#Bloodborne discussion

[mangledskull]

So I’ve been replaying Bloodborne and I noticed this castle in the distance of the Nightmare Frontier. I can’t get any better resolution so this is all I have for pictures.

Does anyone in the Bloodborne community have any speculation on what this is? Cut content? The Hunter’s Nightmare? Micolash’s vacation home? Please tell me what your thoughts are!

[mecania]

Before people say anything about bloodborne not having anything to do with women in the slightest I'm going to need them to an intense read up on medical history and then read Simone du Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' and then like. everything else by Beauvoir, if you have not already, as a MINIMAL baseline. very, very bare bones reading, but it should be enough if you actually want to engage with discussions regarding the treatment of women in medical instituitions and the supposed ideal of the 'perfect, true female body' in actual good faith. (please take note... this is working off of the understanding that gender is not ontological and is not grounded in anything real. there is no reality to the idealised woman under the patriarchy, and there is no worth in defending it because it can only harm and makes no fucking sense. thank you)

Even if you do not think the subtext was intentional (which it very much is, i don't typically like stating 'if you want to understand the story watch this youtuber!' but charred thermos on yt delves into the inspirations behind hemwick charnel lane and that is proof enough that the writers did give a shit about the unique position of women in the world of medicine and religion. also he has multitudes more knowledge on 18th century european medicine as told in art than i do), that does not deny the fact that it can still be read in that lens and it makes bloodborne much more rounded out and meaningful in our current social climate. it is impossible to make a complete work of art about medical and religious institutions and the abuse they have enacted for years without engaging in discussions about how oppressed groups were treated by these institutions.

there is implicit reference to the treatment of 'foreigners' in these medical systems. notice how the patients in maria's lab, those who are not put in 'better conditions' (like adeline, who has her own space) speak in a distinctly different accent/cadence than most other characters you find. you are explicitly hit with xenophobia by the first few doors you knock on aside from gilbert's. this game is not 'vague', it is very, very allegorical and referential.

there are very good references to the idealisation of the 'woman', and how this construct works in reality, that i cannot think of it being anything but a discussion of this very concept and showing the truth behind it. a confusing part of sexism can be the utter difference between the treatment towards pregnancy versus the treatment towards women. it is, in truth, not a 'mistake' in the system, but rather an intentional facet. the woman is not substantial but a concept to be maintained for the sake of other ideologies like purity, heritage, and legacy (which is why the concept of 'womanhood' is so heavily disputed and even denied to those who you think should fit into it by these rules. it is simply plain bullshit). in the patriarchy the concept of the woman is divine, but the 'substantial' woman is believed to be dirtied by the nature of her existence. this is why we can abuse women's bodies while at the same time worship pregnancy; pregnancy is her saving grace in the system's eyes. this is what happens to queen yharnam, to arianna, and to get the point across even further so unbelievably clearly, this is what happens to kos. once a living god, an extraterrastial being that is the root of worship still now. in stark contrast to the immense pedestal she is placed upon, her physical body was discarded, maimed and brutalised for the sake of cutting her apart and taking out what was inside of her; her stillborn.

this is where we see the contrast between the worship of the conceptual woman versus. the treatment of the 'real' woman who has had this concept forced on her and what has been determined to be her physical body. the physical body of the determined woman will never meet the standard of the conceptual woman, because that is what it is; a false truth, an idealisation, and something to control, to detain. kos is trampled in death, her body is a tool, despite the passionate worship she received then and receives now. she is revered as a 'mother' yet at the same time it is this status and its claimed actualisation that allowed for them to dismantle and abandon her corpse. you hear her name praised and called upon for knowledge, yet when you find her, she is a pitiable corpse, blending in with the grey sand beneath her. the worship done in the name of the divine, holy, mythological 'female body' is not done in spite of the treatment of the supposed real woman. it is done in tandem.

[butch-with-a-deep-voice]

[beesmygod]

BLOODBORNE LORE Q+A PART 2: CAINHURST STATUES

part 1

---

THE HUNTER ASKS:

all the statues in yharnam are weird. even the ones that look normal are so fucking weird. nearly every statue in this game hints at something much larger and stupider than we ever could have imagined.

before we start, for clarity's sake, the chalice dungeons are comprised of four major areas: pthumeru (the largest area and the aforementioned "tomb of the gods", it is a city that rose and fell eons before yharnam), the hintertomb (previously explained), ailing loran (a long ruined city whose fate echoes the fate of yharnam), and great isz (a dungeon that is overlapping with "the cosmos" and is of great story importance). they are NOT main game content. some people completely skip them because they appear to be repetitive and are honestly kind of boring. and yet....

this ties into castle cainhurst's "normal" statues. the first clue something is off is that all the knight statues are missing the right leg. all of them. and not in an uneven way that would imply they were knocked off by some art hating maniac.

it wasn't until the DLC came out that this became retroactively significant. the item description for the old hunter's trousers reads:

A widespread belief of the period was that "beast blood crept up the right leg," and this led to the double-wrapped belt.

the dlc takes place in the time of the old hunters, the distant past. but the knights predate the hunters, right? they have to. the rifle spear was said to be based on a "lost cainhurst weapon". its a pale and poor imitation of the reiterpallasch. and the statues...

the statues in cainhurst clog up rooms to much that they make moving around difficult. they're all the same 4 statues: a queen, a king, a different queen holding a child holding an orb (?), and a tasteful contrapposto nude. i cannot stress how many of these fucking things are just lying around or shattered around the castle. the depictions of the generic king and queen (in truth, these are recreations of statues around notre dame) match depictions in other parts of the game but absolutely no mention is made of their rule now or in the past.

how old is the cainhurst lineage?

old. really, really, old.

here's the only other place you can find the statues: as gold statuettes in the treasure rooms of the pthumeru dungeons

ah, and i know what you're thinking: obviously this is just fromsoft re-using assets in that classic sloppy late game kind of way. but there's. more. a lot more. its not just this.

its so old that the armor you see in the throne rooms and a portrait of a knight in cainhurst castle can be found scattered throughout the lowest parts of the labyrinth.

in modern cainhurst, the fellow above has been transformed through dastardly means into the gargoyle-esque enemy called the "child of antiquity". "bastard of cainhurst" probably would have been a better and more thematically appropriate name.

he is not the only cainhurstian (?) depicted on the this wall of what you probably thought was reused concept art. its probably that. but its something else too. you know who else is in these paintings and also in the chalice dungeons?

her.

in the sinister chalice descriptions ("sinister" being a modifier that adds her to the dungeon for extra challenge) she is described as a "mad pthumerian". h-how can she be a pthumerian if she's a cainhurst noble?!

have you noticed that bloodlickers will appear in chalice dungeon rooms where you've preformed a visceral attack? the only other place they're found in the game is cainhurst! they're read to be blood drunk nobles who have become vampiric like mosquitos or ticks. why are they in the dungeons??

there's also this cainhurst knight who continues to live and serve his queen. i believe one of his guaranteed encounters is at the very bottom floors of the labyrinth. how did he get down there??

did he get down there?

or...did they come up? the subjects of the portraits are pale and thin.

"The old nobles, long-time imbibers of blood, are no strangers to the sanguine plague[...]"

how old? how long have they been imbibing blood? they've experienced blood plague before?!

why do both the bloody crow of cainhurst (one of annalise's knights who is evidently not a vileblood) and the shadows of yharnam (the entourage of queen yharnam) drop "blood rapture" runes which are deliberately vague about which queen the rune is in service to?

how old is the cainhurst lineage?! WHAT is the cainhurst lineage?! annalise, queen of the vilebloods, is the sole survivor of a massacre that wiped out the rest of the vilebloods (an ideologically charged name imposed on them by the church). she was left alive simply because she could not be killed but she was forced into a mask she cannot remove. but the mask does not prevent her from making us into a vileblood, as we only have to drink her blood to do so.

what could the mask be hiding? why does her dialog change when you unlock the lowest chambers of the labyrinth? how are there two undead queens?! (yucky item from bloodborne warning)

all hail the undying queen of blood!

[johnnydluxe]

Hi I need someone incredibly insane about Bloodborne lore to talk to me about their opinions on The Healing Church's hierarchy and the roles and ranks of like nuns/sisters (not exactly gender exclusive) 🤔

[eldritchtouched]

Bloodborne understands something integral to most of the plot structure in the Lovecraft Mythos that most modern Mythos writers sleep on if they want to reinterpret the perspectives of the original setting. It gets complicated with Lovecraft because a lot of characters in-story go with a different interpretation but most of the stories are written in a way that offers an 'unreliable narrator' interpretation with ease.

Which is, most beings in the universe are already aware of the weird eldritch shit and cosmic deities. As a whole, most of the various aliens do not want to conquer people, or murder them, nor have they gone insane from this knowledge. The problem is when someone goes from not knowing to knowing but is deeply arrogant and believes themselves superior to others, they use that knowledge in horrible ways. This includes Joseph Curwin in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the Yith as a society in The Shadow Out of Time, Clarendon in The Last Test, and Ephraim Waite in The Thing on the Doorstep.

They are those who use their newfound knowledge and power to do whatever they like. It inevitably causes harm for whoever gets caught up in what they're doing, because they are the sort of edgy nihilist who learns that morality is entirely made up by a given society and is not a guiding thread throughout the fabric of the cosmos, but does not understand that does not give them the right to do whatever they like. Their actions come to bite them in the ass eventually in various ways.

While Clarendon's statement is most clear about his interpretation (that he just got involved in unwholesome things best left not meddled with by humans, with the obvious xenophobia and anti-intellectualism associated with such thinking), the actual issue was clearly his fervor to just do whatever the fuck he liked, no matter what. Surama, his teacher, told him not to do such things, too, and that he was being a fool, but Clarendon didn't wish to listen.

The same can be said of other aspects of the Mythos, like The Whisperer in Darkness. The Mi-Go were content to let Akeley listen in on their stuff for over a decade and only retaliated after a series of escalations on Akeley's part. He recorded them in 1915 doing rituals, he often was in the woods where they were, and he often spoke with one of their agents prior to everything happening, for example. Only after 1927, when he picked up one of their stones and refused to give it back did they start sending people to him. And only after he killed someone did they do the brain in a jar stuff and try to lure Wilmarth to the farmhouse to get the material Akeley had sent Wilmarth.

You could easily argue, based on some of Akeley's verbiage that he had such a severe hierarchical view as the antagonists in those other stories, too. He often spoke of certain classes of people as being lesser (going on about 'simple backwoods folk'), and his reactions to handling the Mi-Go's body as innately disgusting and revolting for its alienness, and his refusal to abide a simple request (give us our thing back) in favor of escalating the conflict over the course of several months, including shooting people over his right to have stolen something of theirs.

[j-artzz]

When fighting Micolash: Stop being romantic and FIGHT ME you COWARD

[katyspersonal]

Whenever I see some statement about a hypothetical male (usually male character? I guess?) on this site I do a 'vibe check' of the post by replacing the gender on female and see if it still works. So like, if someone posted something sexual but kinda humiliating about a 'him' I try to imagine the same post about 'her' and if it is still a fair statement - it is an okay post! But if it suddenly became creepy after this change, I figure that I should not find it funny for a 'him' either and condemn the original post! Or if someone is gloating about how good it is that artists are ""fixing"" a canonically ugly male character, I try to imagine this statement about a female character... and, naturally, that leads to condemning the approach no matter what.

I honestly find it helpful, it is like keeping mind in shape against double standards! It is just kinda an easy trap in online spaces, where people will write and write about how "creepy" and "disrespectful" users can be towards fictional women, only to turn around and show the same attitude (often even worse) towards men. It is just... wrong. If someone wants to make a point about how certain feelings or statements are inherently vile, it should be applied to every person (well, character xd) equally, without distinction by gender! Like- if you can't "disrespect" a woman, you should not disrespect a man either. If you want to grossly objectify that male character, be okay if someone does the same with a female one! Like, whaaaaat, you think women are not important enough for their ""bad"" feelings, actions and words to 'count' as such? :p (I jest because sure they're only "bad" in very narrow near-puritan vision of how fandomry is done, but you see the point about how hypocritical this is!)

[velvet-vox]

When depression ruins art.

Do you ever get so depressed that not even your comfort characters can help you, but on the contrary, they make you feel worse?

I'm talking about when you feel so depressed that you project your feelings on your favourite fictional characters, but you push said feelings to such an extreme that you make your comfort characters literally unlikable for the sake of expressing your mental distress to the point where you can no longer bare to think about them in the correct way, and so they become an empty shell of the complex individuals they once were as they are now just reduced to mere caricatures for you to cause them as much bad writing as possible, and yes, I am not talking about torturing them, I'm talking about giving them bad writing on purpose since it's more harmful to a character than just mere torture;

I'm talking about the worst coping mechanism possible where not only it doesn't make you feel better, but it actively drags you down and your comforts with you, in an endless spiral that just makes you feel worse, to the point where art isn't enjoyable anymore.

I know I had this problem, and ruined all of said tagged characters, so, if you have ever felt or feel this way, maybe leave a comment on this post for other people's sake or your own.

[bornetoblood]

Gehrman is like Victor Frankenstein if he was working class and Laurence is like Dorian Gray if you gave him a physician licence send post.

[foolish-ghoul]

With the idea of her using a pizza cutter, why the hell has nobody drawn Vanny using the Whirligig Saw from Bloodborne or Ghiza's wheel from Elden Ring? It's perfect.

[space-blue]

Abandoned but there is weirdness inside - gods that's also a good title for mine.

[feartheoldblog]

when you really think about it gehrman is basically moon presence’s pokemon. sends him into battle to kill us, keeps him in a permanent state of limbo (pokemon in pokeballs)……..

[skleech]

“you’re a muppet with your sanity aren’t you? must’ve taken a wrong turn then, ay?”

[bobbyzombiegg]

Why does the Watchdog of the Old Lords exist? I don't mean I'm lamenting how hard of a fight it is, I mean why is it on fire. It's a "true" beast so it takes more damage from serration, and is thus on the same level as scourge and cleric beasts, but the entire monster is on fire, the weakness of beasts. Another strange thing is that the beast-possessed-soul has fire abilities despite also being a beast. Normally I'd say that it may be one of the keeper's dogs that got infected, but those dogs have horns, while the watchdog doesn't. Also, the keeper's dogs follow silver beasts which is even stranger. I guess this could be the dogs following their previous masters even after they succumbed to the scourge. The description for the keeper's hat says they committed a certain sin. It's probably a reference to dark souls and the first sin, but maybe it could refer to the creation of the big Watchdogs? When looking at the watchdog, it looks even more unnatural than the keeper's dogs do. Also the silver beasts definitely aren't created from the keeper's as the keepers have 8 eyes.

Another weird thing are the loran clerics. They also have similar horns to the keeper's dogs and wield fire while being beasts. Maybe they created the keeper's dogs somehow? Another weird thing is that they drop coldblood flowers. And blooming ones as well. You should check out katypersonal's theory on those too. Coldblood is apparently a person's final will made form. If we assume coldblood is literally cold blood that hardened into a ball then that makes this even weirder considering that loran clerics use fire. They also don't drop coldblood which is strange. I don't have any solid theory on this stuff, but what I do want is for more people to start talking about these things. If you got any ideas about this stuff please share them.