#dark souls spoilers

[batterychugger]

Filianore.

Study of concept art for Dark Souls 3.

[houseboywife]

So what's up with the people in dark Souls Souls 3 turning into trees?

In Dark Souls 3, all around the world, you can find people being transformed into trees. I find this imagery pretty neat for a few reasons: it's completely unique to this game but also it continues the tree motif that the series has. The game also has mysterious pilgrims that long to transform into giant tree-like butterflies. This is never directly explained.

Trees in the dark souls series are the pillars of the world: literally. Before the age of fire the world was composed of nothing but crags, dragons and giant archtrees: after the Lord Souls appeared and were claimed, seemingly a new world (or rather, worlds) was made on top of the archtrees, at least from what we can gather by the ash lake's location.

But of course, there couldn't just be trees, rocks and dragons: a kind of life, after all, rose up to claim the Souls for themselves.

To me, this signifies that the beings that became the gods and humanity were in some way connected to the trees: maybe, in some way, they were trees. And in Dark Souls 3, a world way past its natural end, every living creature is being called back to the way they used to be. Pilgrims hear the calling of the end of the world and set out to ascend their bodies that should no longer belong to them, acquiring their primordial form. And even regular undead can do little to stop the forcible reversing of the state of the world to an age that was already supposed to have come. Eventually, everything will go back to trees.

Or then again, maybe not. After all, even the biggest tree can be burned down to ashes.

[dreadfutures]

i just love a chained knight who's become naught but a vessel for the evil they were sworn to contain, chained for eternity until a cursed successor frees them to death

[spinzzy]

guys I might be going insane but I have a headcanon/crackpot theory, hear me out. Dark Souls series spoilers ahead.

So; Seath, Priscilla, Gwyndolin, Yorshka, and Velka.

I believe these characters are all connected, and here's how:

Let's start with Velka. To my knowledge, we know very little about the mysterious goddess of sin. What little information we have comes mostly from Oswald of Carim, Purple Miracles, and the Painted World of Ariamis. For the sake of this theory, the only thing that's really important is Velka's domain: sin. Let's put her off to the side for now though.

Do you know who else has a connection to sin? Gwyndolin. Already an interesting connection, but something even more interesting is that the Crow Demons that you encounter in the painted world have a chance to drop Souvenirs of Reprisal, aka the covenant time tied to the Darkmoon Blades: Gwyndolin's covenant. Speaking of the Darkmoon Blades, the entire point of the covenant is dealing with sinners.

Now, setting Gwyndolin aside for now as well, let's talk about Priscilla. Priscilla is a crossbreed and "bastard." Additionally, the Peculiar Doll states that she's an "abomination." So this tells us a few things. Firstly, she's very likely half dragon, equally likely to be Seath's child. Second, she was born out of wedlock. And finally, she was viewed unfavorably by broader society, thus her place in the painted world. Also of note is the description of the Lifehunt Scythe. The Lifehunt Scythe causes bleed, and uniquely it causes build up in its user as well because "in the hands of a mortal, its power will turn upon its wielder." This tells us that Priscilla was likely not entirely mortal, thus she's half dragon, half god. This is all some pretty well accepted stuff, and we're gonna set it aside for a sec.

Now, Yorshka. Yorshka is interesting, for a few reasons. Mainly because she claims to be Gwyndolin's sister, when its stated in Dark Souls 1 that Gwyndolin is Gwyn's youngest child. Additionally, to my knowledge, Yorshka never claims to Gwyn's child. So, working with this, i believe that she is Gwyndolin's sister— but not Gwyn's daughter. Visually she's eerily similar to Priscilla, so it can be speculated that they're related, somehow.

Now, with all the main pieces all laid out, we get really into the speculation/headcanony bits. Just bear with me here for a sec.

I believe that Velka was Gwyn's wife, as well as the mother of Gwyndolin, Priscilla, and Yorshka. This explains Gwyndolin's covenant items being found in the painted world, as well as Gwyndolin's general connection to sin. Velka being Priscilla's mother also explains her chilling with all the Crow Demons.

Now, the final bullet point: Seath.

The crux of the theory is that Velka, wife of Gwyn, has some sort of affair with Seath, leading to the births of at least Priscilla and Yorshka, and maybe Gwyndolin as well, though I feel like that is a bit less likely.

anyway, thats all, I'm tired, and it is six am.

[go-go-devil]

Leiurus slowly approached the dying flame, yet could not bring herself to ignite it. She had seen what had become of Lord Gwyn, how the very flame he sought to protect had doomed both him and his kin, and realized at once what was to happen should she take his place.

How long would the new Age of Fire last if she were to rekindle it? How long until the undead curse returned to spread the same misery to an unprepared populous as it did for her time? How long until she was slain by the next chosen one as a charred, broken form of what she once was?

No. This was not the end she needed. Not the one humanity needed. The illusion had been broken, and there was no need to cast it once more. She had lived in the darkness for so long, her and every hunted being in that Age of Fire. It was time for the rest of the world to embrace the life one could find in darkness, and correct the errors of the past age.

Leiurus would not die in solitude as a martyr, but be reborn anew. The Rise of Humans and Dragons shall commence.

The Dark Lord hath come.

Also known as

I JUST BEAT DARK SOULS FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cellarspider]

I have a thesis to share on Elden Ring, because I can’t stop thinking about this game. In summary: With an approachable, pantheon-driven mythology hiding the incredibly far-reaching substrata of the setting, Elden Ring has the capacity to become just as psychological as Dark Souls, and provide a different sort of cosmic horror. And through this, gameplay and story echo each other on a profound level. This piece assumes you’ve finished Elden Ring’s story or are familiar with it through other means, and also contains major spoilers for Bloodborne and Dark Souls.

I connected very quickly with Elden Ring's story of the earthly gods, because their role to me felt less like the metaphorical figures that Dark Souls prefers, and more like a mythology based around stories of a pantheon. Big, messy families cobbled together by cultures that traded with, absorbed, or conquered each other, creating something unique and strange and very human in its cosmology.

Dark Souls has a thesis that’s very rooted in Buddhist ideas of how the world cycles through suffering, and focusing your energy on extending the existence of that cycle is against the better interests of all. While deities play a definite role in its implementation, Buddhism places a very strong emphasis on this core thesis. The gods are standing against the philosophical underpinnings of the world, and this dooms them to failure and all suffer further as a result of their hubris, thinking that they can find perfection by existing forever within the world.

While Elden Ring is still definitely flavored by all of this, Elden Ring’s immediately accessible pantheon feels like a blending of Buddhist philosophy overlaid on something more like Shintoism, or Egyptian, Norse, Celtic and Greek mythology. These aren’t pantheons where there’s an explicitly stated grand thesis to their existence, beyond their place as a reflection of the culture that made them. In the context of those pantheons, things like Godfrey's WWE Smackdown fit--A Hercules or Thor or Cú Chulainn or Susanoo would absolutely pull a wacky, prideful, underhanded move like that. Though I'll admit, I still laughed.

Given the fact that most of those pantheons describe a strata of primordial reality completely unlike our own should have clued me in on the fact that something more deeply alien was coming, but it caught me completely off-guard. Every new item description or otherworldly bit of environmental design completely rearranged my sense of what the world was, over and over again.

The fact that I found so many of these things before I reached the points where they'd become evident made it all the more revelatory. The two moments that hit the hardest were finding out that these massive insects in the deep caves were "malformed stars", and falling down the roots of the Erdtree to find an incantation that said the Greater Will sent down a golden beast to become the Elden Ring.

And so it left me asking more questions--Buddhism provides a framework for Dark Souls and how to put the world to rest: the world churns through cycles of inequity, with only the final abandonment of the cycle bringing about peace and enlightenment. But when even the fundamental tenets of reality are defined not by universal truths but by vast beings with their own agendas, it becomes harder to see a compassionate path forward.

In that way, the cosmic horror of it all felt more profound than Bloodborne. I’ll admit, I was spoiled by the demo of Bloodborne we received before its release: In that, the Lesser Amygdalas were visible by default. If I’d gone in thinking it was just a game about werewolves in a jacked up Victoriana goth setting, then maybe I’d feel differently.

The Great Ones in Bloodborne have their own agendas, yes, and great power. But many of them still have limits or small-scale ways they interact with the world. You can beat the Moon Presence to death with a big hammer. Oedon reshapes Yharnam through his fundamental connection to blood ministration, but all we see coming of that is an attempt to create children. They profoundly twist the world in ways inescapable to those that fall under their influence, but I never got the same sense of vastness that the Outer Gods in Elden Ring produced for me, once I realized they were even there.

That's how Elden Ring really got me, and how gameplay and story mirrored each other in my experience. The deliberate accessibility of the game in both story and mechanics eventually culminated in something altogether transformed, and more difficult to wrestle with. That's why it's my favorite out of all the games FromSoft's given us.

[melancholicwriteaholic]

Dark Souls is great. You go through an old man’s entire family tree, taking them down one by one, until you face him as the final boss. Good tragic stuff.

[phanerozoicfossilgardener]

This could either be really good or really bad

[homunculusgirldick]

Dark Souls and Hollow Knight

Ok, this whole thing is mostly for my girl @demigirlie but i got a bunch of thoughts about hollow Knight and Dark Souls. It has spoilers, for both.

So, I was confused about the whole infection thing in hollow knight, because i think i compared it with the undead curse in Dark Souls, and it is a pretty apt comparison.

In both stories, proudful god-kings realize their eternal kingdom and age might end, in dark souls it is clearly a sort of natural ocurrance, and the same is implied in hollow knight, nothing last eternal, the dawn will break for hallownest, and the night will come for the age of fire.

The kings hate this, so they fight it, and they commit a terrible crime, condeming their people, in order to keep their age, their rule, going beyond its due date.

By doing this both kings provoke an “stagnation” an era eternal, but stuck, and crumbling. In both cases, this breaking of the natural cicle causes a terrible thing, it makes things come back from the dead, it makes people into husks, and hollows. 

The difference seems of course, that the infection in hollow knight existed before the king comits his crime, he comits it in part to stop the infection, while in Dark Souls, it is clearl that, it was because the king tried to make his kingdom eternal, that the undead curse happened, it is a clear theme about how trying to opose the natural passage of time, trying to avoid death, avoid lost, avoid things from breaking apart, means only to rot, and stagnate, become a corpse, rather than living or dying. But while hollow knight doesn’t present this theme as explicitly as Dark Souls, i think it is still there, the pale king is still that proud ruler that refuses to let himself die, and his time to pass, even if, that is what is natural.

Both stories also share a variety of interesting aspects, like your main character in dark souls is called “choosen” but you later learn that you where just a random guy, tricked into thinking you where special.

While hollow Knight never calls you a choosen hero, it does i think give you the impression that you are special, before you find the statue of the hollow knight, a lot of people assume that they are the hollow knight, that the game is named after them, but then you learn, like in dark souls, that you are one in millions, a nobody that failed and that just managed to get further than the other dead or discarted. 

Both also have the promise to become a great hero and defeat a powerful legend, only to find that legend a husk of their former selves, and also find that, the great role you are supposed to take is simply to sacrifice yourself to maintain the rotting stagnation, replace the previous puppet, and eventually, be replaced by a future puppet, once you break as well. And that, the only better end is to usher in a terrible abyss of darkness, to bring the posibility of a diferent future, a change of age.

Also, i love how both games have this world building concepts, like the radiance and the age of fire, that are both real metaphisical parts of the setting, but also obvious metaphors. The wavering of the first flame is both a literal change in the in universe magic and world of dark souls, but also, a clear cut theme of the slow crumbling of an era, and a dominant rulling sistem.

The radiance is the goddess of light that controls dreams, but her sealing is also, taking away dreams, and taking away the dawn, so that the next day doesn’t come, again, so that change never happens.

[palebloodcvrse]

Nameless King did nothing wrong

I saw this on another tumblr post

"When the eldest son was stripped of his deific status, he left this on his father's coffin, perhaps as a final farewell."

O u c h

Even after being cast out he still bothered to say goodbye? And then he grew resentful of his father after all those years in archdragon peak

I assume he just left but no I never read the sunlight blade description and now I am absolutely bawling

Gwyn didn't deserve to have such a wonderful son man

Good at heart and wanted to rightfully undo his father's crimes by helping the dragons recuperate and seeing through gwyn's fanatic nature (since he went a bit coocoo about the coming age of dark and imprisoned all the undead)

Yet in the end still respected him as a father

*cries*

[clemmiewemmie]

thinking about dark souls 3 and its grief. almost nothing in the game is left untouched by time. Anor londo still stands, but is filled with eldrich creatures. Gwyndolyn themself is eaten and puppeteered around by Aldritch.

The first time you meet slave knight Gael he's a sad man trying his best to find the ashen one, so he can free Ariandel from the rot that's festering in the town and the basement of the church. He does, and it doesnt work so he resorts to killing literally everyone at the end of time, with the entire world collapsing in on itself in the background, just to he can have a new world which lasts a tiny bit longer.

nobody seems to want to accept the world has died and it's best to keep it that way. It has run its course, it might have been fantastic back when it was alive, but now it needs to be put to rest. Let the world keel over and die.

[bobbyzombiegg]

you know, when I first heard about the Ashen One protagonist from Dark Souls 3, I thought them being Unkindled meant that they were an amalgamation of everyone who attempt to link the fire and failed, sorta like the opposite of the Soul Of Cinder. I mean, I know that's wrong now. But. I like that idea more than the truth that we're just one of the many thousands who failed. It just seems more in line with the themes of being built on the work of those who came before, and keeping the memories of those you lost with you a lot more to me. Then again, I've never played DS3 or any DS game, and I don't have as much connection to the series as Bloodborne or Elden Ring, so I might be completely wrong.

[szif]

not gonna lie guys knight lautrec fucking scares me. like the fact that hes just this filthy fucking guy who decides to randomly kill a random innocent woman out of nowhere JUST to probably absorb her power and he has like 2 bitchboys on his side too and he acts like, so fucking, i dont know, chill when he's getting invaded. i thought he's gonna go "w-what?! what the hell are you doing here??" but no. hes steel balls just going "oh. you got some nerves coming here. ok. let me punish you" like OK thats so chill coming from a guy whos literally getting invaded for fucking vengenace. like what??????? and this guy is literally just. like you could just SMELL the fact that he's up to NO GOOD when you first find him. and he keeps being like that for a long time. just the way he talks. and the way he looks, too, actually. fuck. i hate this guy i tried invading him and his gayass buddies wrecked me. hes just scary to me. like genuinely heart beating fast type of way. and im really only scared of the bigger-than-my-character enemeies in dark souls so like.......its SO fucked up

[galladegamer]

new sense of humor: putting the wrong death screen on video games

[tatakaeeren]

Geto Suguru | Jujutsu Kaisen S2EP 5 "Premature Death"

[galedekarios]