#the world's most accurate depiction of Kos and the orphan

[subzeroparade]

Im playing my first NG+ and it’s striking to me how bustling and alive Yarnam is while the sun is still up. The people scoff at you, outsider. The residents of Cathedral Ward are grateful, so grateful, to the church. You’re known as a hunter, smelled through the grime of beasts and blood and incense. You talk to someone; they respond with sanity. It’s so striking, to be part of a breathing world again, after the loneliness of the endgame after everyone is either gone or lost their minds, and the silence oppresses with its emptiness. Anyways. I can’t stop thinking about that relationship between Yarnam, its people, its powers, and you — the hunter. One of many. A slice of society. So many details stick out: the hunter chief emblem shows that hunting is an old tradition. Gilbert mentions that Odeon Tomb is in a more colorful part of town, and while you’re there, you can see how it’s more charred, from the Old Yarnam fire. A new lore video on the archeology of Yarnam analyzed the previous religion of the city, on its focus on motherhood. How base, and material, and bodily, this whole idea of divine ascension is. I saw a post on how Yarnam was possibly attempted to be evacuated— luggage and bottles of blood left everywhere, as if in a hurry. How few houses are occupied, how few people there are left— and despite Eileen’s assertion, there are a few left. Who here is the list one?

I so want to write about this — the relationship of the city to all of what’s going on. The perspective of a resident on these new foreign hunters. The betrayal of the church, sequestering itself beyond the Great Bridge. The way that this is just another hunt, we know how to do this. But it isn’t. We all know it isn’t.

I don’t know if I will espouse on this, but I love love love how you get into this in your Cainhurst execution fic. The tension between plebeian living and aspirational authority — its fascinating, especially in a place as fucked as this city.

Anyways. It’s 3 am. I think I’ve put my thoughts on a page. I hope to maybe elaborate of them further. But I wanted someone else to see them too. Thank you, for reading.

I wanted to actually share and respond to this because you’ve hit on some juicy stuff that I absolutely agree with. I’d never thought about the passage between endgame Yharnam and dusk Yharnam - which seems appropriately cyclical, if you think about it - but the difference, as you said, is stark. Even then, dusk Yharnam is still bathed in this sepia hue. It’s bleak, and grimy, and the air is full of smoke and soot and the smell of singed fur and gunpowder; the cries of beasts and the sounds of men having their last mindless hurrah before they too succumb. It’s “bustling”, but it’s still hellish, and grim. One of the reasons I love writing pre-Church and Church heyday is because if you rewind enough, you may, with a bit of effort, picture Yharnam as something other than depressingly dried-blood brown - green, even, with new marble, and polished white and yellow cobblestones. Glass and iron and slate and avenues lined with flowering trees, and the sounds of market and the clatter of carriages and all these things that become the drone of a lively city rather than the prelude to something coming to kill you. Surely there were bleaker sides of Yharnam, even in its heyday, as with most major cities - but the threats are different. Night is different. The smells are different. Everything is a little less stained, in all possible senses of the word. It’s also such a fascinating contrast to wonder how long people sat idly with the Church’s assurances before they decided “okay, that’s it, we leave tonight.” It seems like there might have been an event or two that triggered an exodus, or attempted flight by the cityfolk - and most didn’t make it out, as you rightly note, based on the scattered remnants of objects clearly intended for travel. It’s interesting to mull over what event(s) might have triggered that tipping point, for the people to finally ignore the Church and its Hunters’ calls to calmly lock their doors, and instead try their luck on the road. It’s certainly good fodder for a fic.   

Thanks for the kind words about my work - I’ll deal with some late-Church timeline soon enough, especially in two upcoming fics. But your point about the “perspective of a resident on new foreign hunters [and] the betrayal of the Church” is a really nice prompt, and you should write about it!

Hope you don’t mind me sharing your 3am rant lmao but I appreciated it. I don’t have any worthwhile WIPs to share atm, so please accept this Bloodborne-specific corner of a collaborative whiteboard session from a while ago (full disclosure idk why the elden ring crab is there but enjoy).