss on a conceptual level, and it's not really out of nowhere since phantom hourglass has at least a little darkness running through it even if the general tone of the game doesn't really acknowledge or take advantage of it. but if you think about it hard enough even without getting into post-game speculation in regards to what happens with linebeck, bellumbeck is kind of a dark boss and it's great. full on screen demonic possession of a major character with most of the cast incapacitated and link isolated with no escape on the ruins of the ghost ship that started everything and facing a boss that is constantly facing him and both someone he's been with the whole adventure and also the creature that's captured his friends and killed who knows how many people.

it's so oooouuuugghhhh it's so much fun to think about bellumbeck even though it's such a short encounter. it's so... the mystery around bellum, the way linebeck is built up throughout the game and saves link directly before getting possessed, the fucking on-screen vaguely violent possession (i am forever obsessed with the way bellum grabs and tugs on his arms), the way ciela is captured early into the fight, too, the first companion character you meet and, if you had her equipped, it leaves you without a fairy that follows your cursor around for the first time all game, it's very... congrats you and your friends are at rock bottom! good luck getting everyone out of there alive!!!!

of course it's not quite that because this game is geared a bit more towards younger players, but still keeps those streaks of darkness and complexity just simply because they're inevitable parts of this story and it's characters. bellumbeck. i'm talking about bellumbeck. what a soulsborne-ass final boss, huh?

there's only so much a ds game can do in terms of boss animations, but i think a lot about more complicated movements and animations for bellumbeck, so, so much character can be communicated through a boss's animations. in my mind, i enjoy bellumbeck movements with an emphasis on puppet-like flourishes and mannerisms, and an emphasis on weight with how he fights. these two go very well together, and its something i love imagining.

with the latter, an emphasis on weight, would ideally focus on the sword (and im a fan of it being this huge greatsword, reading berserk got me around to liking it because you can do that really well) and how it has to be used one-handed, with bellumbeck leveraging his own weight against it and taking advantage of momentum to use it especially effectively to turn link into a little green and red smear on the wood. attacks blending into each other as he builds up momentum, and using that weight primarily against link, who is a small opponent who relies on rolling around and can’t really stack up at all in terms of brute force.

i imagine this kind of physicality and movement would lend itself very well to bellumbeck also having more puppet-like movements, being a little too tugged-along by his attacks but still retaining his footing, his free arm being just a little too limp a little too often, and his leaning away from his sword side, likely with the intention to properly balance himself out, looks off with how his head lolls unnaturally to that side. the puppetry effect lessens as the fight wears on and bellum gets the hang of the body he’s using, but never actually goes away since he’s not looking to act properly human anyways.

just like... movement flourishes and details that could add a whole lot to the overall experience of bellumbeck that i think about often.