#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!

[butch-with-a-deep-voice]

[trenchgardens-ooc-ooc-ooc-ooc]

your mommas lyin'... what's she tryin' to do...

[necromancerfan]

This might be kinda surface-level, but I find it very interesting that the Hunter's nightmare is, specifically, an endless hunt without end, where the beasts are always stronger, and none cam escape, not even Maria, who is presumably thought of quite highly by Hunters.

Contrast this with the Hunter's Dream, which is a quiet place of rest and preparation. It is still the Hunter's Dream, it is not an escape from the Hunt. If they did not hunt, they would not be Hunters, so it is always, what's the word... Liminal? Transitional, I suppose, allowing a Hunter to rest a little between battles.

Beyond that, it featuring graves prominently is important, because hunting is, well, thankless. Very few Hunters are remembered, if we are to assume you are just one of many. And I imagine graves are in short supply in the beast-filled streets of Yharnam, so to have a memorial is valuable.

Circling back to there being many Hunters, you being insignificant is a common theme in Fromsoft games. In Dark Souls, you are just one undead, and it isn't until you defeat two legends of Anor Londo that you become at all important to the world. Elden Ring, too, has you as one of several Tarnished, trying to become Elden Lord.

But I digress, the Hunter's Dream is, really, designed to be just that. The Dream of those who Hunt Beasts. And, likewise, the Nightmare is the one thing no Hunter can bear to face: That the Hunt might never end.

[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!

[arkus-rhapsode]

Sony wants to buy Kadokawa, what does this mean?

So this is a post I didn't think I'd ever have to make, but I guess I will because it concerns two things I'm invested in: anime and video games. And it concerns how we may potentially be seeing those industries get even more consolidated.

Yesterday on November 19th Reuters reported that Sony was in talks to acquire the massive Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa. As of November 20th, we see that Sony has indeed sent a letter of intent for an acquisition.

Now look, I know we all tend to see Sony as a video game and technology company first and foremost, and I think that has led to a tendency for reports on this story to frame this story as "Sony wants to buy the parent company of FromSoft, what does this mean for Armor Core and Souls games going forward?" Now I don't necessarily blame gamers from focusing on the game aspect of this purchase, but its massively underselling that Sony is a multimedia entertainment company with plans outside of video games and Kadokawa's holding on other forms of media. For just a taste, here is just what Wikipedia lists as some of the subsidiaries of the Kadokawa Corporation.

As you can see, numerous light novel and manga magazine publishers, anime studios, and even news sites like Anime News Network fall under the umbrella of Kadokawa owned operations. And Sony themselves have been no slouches in the anime industry either. Having bought Aniplex, Funimation, Crunchyroll, RightStuff and more Sony has had a foothold on the distribution of anime outside Japan for quite a while. If this acquisition goes through there is no doubt that this will make their grip even tighter on the anime industry. Basically now controlling all the means of taking a work from the page to the screen to overseas to the merch to follow.

Obviously, I don't necessarily blame video game journalists and personalities for not going this deep into it, video games and anime fans may have overlap, but it's pretty clear there's a level of separation between the two in the same space. However, this focus on FromSoft honestly reminds me of the Microsoft-Bethesda purchase where most people talked about it like Microsoft only bought Bethesda. No, they bought Bethesda's parent company, Zenimax Media, which owns Bethesda and also numerous other studios like Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Obsidian, Roundhouse Studios, and Alpha Dog Games. Note that all those studios except Obsidian saw a closer this year. When dealing with a massive merger/acquisition like this its important to keep in mind the full scope of it.

Kadokawa and its video game sector which includes FromSoft, Spike Chunsoft and recent acquisition of Acquire being purchased by Sony would be pretty rough. Particularly Spike who have made a reputation for themselves as one of the still AA studios that are into developing and publishing niche games like Ai The Somnium Files, Master Detective Raincode, and Mystery Dungeon. So having Sony, who have spent basically the last decade and a half moving towards huge blockbuster AAA games and who have just incurred a massive loss and shuttered a studio like Firewalk after one disastrous game, makes me fear for a lot of the safety of any new company being brought on.

And of course, there's the very real possibility that one acquired Sony will make many of these games these studios make exclusive to their Playstation platform. Or at the very least require a PSN account to access these titles on things like the PC. I know there's a lot of people who like to turn stories of Sony and Microsoft acquiring companies into pissing matches for whoever's team is "winning" by buying up more, but setting aside the console wars nonsense, the adverse effects of the major third party publishers on the industry would be bad for all platform users.

However, even more worrisome is what will happen on the print entertainment side of things. Kadokawa isn't a small time publisher of works. When it comes to their Light Novel prints they include series like Sword Art Online, Haruhi Suzumiya, Irregular at Magic High School, Classroom of the Elite, Re:Zero, No Game No Life, and even Slayers

There's also Enterbrain, a much smaller publisher known for its cult fanbase and publishing of niche series like Delicious in Dungeon!

Now, all of these series in Japan are typically protected by much stronger creators rights laws in Japan. With the series creators owning their work and not the publishers. But it doesn't change that now Sony will essentially have ownership of their publishing outlets and a seat at everyone of their production committees I regards to adaptations of their work. And then we get into how those products might leave Japan. Yen Press and Book Walker aren't small outlets, they are a big deal in making several of these series legally accessible to non-Japanese readers. Yen Press has even taken it upon themselves to bring over series from other magazines like Oshi no Ko, which Viz Media had failed to bring over for years.

And speaking of Oshi no Ko, this acquisition would mean Sony would now own the studio that makes it, Doga Kobo. Along with Cinema Citrus, the studio behind Made in Abyss, Rise of the Shield Hero, and as I was writing this, just was announced for Star Wars Visions Vol 3. Now lets add onto the fact Sony currently owns Crunchyroll which is one of the three main players in the North American anime streaming and distribution game along with Netflix and Hi-Dive. Sony could in theory now cut out the need to bid for airing certain anime overseas and instead just have a pipeline that leads directly from Kinema Citrus all the way to Crunchyroll's servers.

And speaking of Crunchyroll, we haven't even talked about how Sony has been acting in regards to this one streaming platform. Initially, Sony had acquired Funimation and infamously we had a neck and neck streaming war with Crunchy and Funi, but eventually Crunchyroll would be sold off to Sony where they proceeded to fold Funimation into Crunchyroll's brand. Erasing years of Funimation's own identity and most egregious of all, shuttering the Funimation website which deleted loads of digital content. Especially annoying when one of the perks of purchasing a Funimation Blu-Ray was offering a free digital copy that could be used on their website. So all those purchases? Gone. Hope you saved the physical media.

Crunchyroll themselves have also been no shortage of controversies lately, from the implementations of AI subtitles that are not only inaccurate, but also a pretty transparent attempt to eventually phase out subtitle writers. Then there's the allegations by actors as recently as a few weeks ago that Crunchyroll Studios has acted unprofessionally and illegally with their treatment of staff. But I think the most controversial of all was what happened to RightStuf. RIghtStuf was an anime merchandise outlet that would be shut down after purchase by Sony and then redirected users to go to the Crunchyroll merch store. If that doesn't sound like an attempt to monopolize a hobby, I don't what does.

I know this post has been very alarmist sounding, I legit was shaken when I heard the news, but there is some small silver lining to this dark cloud. Kadokawa hasn't made any decision either which way to go with this intention to acquire. They are capable of doing they're due diligence and seeing if this acquisition is opportune for them or not. Do I think they are going to reject it? I don't know. I'd prefer to not have this go through, but its out of my hands.

Once again, we must unfortunately watch more consolidation in the animanga and video game spaces. Which in the year 2024, we've seen full display of what has happened with the shrinking AA space of developers and publishers as they've been eaten up by guys like Tencent, Embracer Group, Microsoft, and Sony. We've had so many lay-offs and shut downs in this year alone its disheartening. Combine that with how this will effect how many people outside of Japan's accessibility to the pass time that they are passionate about and how this will inch us closer to only a few big players making all the choices for the anime industry is also disheartening.

There's a very tangible future where corporations like Sony own so much of our art and entertainment.

[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!)

[mecania]

Shoutout to bloodborne for the best biopolitical analysis i've seen so far in a mainstream fighting game

[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.