#depressed-gwyndolin

[daily-smol-silm]

Maglor singing a lullaby for elrond and elros just thought it would be a cute idea ^w^

Day #108 - Lullaby

YES IT 100% IS YOU ARE SO RIGHT

[yharnam-everchase]

What your Dark Souls 1 Baes say about you

Do you ship your chosen undead with an NPC? Here's your vibe check, sir.

Solaire: you have eyes and a brain and a heart

Laurentius: you took his line about the pyromancy flame too seriously

Griggs: you had a crush on the nerdy kid at school

Crestfallen Knight: you're depressed

Lautrec: "I can fix him"

Siegmeyer: you love dads. Not even dilfs, just dads. You wanna go grill some footballs with him.

Crossbreed Priscilla: you're tired of dying in Dark Souls and just wanna go live in the Painting forever with your soft cute girlfriend pLEASE-

Andre: you watch WWE for the ripped shirtless men

Gwyndolin: local blindingly beautiful deity grants everyone alive a sexuality crisis

Gwynwvere: you like this game for the plot!

Darkmoon Knightess: oh to have a strong knightess lift up your chin with the tip of her sword

Anastacia: if the game won't treat her right you will

Oscar: you're a paladin player who keeps rolling 1s

Artorias: you love animals and heartwrenching angst

Ornstein: you fucking furry

Ciaran: Lady Assassin is a nice, very sexy trope

Oswald: you have a priest kink and you listen to Ghost.

Patches: you like funny evil cartoon men

Domhnall: fuck minimalism, embrace clutter and trinkets and outfits that make you look like an 80s arcade carpet

Chester: Bloodborne? In my Dark Souls? It's more likely than you think! Also his voice is sexy.

Seathe: he's every monsterfucker's dream but you'd be into it just for his looks, cause his personality is... not great.

Gwyn: that's a trick question, nobody likes that guy

Btw, I selected a few of the most memorable ones, but this fandom is a bit like pokemon. It's got a billion characters to choose from, and even the most obscure ones might be someone's favorite, so feel free to add more! Yes, even the Capra Demon, you monsterfuckers.

[wanderer-among-undead]

Talking with Rosemun about how proud I actually am of Jarrod. Elden Ring Jarrod is a very matured and wiser man than his Dark Souls 1 and 2 verses. He has confidence and he is just really really chill?

Jarrod was made as a very anxious and depressed man. He was so weak and he had no faith in himself. The first thing he did that was actually badass was kill Capra Demon, but that was after he indirectly got Rosalind killed fighting it. His guilt and depression were what made him vulnerable to manipulation.

Jarrod got roped into the Chosen Undead journey and then Gwyndolin saw him: a god fearing commoner who got to Anor Londo on a fluke, and gave him great power. 

Jarrod then lost that power, when it turned him on Rosalind, and he began to rebuild from there. 

Jarrod went from a sleep-deprived, stinky man with anxiety to being a relatively rested, nicer smelling man who has a lot more confidence in himself. He still has moments of weakness and insecurity, but like...

The man’s married to Rosalind and has a love that drives him so much that it’d make him a legend, I bet. I never thought Jarrod would become such a more heroic sounding character, but he has become that out of his love.

[girlvinland]

For the ask meme, give me Artorias and NK, please! ^^

Ty Tarori 🙏🏼

Wolf Man 🐺

Sexuality Headcanon: I lean towards ace or demi for him, honestly

Gender Headcanon: Think of him usually as cis man, but can see perhaps agender as well

A ship I have with said character: Ciartorias, ofc 😭

A BROTP I have with said character: Orn, and I feel like in some ways it is a mentorship. My personal HC is that Arty is the youngest of Gwyn's knights and that he looks up to Ornstein. They do not see eye to eye on everything, but they rely on one another and have similar views on their duties. On the opposite side of that I think they'd make really good/fun/disastrous drinking buddies. If you add NK to that mix something is going to get broken. Maybe one of them.

Speaking of NK, I think he would also connect with Arty, but mostly for irritating the shit out of Ornstein together (see the question after next lol)

A NOTP I have with said character: I have to say, I can appreciate some Amanus stuff but I'm really not that into it overall. It just depresses me but not in the good way (lol you understand what I mean, it is angst I don't really enjoy).

A random headcanon: I think maybe we talked about this in chat before but I love the idea of him playing pranks on Ornstein constantly (oh yeah, like that one video of the son scaring his dad all the time lmao). NK/Arty Dream Team of irritating the captain.

I think he is also someone who needs to recharge often though and really appreciates alone time or some time in nature. Pretty common HC I think.

General Opinion over said character: He's kind, he's cool, he loves dogs, wish they kept his voice lines in the game that is all 😤

-

Da KING 👑🐉

Sexuality Headcanon: I switch between bisexual and gay like every five minutes for this HC I do not know

Gender Headcanon: Just a straight up cis dude I'm sorry

A ship I have with said character: He and Ornstein are best friends and life partners that is all 😭

A BROTP I have with said character: See Arty above! Also like Little said for the Gwynevere answer, NK lol. Both of his siblings, really. But I think NK and Gwynevere have more fun banter with one another. As far as Gwyndolin goes I think NK would be somewhat protective while also being really annoyed at their father for being so OVERprotective.

A NOTP I have with said character: Not really into the whole Solaire/NK thing. I get it, or at least, in theory I get it. Just not for me.

A random headcanon: My personal favorite name HC is still Gwynsen while he is in Anor Londo, and once he is deleted from existence, he picks up the name of Faraam from human devotees. I like it because the idea of a god living for thousands of years and having their name transition to something else over time is not so strange I think (going on the theory that they ARE actually gods in a sense - that's a whole can of worms ofc). Also wrt to the first name I'm just big on the Sen is NK theory - I like it a lot, and also I enjoy the idea that the fortress was used as a silver knight training ground sometimes (plus very few people in-game even know it's called Sen's Fortress which fits w/ his name being forgotten). I'd also just find it weird if Gwyn didn't name his firstborn after himself (obviously this isn't saying any name ppl use for him is wrong bc we legitimately don't know [even though I think a lot of ppl agree that Faraam IS the mostly likely]. Still, Gwynsen/Sen is just my fav). Ty for letting me ramble about that.

General Opinion over said character: Not sure if he is my favorite boss across the series, but he's definitely my favorite non-human character. I find his backstory really fascinating and parts of it are strangely relatable in unfortunate/stupid ways. I try to sunbro for him at least once a week bc I really do enjoy that fight (at least the second half) and I don't want to get rusty on it (I am rusty on it anyway - you fight any other thing ever and the minute you go back to NK you forget how to deal w/ delayed attacks gdi) 😭

-

Ty again 🥺

Link to the Ask Meme

[cherrywoes]

ethereal reality. (akaashi keiji x f!reader)

title: ethereal reality.

pairing: ashen one! akaashi keiji x goddess! dancer! fem! reader

word count: 559 words

summary: ashen one akaashi keiji is forced to kill the goddess he so reluctantly loves.

warnings: character death.

a/n: in dark souls 3, there is a boss called the dancer of the boreal valley that i really loved the first time i came across her. it sparked inspiration for this, i remember, especially with the theories behind her existence. in short, becoming a dancer, for her, was akin to punishment, and then an outrider knight was exile. out of context this makes no sense but i hope you enjoy it, besides, even if it’s just for the prose.

“Don’t say you love me.” His voice was low, gravelly, and torn with sorrow, as weighty as the blade he held in his right hand. His armor shone brilliantly in the sunlight, each ray refracting off of delicate snow crystals that fell from the sky in flurries—crystals that were illusions but felt real all the same, melting against his skin in a mockery of reality. The outburst of emotion was unusual for him, but you knew why, could at least speculate on some level what conclusion he had arrived at, depressing as it was. “Please, do not, goddess.”

He stood before your humble throne of wood and stone, as he always did, staring up at your larger, ethereal form with anguish scrawled across his face in livid character. The toes of his armored boots just barely brushed the gossamer veil that floated around you in an invisible breeze, immune to the crystals that never seemed to touch you. He was always so small, so polite to you whenever he sought your company despite the  growing artifice of the world around him. Even his embers, once nothing more than wisps of energy stirred by the tolling of the bell, were now a roaring pile set for kindling a bright flame, bloated and powerful upon the souls of Lords and beasts alike.

He knew not his name, you knew, from countless other conversations he’d had with you over the sparse months it had taken him to reclaim the Lords and set them upon their thrones. Just like any other Unkindled, any other failed Lord, his memories were burned away by the First Flame along with his original body, the new one a mockery of the form he had used to hold.

You knew his name, though you would never tell him, for it was forbidden.

Akaashi Keiji.

You smiled upon Akaashi, as you always did, and watched pain flash across his visage when you did so. It hurt him now to see you so, knowing full well that your time in this world was coming to a slow and deadly end—Aldrich had killed Gwyndolin, the last remaining god, and Yorshka, the halfling who had known no other but he. In a way, it was fated to be so: because you were already dead. Your soul, however dark and tentative it was, lingered, forced dregs of power upon it by repeated renewals of the Age of Fire. You no longer had the life, the energy, the time for another one.

It was time for you to succumb to the Abyss.

“I love you, Unkindled One,” you murmured in your quiet, silvery tone, the Pontiff’s ring on your left hand growing colder and tighter with every passing second. You watched him almost drop his sword, his knees falter, ready to fall prostrate at your feet and stave off the Abyss for at least one more moment. But such was impossible for an Unkindled, and so your fate was unavoidable. “Do remember that.”

Akaashi did not answer you, but you knew he acknowledged it all the same.

Another overfond smile and you had succumbed fully and completely, unaware of anyone and anything until Akaashi’s sword slid home into your chest, as if it had been molded to be there. 

                    ⍈ rules + requests.

                    ⍈ archive of our own.

                    ⍈ back to your dashboard.

[doshmanziari]

Aldrich and the Desacralization of Dark Souls 3

Aldrich, the obsessive-consumptive cannibal saint, is one of Dark Souls 3′s most interesting figures when one sees his actions and inferred character as representing a prominent facet of humanity’s spiritual position at the time of the game’s setting. If we look at Dark Souls 3′s landscape as an assemblage of symbolics, and compare it to Dark Souls’ arrangement, we see that an inversion has occurred: the zenith is the human domain of the High Wall of Lothric, and the nadir is Irithyll/Anor Londo, once the apical sunlit land of the gods, now chilled, darkened, and sunken. And yet, even if Anor Londo only ever represented the power of a pantheonic institution, its ruination and darkness here is a much more troubling scenario; because at the “zenith” we find only stasis or stagnation, a reflection of the psychology of prince Lothric himself who has selfishly fended off fate through elusion and inactivity (if we note the series’ pattern of things being what one makes of them (i.e., reality is what one believes it to be), we may wonder if Lothric’s lameness was not self-willed¹). On the broadest scale approaching metatexuality, we see too that Dark Souls 3 is the series at its most complex and diffuse, with the collective mono-myth responsible for the Age of Fire now distant, separate, very nearly nonexistent.

For an example of this, let us look to the swamp around Farron Keep, where we must put out three flame-beacons corresponding to the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and Gwyn’s deific family. This sequence is an initiatory rite of passage, but, rather than entering into a mystery for contact with the numinous, we perform willful ignorance for mere tribalism (to witness it, anyway). For it is only through this symbolic act of un-remembering -- the nullification of the sustaining flame of myth, the obscuring of its principal actors -- that we are granted access to the Keep proper, and then to the Abyss Watchers, a clan of warriors who represent, to an extreme, “mass-mindedness”: directionless, hollow zombies who do not even remember the name of the knight they model themselves upon. All that matters here is the Clan, where insular, infinite warfare is mistaken for life-sustaining meaning (I’d make special note of the fact that the Abyss Watchers all resemble one another; the violence done to another is, in truth, violence done to the self: self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment). As César Daly wrote, “To neglect history, to neglect memory, that which is owed by our ancestors, is then to deny oneself; it is to begin suicide.” The great abundance of such details makes it all the more startling when Shira, in the Ringed City, says to us, “Speak thee the name of God” (i.e., Gwyn).

No one can seem to agree on what exactly constitutes or delineates the Age of Fire or the Age of Dark, but Dark Souls’ Serpent Kaathe refers to the latter as "the age of men.” Given the evidence, it is difficult to not see Dark Souls 3 as marking the beginning of such an age, or at least the transition between the two. But what liberties has it brought? They are, I think, the pseudo-liberties of a desacralized world. Narratives have become aimless, attempts are made to plug up voids without examining root causes, and the self cannot be harnessed for purposeful actualization. If we seek a demonstration of the latter, think of our first major combative encounter in the game with Iudex Gundyr, whose body, midway through the fight, unleashes a chaotic mass of black, writhing forms uniformly termed the Pus of Man. The Pus of Man reappears during our initial exploration of the High Wall of Lothric, this time out of a couple of standard Hollows. Once the Pus of Man has emerged and is aware of us, any semblance of the host’s self-control is usurped by total destructive instability.

In our own bodies, pus is the result of infection, and its treatment is its release from an abscess; but the Pus of Man, thus released, does not allow for healing, because its internal causes, a symptom of a shared spiritual crisis, have gone unchecked for too long, and so it assumes complete control. It is, on one level, a coup by the id, which Freud describes as “...a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ...It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” It would also not be inappropriate here to look to the concept of humorism, wherein humans’ personalities are regulated by vital body fluids, and where we find (within the most popular, four-component model) “black bile”, a secretion whose associated qualities are coldness and dryness and whose effect is melancholia: “a mental condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.”

The Cathedral of the Deep is representative of the same crisis, but diverges in the shape of its consequence. If the Pus of Man recalls Manus, whose “humanity went wild”, and signifies degradation with “seething excitations”, then the Cathedral of the Deep -- a religion and a site -- signifies degradation with stagnation. Inside the Cathedral, we find that its nave and south transept is thick with liquidized decay, the perimeters encrusted by mounds of corpses. These are the matter-of-fact results of both mortification of the flesh (done by flagellation) and Aldrich’s cannibalism, prior to his relocation. What’s relevant here is the material stasis. Richard Pilbeam, in his video “The Bastard’s Curse”, compares aspects of the Deep faith to those of Shinto, placing specific emphasis on the cleansing properties of water. He notes: “Water will wash away impurity, but only if the water remains in motion.”² The motion of the water is the motion of a dynamic, reciprocal spirituality. Our own bloodflow requires circulation.

All of this talk of the body, ruptures, and liquid brings us back to Aldrich, the Devourer of Gods. Despite his title, the only god we are explicitly aware of Aldrich having consumed is Gwyndolin; but the sheer extent of rotting flesh and bones (some, no doubt, of mortals) in Aldrich’s current habitat, the appropriated chancel of the great Anor Londo cathedral, is evidence of innumerable, unseen feasts. Inspecting the soul of Aldrich, we are told that when he “...ruminated on the fading of the fire, it inspired visions of a coming age of the deep sea. He knew the path would be arduous, but he had no fear. He would devour the gods himself.” It again behooves us to approach the matter in terms of symbolics, poetic substitutions, and understand this envisioned age as a radically desacralized state of being, one where the Age of Fire has been permanently entombed, replaced by a humanity misled by vacuous obsessions which is then itself overcome by what those profanities manifested. “In time, those dedicated to sealing away the horrors of the Deep succumbed to their very power,” the description for a robe worn by deacons of the Cathedral of the Deep reads. “It seems that neither tending to the flame, nor the faith, could save them.”

Aldrich, as a deiphagous agent (although perhaps not godly to begin with himself), of course has deicidal associations.³ Most pertinent would be the filicide of the Titan Cronus, who devoured his children in fear of his prophesied deposition. We are told that Aldrich “had no fear”, but this is, I think, an ironic statement. In the same way that we may compulsively eat in order to fill an emotional-existential void, Aldrich feeds to fill the void of Dark Souls 3 which has, as M. Christine Boyer writes in reference to modernity, “[closed] off any meaningful access to the past.” Yet his murderous feasting prepares himself and the world for another void: that of the “age of the deep sea” (to be slightly literal for a moment: what, on Earth, is more akin to a void than the ocean’s depths?). At the Ringed City we observe resonances of this behavior in the locusts, who primarily inhabit the dim mire at the city’s bases (the resemblance to Oolacile’s predicament is unmistakable), and “were meant to beckon men to the dark with sermons, but most of [which] are unable to think past their own stomachs.”

We should also recognize that Aldrich did not act alone. He “had the desire to share with others his joy of imbibing the final shudders of life while luxuriating in his victim's screams.” Recall that certain deacons of the Deep are bloated, including the deceased Archdeacon McDonnell. These are ministers who have oftener partaken of feasts. So here is also a distortion of that communal principle wherein participants ingest the deity/deities and affirm life through its nearness to death. This ingestion recalls the older meaning of “embody”: “a soul or spirit invested with a physical form.” George Hersey writes, of the ancient Greeks and their sacrificial rituals, “Whatever form the victim or offering took, once it was [...] full of the god, [...] the divinity became too immense, too terrible, to be contained. It was necessary to break apart the offering. Yet even after death -- perhaps especially after it -- the animal’s carcass, the god’s container, was steeped in his presence. This is why the worshipers ate parts of it: the act was not just feasting, but communion. The worshipers’ own bodies combined with parts of the victim’s to express the fact that the god had entered them. The victim’s body parts were in fact ‘reconstructed’ now in a different way, by uniting the bodies of the worshipers.”⁴

There is no concern for any of these vitalizing affirmations with Aldrich and his followers. Indeed, we see that Aldrich himself has become “too immense, too terrible, to be contained” (just like those aforementioned “horrors of the Deep”), and so his body is coagulated hemorrhage. Constructive concepts such as selflessness, spirit, metousiosis are nullified, as the consumptive process, one of intense sadism, functions as its own end. Aldrich is both terribly and mundanely a narcissistic parasite. During our fight with him, he will burrow into the refuse of the arena to temporarily escape -- a tactic that is emblematic of his self-regressing psychology, where nothing matters except gorging, sleeping, and surrounding oneself with a playpen of mud to dive into and thus hide from the world. Remember, now, that Aldrich was canonized as a Lord and remains one. Hawkwood, a former member of Farron’s Undead Legion and a resident of Firelink Shrine, wryly and accurately comments that this was “...Not for virtue, but for might.” And when we venerate sheer might, we venerate persecution.

From this perspective, I think it is not an accident of phrasing when the description for human dregs, an object sometimes released by slain Deep devotees, says that they, once having sunk to the “lowest depths imaginable, [...] become the shackles that bind this world.” To bind something can mean to unify it, to adhere components together and provide a sort of structure; but this is done with shackles, items associated with repression and enslavement. It is another echoing of that “self-oppression misinterpreted as empowerment” (or, analogously, freedom). There may be no better conclusion to this essay than to remark upon Aldrich’s death at our ends. As the battle progresses, Aldrich’s body becomes enkindled, speckled by embers, to the extent that any zone he occupies catches on fire. This is not so different from Yhorm or the remaining Abyss Watcher; after all, they are Lords of Cinder too. But I believe that, for Aldrich, this can be read relative to the sacrificial ritual which ended with roasting specified parts of the animal and then eating them. Thus, when we kill Aldrich, even if we cannot adopt and atone for the sins of his actions, we can at least break that insatiable cycle and consign his body to the purifying fire -- so that we may, finally, take and imbibe his soul.

You can financially support my writing, art, and music on Patreon.

¹ Dark Souls 2 quickly presents us with an example of this when a handmaid gives us a featureless human effigy and says, “Take a closer look... Who do you think it’s supposed to be? Think back, deep into your past. Yes, it’s an effigy of you.” Consider also the case of Miracles, which are not instructions but stories. Once read, they turn real -- fiction tangibly weaponized.

² See: Misogi and kegare. The concept of the sacred grotto is apposite, too, if we imagine that the latter-christened Cathedral of the Deep neighbors one. In Heavenly Caves, Naomi Miller writes, “Fascination with the grotto is rooted in the story of creation. While understood as a source of life and as a sacred spring in the classical world, in the Old Testament the grotto is often equated with the void and hence with chaos -- the formlessness that precedes the beginning. [...] ...within the Temple in Jerusalem, beneath the Stone of Foundation in the Dome of the Rock, was a cave known as the Well of Souls. This fountain of perennial water within the Temple may well allude to the cisterns and reservoirs known to be under the Holy Rock, but it also has metaphysical significance and refers to the mouth of the abyss identified with the subterranean torrent located at the earth’s center, from whence the rivers of Paradise went forth to water the four corners of the world...”

³ An example of deicide which is often not thought of as such is that of Christ, who, in his self-sacrifice as the human avatar of God, clears the way for a radically new covenant.

⁴ Walter Burket, in his book Homo Necans, posits that such sacrifices “were much later reenactments of primal ritual murders in which a god-king was killed and consumed.”

[unkindledsuggestions]

the funniest thing to me about the ravnican au for Leah is that it causes her personality to do a full 360 (for a while)

she used to be a really sweet, genuine, softspoken person. she could be bubbly sometimes but was mostly shy. she showed mercy in places she probably shouldn’t have (another character scoffed at her for sparing a beast in Irithyll, saying it would just come for her later if she did, and Leah still wouldn’t kill it because it was begging for mercy). she was VERY driven by her faith in the Church and Gwyndolin, but she also had faith in herself and trusted herself to make the right decisions

after finding out about Gwyndolin’s death and having her damn mind shatter and going Hollow, Leah came back a different person. colder, more sarcastic, fairly cynical about herself, pretty damn depressed, and mostly without mercy. she bit off a few of her friends’ heads and hated herself for it, but couldn’t stop herself when they were being so overwhelmingly cheerful or devastatingly obtuse. she had no faith in anything except her brother and the Pit, and was no longer a protector-type character, but a hunter. one of the very people she used to protect against before Hollowing.

her personality stays that way in her true canon, up until she dies. she’s still protective toward her friends, but everyone else can pretty much fuck themselves.

but in the ongoing Ravnican AU, when Sona wipes her memories, she loses the trauma that caused her to Hollow and change. no more memory of Gwyndolin’s death. no more memory of her own failures or the mistakes she made with Ethan or how she thinks she failed her friends.

Sona removing her memories reverts her back to her original personality, albeit with a lot more confusion because with Sona’s guidance, she thinks she’s a severe amnesiac he’s generously helping.

also the potential for a major breakdown because one of the other characters who’ll survive this AU won’t hesitate to beat her lesson of being merciless back into Leah’s head (and like the first time, Leah will still refuse)

[seeyouguyslater]

Ever think abt dark sun gwyndolin?

Like i know dark souls is a depressing ass game but damn... Yanno?

[crimsonlocks]

CHARACTER SHEET repost. do not reblog.

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME. Ornstein PRONUNCIATION. Orn-ssst-ayn. NICKNAME: Orny, Orn, Ornsty, Orin, but he doesn’t like when you call him one. GENDER. Cis Male HEIGHT. 260cm AGE. unknown, but anywere between 35 and 3.000 ZODIAC. Leo SPOKEN LANGUAGES. Anor Londo common tongue

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR. Crimson red, curly, very long, EYE COLOR.  Green SKIN TONE. Pale BODY TYPE. tall, ripped, broad shoulderse, six pack, visible muscles ACCENT. None VOICE. rather deep, but not too deep. Speaks very calmly and collected. Almost never raises his voice. DOMINANT HAND. Right POSTURE. Straight SCARS. Too many. Mostly burns from the dragon war, some scars from the Chosen Undead and a scar on his  temple from Smough’s failed mercy killing TATTOOS. None BIRTHMARKS. Freckles MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). Very tall, has fangs for canines, crimson red hair, lots of scars on his body, but not on his face.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH. Near Anor Londo HOMETOWN. A village near Anor Londo BIRTH WEIGHT. Usual BIRTH HEIGHT. Usual MANNER OF BIRTH. Unknown, because he was a foundling, but because he was clearly a newborn, it got determinded that he wasn’t born far from the orphanage. FIRST WORDS. (holy, I never thought about that... but I would like to think that it was paint) SIBLINGS. Unknown, but he considers the other children in the orphanage as siblings. PARENTS. Unknown, the matron of the orphanage was his closest parental figure PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. None, he got abandoned as a newborn. The matron of the orphanage did her best to raise him, but with so many kids in her care he ended up being a bit neglected. Especially because Ornstein was the quiet kid.

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION. Knight, Dragon Slayer CURRENT RESIDENCE. Anor Londo, travelling the world, Arch Dragon Peak CLOSE FRIENDS. Artorias, Ciaran, Gough, Gwyndolin, for RP interactions, Quelarah so far RELATIONSHIP STATUS. depending on verse, taken in Blooming Anor Londo (NK), married in Forsaken Anor Londo (Smough), widowed in Wanderer verse, taken again in Arch Draon Peak (reconciled with NK) FINANCIAL STATUS. Fine. He isn’t rich, but he gets a nice pay for being a knight, though because he gets food and room in the cathedral, he gets paid much less as one would think. DRIVER’S LICENSE. Modern verse Ornstein is a cop and needs to have a driver licence, so yes CRIMINAL RECORD. Well, genociding an entire species counts, right? VICES. He gets jealous easily.

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. gay ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. gay PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive  | dominant | switch. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. submissive |  dominant | switch. LIBIDO. Average TURN ON’S. Biting, scratching, everything that invokes light pain, food play TURN OFF’S. Anything that hurts more than just a bit, gross stuff (besides golden shower, he is willing to do this) RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. He has troubles saying that he is in love, but shows it mostly with silent cuddles. Ornstein will rarely say “I love you.”, just pull them into a hug and tell them that he cares for them like this.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. Boss music. HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. Painting, playing the piano, doing parkour, MENTAL ILLNESSES. Depression, PTSD, Anxiety PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. Ornstein’s body is rather healthy, but he tends to get a psychsomatic sickness when feeling mentally unwell. PHOBIAS. Dogs SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. You would think it is high, but Ornstein constantly thinks he has to proof himself or people wouldn’t care for him. He thinks that people only care for him when he is the dragon slayer and would hate and loathe Ornstein, the man behind the golden armour. VULNERABILITIES. breaks down easily but never will show it, dogs, cats and birds, having to eat his own food, is very anxious, when he messes up, he will probably hide for hours in his room because he is so embarrassed about. Gets embarrassed about everything. tagged by: stolen! tagging: crime it up!

[just-ornstein]

The meme for Ornstein and Fandral please.

Ornstein:

OTP for them: Ornstein/Smough, no surprise there. Also still Ornstein and @general-grey​ Caspiron. That one always holds a special spot for me.

BROTP for them: Uhhh probably Artorias, Ciaran and Gough. They’re his buddies. Never shipped him romantically with any of those either. I also loved the idea of him and Gwyndolin being good buddies.

Other ships: Ornstein/Nameless King... I think that’s it? Him with Gwyndolin was my first ship tbh, so that one is still somewhat interesting as well.

What kind of fic I’d write about them: Hurt/comfort, hurt/comfort, hurt/comfort! That one fits best for Ornstein all the way. He’s a sad boy.

A favorite canon moment: He has not much canon screen stuff. xD Sure my OC version of him has plenty of time... But with the canon game the only thing he has is a boss fight in Dark Souls I.

Color that reminds me of them: Gold and Red, always. Also Cyan/Turquoise, because it’s the colour of lightning and what I headcanon his eyes to look like.

Song that reminds me of them: Miserere Mei Deus!

A headcanon about them: Too many haha, it’s why I ended up making my version an OC because he turned to be so very different. I suppose one of the headcanons I still strongly believe is that you do fight the actual Ornstein and Smough, Smough died during the battle and Ornstein went on a trip to look for his lost Master the Nameless King. Ornstein managed to find said location and lived with him for about a week until he succumed to illness and died. He now lays buried at the stone altar close to where you fight Nameless King. It is outside and stands tall on some sort of hill, looking out over the mountains. 

A random AU I think up on the spot for them: World of Warcraft AU where he’d likely be a Dragon... I just am not too fond of the whole possibly making it possible for players to turn into Dragons. So it’s an idea in name alone. 

Anything else: Ornstein is still my baby, love him with all my heart. His first name is Glaurung as well (Tolkien!). <3

--

Fandral Staghelm:

OTP for them: Fandral/Xavius (only in the AU Dazzittok came up with) or Illidan/Fandral (a crack pairing yes, but I think they could have a very interesting dynamic).

BROTP for them: God... Everyone is an asshole towards Fandral so he doesn’t have many friends. But him and Broll seemed close? So perhaps those two. I also like to think of how Malfurion would have been with him in the past before everything went downhill.

Other ships: Fandral/Tyrande... My guilty pleasure hehe. Their constant bickering is super entertaining.

What kind of fic I’d write about them: Once again Hurt/Comfort cause his entire story is sad and depressing... Maybe a bit slice of life though? I’d love to go into more details of what went on inside of his head after his son died.

A favorite canon moment: I LOVED the final confrontation with him in the book Stormrage. He seemed so far gone, deeply hurt and overal like a mess and I think the writer portrayed this very well. If only Malfurion had send him to the Moonglade to recover instead of a prison in Mount Hyjal which he somehow thought would cure him?? 

Color that reminds me of them: Hahaha... Emerald Green.

Song that reminds me of them: Leaves From The Vine and It’s Been So Long by Caleb Hyles

A headcanon about them: Hmmm... Not really? I really love the idea Dazzittok has that Fandral was aware Xavius was playing tricks, but just wanted something to hold on to. I like to imagine him and Illidan at least knew each other in a sense and Fandral would sometimes visit him in prison if permitted. While this one is already kinda canon I also always felt Fandral wasn’t “corrupted” like WoW likes to tell their villains are, but rather very, very ill mentally. Losing his partner, his son, his granddaughter, having his Shan’do turn his back on him whenever he needed him, constantly being shoved aside for your ideas (and right after everyone screaming about how good some of them are, not even giving credit where is due) it does things to a man.

A random AU I think up on the spot for them: A happy AU... Please. One where his entire family is still alive and he can be happy.

Anything else: My fave wow character hands down, I know he’s rather unpopular but I love him!

[daily-smol-silm]

Fin rod and maedhros playing chess?

Day #129 - Checkmate

I have only played one game of chess in my life. Please have mercy :'D

[madetodoevil]

((Starter for @darkmoondelusion​!))

She hates the cold. Cold kills - and nobody understands that more than a plant woman. Certainly, the winter months have their own wondrous wildlife, but all her beautiful flowers from the past few months are struggling just to survive. 

And the plantlife around Isola is hardly doing any better - everything she’s planted has started to wilt, and everything that she hasn’t planted is looking even worse. Even the bamboo in the Bamboo Grove is starting to freeze over. It will survive, but... she wouldn’t want to be a bamboo grove right now.

Although, unfortunately, she might as well be one. She’s doing even worse. Like she herself has wilted, the dropping temperatures have made her weak, lethargic, and even a little depressed. It’s taking all her energy to stay her usual self, and if it wasn’t for not wanting to stay cooped up in the Nightmare Knight’s castle, she would stay there non-stop. At least it’s warm there.

In times like these, you make excuses to visit friends. So, dressed up in a floor-length black parka with a massive black faux-fur collar, she takes the now rather arduous journey to the shrine in the Bamboo Grove to pay a visit to Gwyndolin... carrying two still-smoking cups of fresh, warm tea she picked up from a local cafe on the way there.

When she enters the shrine area and sees Gwyndolin, still standing like a statue overlooking the shrine, she grins.

“Gwyndolin! You must be cold.”

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Frustration with the boss aside I am feeling weirdly very affected by Aldrich, the concept of Gwyndolin (and possibly Priscilla??) being half eaten by this thing and being used to defend it has me weirdly very sad and depressed as well as full of genuine disgust for "Saint" Aldrich. Idk why I'm feeling it so deeply. Maybe it's the combination gamer rage. Presentation and music are neat.

[wanderer-among-undead]

I will just share the story of The Noob Trio as well, because it is not a fun time all of the time:

In Lordran, Jarrod got dragged into Oolacile, where he encounters "future" Marylin and learns that she cannot go back to the present, like he can, because she is not undead. So, after helping defeat Manus and Kalameet, Jarrod has to go to the present. And even though Marylin is still there, in his present, Manus will still reach and grab her, as he could take her at ANY point in time.

Jarrod and Rosalind are also petrified between the events of Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. One of the last Dark Souls RPs actually was August tracking Jarrod down for his sins as a Blade of the Darkmoon (killing Gwyndolin and aiding a sinner, like Rose). I've headcanon'd that it was August who petrified them, and left them just there. Rosalind's statue broke, thus she died and would be reincarnated.

In Drangleic, Jarrod is brought out of stasis by a reincarnated Rosalind, and the pair gradually begin to fall in love with each other again as Jarrod has lost all of his memories to the curse except for his name and a will to survive. But also, Jarrod starts to learn more about his past after Marie leaves. This journey brings him to a cavern of crystal, where he finds Marylin locked in crystal. He breaks her free, and they rekindle their old friendship.

By Lothric, Jarrod, Rosalind, and Marylin have become incredibly powerful. We did not get to do much, but Jarrod and Rosalind lost the Court of Roses to the Pallid Lord and their adopted family with it. They are both depressed and unable to be as happy as they used to be, being so very weary. Marylin also got trapped in Irithyll Dungeon.

[girlvinland]

17, 25 and 28! For the soulsborne asks 💜

17. Which boss has the saddest fate?

Lol, you know I'm going to say Gwyndolin bc I bring this fate up every day of my life. Idk if it is objectively the saddest but to me I think it's just pretty damn bad. Like I already felt bad for Gwyndie in DS1 then DS3 happens?? Are they for real??? Still love it though for reasons. Orphan of Kos is also pretty depressing I GUESS. And Ceaseless is sad. Now I'm just trying to think of bosses that don't have sad fates or backstories or whatever. I got nothing, I'm sure there has to be someone??

25. Do you headcanon Sif as male or female? Why?

Female just bc of the name being a Norse goddess name.

-

I'm gonna answer 28 in the next one since I got it twice! Ty Juan ;w;.

[ladygwyndolin]

Rachel Ranks: Dark Souls 3 Bosses From Worst to Best

#14: Aldrich, Devourer of Gods

“Aldrich became a lord by devouring men, but was disillusioned with his throne, and so took to devouring gods instead.”

Man, fuck this dude. Boss quality aside, having to fight Gwyndolin’s puppeteered corpse was so goddamn depressing (especially given how terribly the series treated her since her first appearance) and feels like a cheap tug at the heartstrings rather than an engaging visual depiction of the nasty sludge monster from the intro. Those gripes aside, the fight itself is fun and engaging even if certain anti-magic abilities turn it into a joke. The magic visuals are great, especially the bow attack that goes from predictable in phase one to a goddamn death run in phase two and the big ol’ scythe. I do feel like this fight has much less of an impact in subsequent playthroughs, but I’ll never forget how much this dude fucked me up on that first run. But at the end of the day, no matter how memorable his fight might be, he’s still a slimy transphobic scumbag that I’ll never forgive for eating my wife.

Pros:

The culmination of fantastic lore built up throughout the game

Fun magical visuals and very fitting music to match

Cons:

Feels like wasted potential

Only really impresses on the first playthrough

(Agree with this ranking? Disagree? Have something totally tangential to add? Feel free to leave a reply!)