#Bloodborne spoilers

[lumenflowered]

The Art of Quickening

I have discussed the Art of Quickening here before, though not in any particular depth. It was... never a particularly widespread skill in my previous world, but to my knowledge I am the only one left who knows how to use it without specialized equipment, and while I have no intention of dying for a long time, I would rather this skill not die with me when I do.

Furthermore, several individuals have expressed interest in learning what I know, and while it has taken me a very long time to organize my thoughts in a way that makes sense, I do hope that this may be of some interest even if simply reading my words is not enough to learn this on your own.

This is going to be a rather long post, I am afraid, so I will be placing the bulk of this under a cut.

First, a history lesson, as understanding what this power was made for is essential to its effective use. Though I suspect few here at this point are unaware of this, though I currently reside in the Johto region, I am in fact a Faller. Before events that I would rather not explain in depth, I hailed from a city known as Yharnam.

For the duration of my time there, and before it, there was an ongoing plague where individuals who succumbed to it would, eventually, transform into bloodthirsty beasts that were quite intent on killing anything in their path. This most typically happened on particular nights, known in my time as nights of the Hunt, and the original policy, I suppose, was to bar one's doors and pray that nothing would break them down.

This changed when Gehrman, the First Hunter, took up arms for the first time to fight back. He was stubborn and resourceful, and it was during this time—before he began to recruit others to hunt alongside him—that the Art of Quickening first emerged.

I honestly do not know, and am no longer able to ask, if it was Gehrman who developed the Art of Quickening or if he merely discovered it elsewhere. Given his resourcefulness, and his skill with the technique—he was directly involved with every single one of the Workshop's early weapon designs, and at least partially so with later variants—I am inclined to believe the former.

"But what, Maria, is this fabled Art of Quickening?"

No one is asking that yet, of course, but a particular Gengar just peered over my shoulder and gave me a very unimpressed look, so I suppose I should explain that better.

[A video is attached. It shows Maria—a pale woman with tied back silver hair, red eyes, and Victorian-era black garb—adjusting the hat atop her head before narrowing her eyes and vanishing, briefly, into green-hued mist. When she reappears from the mist, she is several steps to the left of where she was previously standing.]

This is the Art of Quickening. It allows one to dodge faster, to move faster. To fight faster.

I have been informed by others from my former home, or other iterations of it, that after my time it is only usable via the bones of, presumably, long dead Hunters. Very few ever mastered the Art of Quickening, even in my time.

...Granted, I suspect part of that was because few Hunters were willing to put in the time and effort to learn a more defensive skill when they could use that same time to learn more offensive ones. It was already falling out of common use at the end of my era.

I consider that a skill issue, personally. All the martial prowess in the world will not allow you to prevail if you do not also know when to retreat, and how to keep yourself alive.

Accordingly, at my best, I was able to match the First Hunter in this area. I am no longer at my best, but I can explain how this functions regardless.

Which is to say... magic, of a sort, exists in my former world. Some is dependent on blood. Quickening is dependent on skill, and on having some connection to the arcane arts, whether that is in one's blood to begin with, achieved through careful study and meditation, or through using an external aid such as the bone of a Hunter from my time. It is a Hunter—or another individual—channeling one's perseverance to move faster, to react faster.

...I am rapidly recalling that I am far from eloquent in writing, my apologies. I myself was not taught through writing, but through physical experience and practice.

Should you have any questions—whether you would genuinely like to learn this or are simply curious—please feel free to ask. The night is long, I cannot sleep, and I know not to trust my thoughts after a certain time so I have written this up instead.

[gealachros]

As a person playing Bloodborne for the first time and has arachnophobia

Fuck Nightmare of Mensis

Holy fucking shit the amount of fear I felt seeing the first room

Its not to bad once you realize its super easy to run past but fucking hell I was terrified at first

The sound they make is awful to hear

[solarkindred]

3 am thoughts with solar;

ORV but it’s hit game Bloodborne. Kdj becomes the moon presence and yjh is his pact bonded 👍

Its. Mostly just a joongdok/dokjoong au… but with lore and immense heartbreak. And feelings that neither men are willing to confront really.

Kdj uses an arcane build and yjh uses a dex/strength build. Yjh has been there longer. He’s seen shit. He’s definitely got more insight by the time kdj gets but its not enough to see the amygdalas. Then shit gets real when kdj gets a little too curious…

[lastoneout]

Okay @ the people saying I made the right choice in Bloodborne I forgot to mention that the little girl dies no matter if you tell her or not and you can't save her. The difference is that if you don't tell her about what happened you can instead tell her to try to go to a safe place(though she dies on the way) and if you do tell her about her parents she just cries and you can't talk to her anymore but she still leaves the house and dies.

But I didn't know that I just told her right away bcs I'd want to be told and my fiancé was like "???" and I was like "man idk I don't like it when people lie to me to protect my feelings especially when it's something bad" but I can see the argument for lying to her so she isn't sad when she dies. But still!! I'd want to know!! And I don't like lying!!

But then again the game also expects you to break this red broach her mom is wearing when you find her body bcs it's a type of upgrade material and apparently everyone else does that immediately no problem but I immediately gave the broach back bcs it was her mom's and I don't have the right to take it and fucking break it, and my fiancé was like "just break it?? who cares" and I was like "that's horrible!!!". Plus it's not that good of an upgrade anyway, but in all fairness you don't get more for a little bit and if you give it back you lose access to it forever.

So like idk I don't think I'm the weird one here but maybe I am lmao.

[horsejawbone]

definitely the normalest guy of all time, don't even worry about it.

[chaos-cousins]

Pelipper Mail! A nightmare that could be yours.

You’re almost used to it by now. To waking up, every time you think you might have escaped the time loop, in an entirely different world where you and your cousins have to help save it.

This one’s… it could be better, in a lot of ways. There’s never been so much blood before, something that you’ve had several separate panic attacks over already, something that your new friend Hunter is a lot more patient with you for than most others. You’ve never had to fight things that used to be people before, never had to use a real gun with real bullets outside of the Metaverse before.

At least the Hunter’s Dream, an odd space between reality and not, is safe enough. At least your cousins are safe there, with a strange yet kind living doll bearing an uncanny resemblance to Maria. You could be safe there too; Hunter’s made his stance clear that he doesn’t think you should be out here with him.

But you can’t let your friend face the horrors alone, no matter how much you wish you could. You care too much for that. You’ve always cared too much for that.

So you repress and repress and repress, shoving the panic attacks aside as much as you can, and you learn how to use a real gun. At least the cane-sword-whip thing is cool, if you don’t think too hard about how it’s tearing through once-human fur and flesh.

You and Hunter make a pretty good team, once you’re mostly done having panic attacks over basically everything about this place. You take down a gigantic horned beast at the end of a bridge, another hunter who went mad and tried to kill you both, a vicar who transformed into a wolf-thing before your very eyes, and you… cope. Sort of. Maybe.

(You return to the Hunter’s Dream more often than you have to, and maybe more often than you should. You tell yourself that it’s to check in on your cousins, to make sure that they’re still doing okay, but really it’s because popping into the Dream removes the blood from your clothes, and there’s so much of it.)

Night falls, and you remember that you haven’t even been here for a full day. The moon rises, a full moon, and as bemused as Hunter is by you promptly flipping it off, he also quite cheerfully joins you in making various obscene gestures in the direction of that particular celestial body when you‘ve got free moments.

It’s around this time that Elena decides she’s had enough of waiting, of losing to cards over and over against the doll that looks weirdly like Maria. She takes to hunting better than you did, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You’d be jealous if you weren’t worried, if you weren’t relieved, because between the three of you, there doesn’t seem to be anything that can stand in your way. The weird snake people in the woods really don’t stand a chance.

And then—

And then there’s a fucking spider, because of course there is. At least you can shoot this one. Which you do, with extreme prejudice. Because, honestly, fuck this thing in particular.

Then the moon turns red. The blood moon rises over Yharnam. Everything you thought you could handle comes surging back with a vengeance, to the point where Elena basically has to drag you back to the Hunter’s Dream and tells you to sit down, she’s got this, it’ll be okay.

With nothing better to do, you too spend some time losing badly to the strange doll at cards.

The only reason you do actually stay there for as long as you do is because thinking of returning to Yharnam with the moon like that makes you want to collapse. At least you know that Elena can’t die, not permanently, not in any way that matters—and you haven’t been calling it ‘death’ because you’ve got a weird enough perspective on death as is, but you very much have died a lot since you got here, and it’s been painful every time—but she’s still your cousin, and you’re terrified for her, and you can see her expression hardening a little more every time she pops back in for a visit.

You force yourself back out there eventually, but you aren’t sure where Elena or Hunter are. The city seems darker, with the reddish glow of the moon illuminating it—and it really doesn’t help that there are these… things, perched atop every building. One of them grabs you when you get too close, crushes you into—not death, death means nothing for you here—nonexistence.

Except you’re definitely somewhere that is neither the city nor the Dream now. It’s… hellish, is what it is. You find someone else sane, eventually, someone who warns you that there are secrets hidden here, secrets that some are willing to kill to keep.

You laugh. Death means little to you now.

You take down a beast who used to be a man, who regains some of his sanity before the end of the fight. You don’t have the heart to tell him what his lofty ideals have become. You don’t have the heart to finish him, either.

(When you circle back later, you find that someone else made both of those choices for you.)

You find a clocktower. At the top of it, you find a face you recognize—but she doesn’t recognize you, and she seems deaf to your pleas.

You can’t kill Maria, either. Maybe it’s for the best that Hunter and Elena catch up to you when they do, because Hunter is willing to do what you cannot.

You end the Nightmare, eventually, returning the three of you to your regularly-scheduled horrors in the city of the present day. Hibiya is starting to look at you and Elena like you’re strangers.

(You can’t let him become as jaded and desensitized as you have. He’s already been through way more than you, and he’s still functional.)

You continue fighting. Continue hunting, for it isn’t as if you have another option. This night has lasted eons, and it’ll last eons more until you find the key to ending it all.

At last, you do. You find it. You kill it.

You return to the Hunter’s Dream. Hibiya is alarmed. The doll, calm as ever, informs you that the master of the Dream is waiting for you. You wonder if she’s capable of feeling anything.

You go to meet him, all four of you, beneath a massive tree. He offers you a choice.

Hunter accepts, choosing to awaken. Choosing to give in.

You can’t give in. Rebellion is etched into your heart, your mind, your body and soul.

“So be it,” the Dream’s master says, and suddenly it’s you and your cousins against him. Suddenly, it’s a fight to the death.

You can’t risk losing here. There won’t be any more second chances.

You discover that you can summon Arsène here. Something about your Persona feels different, but you don’t have time to dwell on what. You’re busy evening the odds.

You win, eventually. The Dream’s master fades into mist, and at least there isn’t blood to highlight the fact that you just killed a man.

The moon is closer than it’s ever been. Larger, too. Hibiya, looking anywhere but at you and Elena, gasps and points at it.

Something is coming. A presence from the moon. Not Nyx; you almost wish it was Nyx, because then it would at least be something you know how to fight.

You can’t move. The presence snatches you up, sizing you up. You get the weird feeling that it wants you to replace the man you killed.

You refuse. Resist. Rebel. Revolt, in any way you can.

The presence from the moon recoils, dropping you onto the ground. Your cousins rush to your side, or try to—only to be pushed back.

This is between you and the thing from the moon, now. You won’t lose. You can’t, not now.

You fight it with everything you’ve got. Your cousins can’t help you here, Hunter can’t help you here—but you can rely on yourself, and yourself alone.

You win. Barely.

As the thing from the moon dies—it’s a god, perhaps, or a Great One as the people of this world call it—you make a mental note to update the deicide tally. When you can. You’re a little more concerned with adding this to your list of reasons to hate the moon, and also not keeling over on the spot, because that took… a lot out of you.

But you won. You did it.

Didn’t you?

Your eyes flutter shut, and you collapse. You can hear the concerned shouts of Elena and Hibiya, now that they’re able to reach you, but it’s too late. You can feel yourself shrinking and changing and growing in ways no human was ever meant to grow, and then you feel nothing at all.

When you come to, you’re not human anymore. You’re small enough that Elena can cradle you in her arms. She’s been crying. Hibiya is still crying.

“There has to be something you can do,” she begs the doll.

“I am sorry,” the doll murmurs, gaze downcast, and she almost sounds like she means it. “I truly wish that there was.”

When you awaken, it’s with the taste of blood in your mouth, and the nagging feeling that you have both too many limbs and not enough.

Whsr the fuck WJSR TJE FUCK EJST TJE FUCK WJST TJE FUCK IN GONNS TJROEN UL WHZ WSS TJST FSMILSR DOMEWJST

(what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK IM GONNA THROW UP WHY WAS THAT FAMILAR SOMEWHAT)

[mushroomwithsomeink]

Heya fellow Bloodborne fans! So I wanted to ask a question regarding Great One!Hunter, it’s been bothering me for a good while now… So I come here to ask you all this!

[mangywayway]

"Good Hunter, you've done well, the night is near its end. Now I will show you mercy. You will die, forget the dream, and awake under the morning sun. You will be freed from this terrible Hunter's Dream."

"Farewell, my keen hunter. Fear the blood."

[fury-brand]

I think ultimately my disappointment with Bloodborne comes from expecting there to be more to it than there was. It's a very thoughtfully designed game, but it's hard to feel that the narrative amounts to more than a puzzle box.

Digging around on the internet hasn't really led me to any analysis that puts the component parts of Bloodborne's story together in a way that feels cohesive, and most aren't even interested in doing that so much as they are assembling the puzzle of what actually happens in the story. If anybody out there has an interesting read/watch, definitely send it my way, but my search has yet to yield anything compelling.

I'm still chewing on it and coming up with my own meaning, but what I find isn't always very satisfying. I think the core of the whole story probably began with something like "pregnancy itself is kind of an eldritch horror," and like yeah, no doubt, that shit's terrifying... But at the same time they don't really do a lot with that. The perspective on pregnancy and childbirth is all very external and I don't feel like the game has anything particularly interesting or insightful to say about motherhood; in fact I think it has a tendency to treat mothers as synonymous with the eldritch and unknowable beasts that can't meaningfully share their perspectives.

It kind of makes me roll my eyes a bit. The ambitions, the diverse perspectives on the situation that create the consequential camps of the games - these all come from men, and academic ones. Pregnancy is such a pivotal concept for this game but myriad perspectives on it are not represented or reflected - the writing is much more comfortable sticking to the eldritch horror side of the metaphor and creating characters with perspectives on that, and it comes off to me as a little cowardly. Lady Maria's role in the story plays into this dynamic. Of the characters whose actions we feel the consequences of, Maria's the only woman, and stands out as being the only one who managed compassion. It's an interesting role but a very gendered one.

As for the other narrative elements, there's a common thread of mania, obsession, frenzy, xenophobia, overindulgence, that will all lead to an inevitably terrible end but there's not really a lot to that either. I guess you could say it's an inversion of the usual cosmic horror tropes - the madness isn't the horrific outcome, rather it's the inception of the horror - but like. They're not saying an awful lot with that, in the same way it doesn't feel like they're saying a lot with the rest of it.

I think I had this impression for a while and I kept looking for something which would supercede it but it kind of just is what it is and I'll have to accept it.

[troythecatfish]

[lumenflowered]

I have... thought on the matter further. I myself may have been little more than a weapon to be pointed at the enemies of others in the past.

But that has changed.

I have changed.

I am not who I was before. That much is certain. The past is... not gone, nor would I wish for it to be.

Without it, I would likely still be complicit in... any number of terrible things. What went wrong at that fishing hamlet was far from the first incident I would come to regret. It was... simply the burden that broke the beast's back, so to speak.

I would undo it all if I could. But it may be for the best that I cannot. That I know, firsthand, what must never be repeated.

There were two reasons that I became a Hunter. The first was rather simple, and far from noble: I had nowhere else to go, was desperate for some sort of purpose, and knew that I could hold my own in a fight.

The second came later. Though not much later.

I... desired to protect people. Those who could not, or would not, protect themselves. I lost sight of that, before the end, and it took something so drastic as... as Kos, for me to remember too late.

Too little, too late.

I'm honestly not sure if it is better to know that my presence here, that my being alive at all, was nothing but a cosmic accident. I suppose it is a reassurance, however slight, to know that I was not... meant to be here at all.

Yet I am.

I know better now. Far better than I did before.

I will not be complicit in a terrible thing like that ever again.

Nor will I stand by and allow others to do the same. Not while I possess the skillset to prevent history from repeating itself.

...When it comes to battle with Pokémon, I find myself reasonably confident. But when it comes to combat without... my skills, I suspect, are much atrophied without having practiced them lately.

It might be easier to select a different weapon to train in. But I know how to wield my own, and 'easier' does not necessarily mean 'better.'

In this particular case, I suspect it to be the opposite. I thought that casting my blade—the original Rakuyo—aside would allow me to move on. It did not.

That was the wrong decision.

...Last night, I was scarcely able to take it up, even for a few moments. Before that, I could hardly bear to look at it.

I will take this slowly. As slowly, I suppose, as I can manage without growing impatient. But... it would be nice, I believe, to wield my blade in the service of real, tangible good.

And I...

I did miss it. That blade remained a constant in my life for longer than any single person did. Casting it away was like tearing my own heart from my chest, yet I scarcely felt it then. I feel that loss all the more keenly now.

...I will take this slowly. Very slowly.

But perhaps, in the future... once I have at least regained some semblance of my former skill... well.

It would be nice to spar with someone.

[unfortunately-a-fangirl]

you may eat random things on the ground you find in the hunter's dream, but watch out!

[bobbyzombiegg]

It's so fucking weird to see the sun in the Yharnam Sunrise ending. Someone should make a mod that makes the entire game in daylight. Like, not the evening phase, but actual daylight with a blue sky. I wonder how'd that look. I'd love to see other areas of Yharnam in the daylight.

[horsejawbone]

[moon-swag-tourney]

Propaganda below!

Ben Drowned

Vote for your cringe Slendermansion past. You know you quoted the creepypasta on Cleverbot as a kid in the hopes of him responding.

Moon Presence

They are the worst in the best possible way. They are the one sending you out and slaughtering everything in your path, just so it can turn you into its puppet. They are probably responsible for most of the problems in the city. We have no clue what their actual motives are, and I am obsessed with it, as it wants me to be.

An eldritch horror with unknown motives that may or may not be benevolent towards humans. It literally descends from the moon at the end of the game and may have something to do with the fact that the moon ends up blood red at some point in the game. In any case, it is strongly associated with the moon, as it’s name indicates.

[h-worksrambles]

As much as I enjoy the ‘kill god with the power of friendship’ trope in JRPGs because of how it can stand for overturning corrupt systems through the best of human nature…

There’s something morbidly refreshing about how the best ending in Bloodborne is to go: “Um…I just played through a 30 hour guided tour of the sheer depths of humanity’s cruelty and depravity…fuck this shit, I’m out’ and so you become god and surpass that same human nature.

This is probably gonna make me sound like an edgelord, but you gotta admit, it stands out.