#flora bloodborne

[crowhoonter]

The Moon Presence holds a special place in my heart in terms of souls games final bosses because of the sheer what the fuckness of it all. All of the other final bosses have some kind of build up; Dark Souls can't go one minute without mentioning Gwyn, Nashandra and Aldia are major figures in Ds2's lore, the Soul of Cinder, while never directly alluded to is another example of the converging of time and space in 3, Isshin plays a large part in Sekiro's story, and Radagon is a major lore character with Elden Beast being pretty easy to clock as a manifestation of the Greater Will.

Flora, the Moon Presence, though? She comes out of nowhere. There are maybe two lines alluding to her existence at all, those being the workshop umbilical cord and the lecture hall note. The closest you otherwise get is the references to the terrible hunter's dream, which doesn't immediately conjure the idea of her to mind.

Even better we don't even know what she really wants. Oh sure, there are plenty of theories and inferences we can make. Maybe she uses Hunters like hitmen to prevent infant great ones from threatening her, maybe she's keeping a natural order running, maybe she wants to spread the beast plague, maybe she wants to prevent mankind's evolution, maybe she just plain loves violence. In the end though, its all still maybes. Girly walks on in and her mere existence changes so much about the story, yet she refuses to elaborate on anything.

Another very interesting aspect is, and this is probably a somewhat baseless observation, we don't really know what she is. Everywhere else in the game, Great Ones have some line of text associating them with that status. Oedon, Baby Mergo, Kos, Amygdala, The Brain of Mensis, Ebrietas. All of them have text somewhere that directly refers to them with that moniker, but Flora? Nowhere will you find something calling her a great one. Hell, in the Japanese translation, she is called "Moon Demon." It is probably safe and the intended inference that she is a great one, but the thought she might not be does tickle me nonetheless.

Then there is her role in the story. The Great Ones are said to be sympathetic in spirit, and there definitely is a part of her that echoes that sentiment. The way she cradles the hunter is like that of a mother holding a child, yet she seems to be a lot more manipulative than the Great Ones we see in game. They typically cause suffering not by tricking or making deals, but by being unaware of how they affect the world with their actions. Getting picked up by Amygdalae seems like a curious child picking up a lizard, unaware that they are hurting it. Flora though, there does seem to be a certain level of maliciousness beyond accidental. Gehrman's pain and suffering is clear to see, yet she keeps him chained to the dream because of whatever bargain he made (presumably animating the Doll). She does the same to the hunter should you forgo the umbilical cords. She also doesn't seem to want a surrogate like other Great Ones, maybe settling for keeping humans as pets rather than having an actual child.

She really is one of the best Fromsoft final bosses because of the sheer strangeness and the wrench her presence throws into the game's story. We can get a concept of most of Bloodborne's story with a bit of interpretation and reading between the lines, but she will forever be an enigma. For what purpose did Laurence and Gehrman summon her? Why is she seemingly not worshiped unlike other Great Ones? Does she desire a surrogate or are humans pets good enough? We may never know, and that is wonderful.

Stay enigmatic queen, live your freak life

[galaxirin]

Drawpile doodles with @bornetoblood and @nishihii !!

[crow-drawing-their-cards]

the moon presence.

okay so im really getting into bloodborne lately so i will post more about it. getting the game soon and it will be my first introduction to a soulsborne game!!!!

[apocalypticapotheosis]

O Flora, of the Moon, of the dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients... Let the hunter be safe, let them find comfort. And let this dream, their captor... foretell a pleasant awakening... Be one day a fond distant memory.

The Moon Presence descending is still one of my all time favourite scenes in a game, its hauntingly beautiful and chilling. After all that time you're faced with the architect of your undying night and unless you take a very specific set of steps, it embraces you as its new surrogate child, tying you forever to the dream.

I also find its appearance enthralling, its weird elongated body and exposed ribs, the tendrils of its tail like the roots of a plant and a writhing mass of tentacles on a face like the hollow of a tree

thats my mum :)

[ternovye]

[hotdogvicar]

this is the dumbest shit i ever made

[adam-trademark]

Moon Presence

(April 29, 2022)

[triflingshadows]

@wurdulac suggested I draw my favorite creature…so moon presents…this one is unidentified white +bit of red/blue paint, a light grey colored pencil, and white pen on black paper

[broodingnightgoddess]

Bloodborne is hilarious because, if you play as a female character a lady from Cathedral Ward goes: "you smell gay. Sorry but I only fuck men"

[rhythmloid]

[katyspersonal]

Flora being the actual name of Moon Presence matches so well, actually? (Apparently the "nameless" bit was edited out of Japanese original and localizations simply didn't catch up with that, but yeah... although Gehrman addressing her as Flora is a cut content dialogue, paired with the fact that "nameless" bit was retracted I think it is safe to assume that Doll does say her name and not like.. just Kin plant-life in general!)

But, again, Flora. Like, plants. In Bloodborne lore, plants, more specifically flowers, reach for the 'Stars' in the sky! Sun itself is also a star, and the Moon only shines because reflecting the light of the Sun, so, because of the star. It is played as though she is "superior" compared to the 'stars', but it only makes sense that as a 'moon' she is jealous and usurps the power! It is in how Moon doesn't glow itself and is just a dark rock no one can see without reflecting the light of the star, and how the flora(plantlife) in Bloodborne reaches for the star. This is just so clever

[galaxirin]

The Plain Doll remembers her birth

Comic series here

[kumiaku]

Kinktober Day 10 - Tentacles (Moon Presence)

Kinktober Day 10 - Tentacles, Moon Presence x Reader, Bloodborne

Masterlist

Misc. Tags/Info - Reader is good hunter who takes gehrman's place after the hunt and is Flora's plaything, but is Strangely into it. GN reader - usage of ‘hole’ specifically anal. Angst, actually kinda sad but that is expected of bloodborne, long set up sorry. Flora is referenced as the Moon Presence the whole time and has it/its pronouns, bcuz unfortunately the reader does realize the feminine grace of Flora. Monster fucking ofc, its bloodborne, eldritch horror fucking.

WC - 707

Nsfw under cut

Every Great One loses its child, then yearns for a surrogate. For a long time, that so-called surrogate child was the pathetic old man you knew as Gehrman. You heard him weep, heard him cry out for a release in the darkest of nights. 

So you released him, were embraced by the Moon Presence in his stead, and took his role. It was a cycle, the night began again, then you were alone with the Doll, the night began again, then you were alone with the Doll, the night began again - 

You were tired. So very tired. The Doll, for as kind as she was, did not have much to offer you. She was a mimic, a doll, a copy, a clone, a puppet, and the more you wanted something else, someone else, someone to hold you who’s hands weren’t jointed and cold. 

The Hunters who came were hard to talk with. Some were hysterical, some were downright sociopathic, some were hardly human. The blood, the hunt, the wolves, the flowers, the moon, everything was getting on your nerves. Yet the Moon Presence never seemed to come down - staying stationary and sad, solemnly mourning the loss of its surrogate. 

That is, until you were fed up enough to yell for it, to let out your anger and sorrows in a rampant and rage filled string of words that you were sure it wouldn’t quite understand. But for the very first time, it seemed as though the Moon Presence would recognize you as its surrogate’s successor and do something. 

But it didn’t, not in the way that you believed it would. 

Like the very first time you beheld it, it held you, large spindly boney fingers wound tightly around your torso. You gulped as you stared at it - fear or awe - it didn’t matter, you were long in its grasp.

It tilted - what you thought is - its head at you, peering close, almost brushing up against you. It was a cold neutrality, its grip neither warm nor cold, like some dead zone, like you were incapable of feeling its touch. But you weren’t. You had drawn its attention, and was now rigorously examining you, like some kind of plaything. 

Your breath stilled, you didn’t even struggle in its grasp. The feelers - the tentacles? - behind its head crept forward, slithering over your face, points caressing and dipping against your skin. It wasn’t quite scaly, nor was it fleshy, it was soft and slick, but not sticky or wet. It was a sensation unlike anything you’d ever felt before - one that made your skin tingle beneath it - made you want it to touch you more. 

Once it had sufficiently investigated your face, the Moon Presence’s tentacles slid down your chin, your neck, and between your skin and clothes. Little effort seemed to come from its part, effortlessly extending its reach against your skin, leaving that same impression on your chest as it rubbed against your bare skin. The deeper it stretched its tentacles, the thicker the gap was, tearing your clothes like a letter opener for the curiosity of what was hidden. 

Just as you were curious of the Moon Presence, it was curious of you. Curious of all of your cracks and crevices, taking the time to gently explore you, sliding its tentacles between the part in your lips. Rolling the strange appendage over your tongue, over your body, and investigating you further. 

It didn’t taste bad, not like iron or rot, it wasn’t pungent but fragrant, flowery or floral and tingling on your tastebuds. It left a blooming sensation in your head as it slid inside of you, hardly needing any time to prep you, as its tentacles were thin and slick until they weren't. You couldn’t contain the squeak you made as it rolled inside of you, your rage long gone, disappeared by the ribbed sensation of its tentacles within you. 

Again, it tilted its head, the Moon Presence so very curious and repeating the motion several times in the attempt to coax another noise out of you. You failed horribly in trying to keep anything contained. It seemed intent on exploring every cavity you housed. You didn’t know if you were more afraid, aroused, or amazed.

[dawn-arts]

Happy anniversary to the game that changed my life.

May you be free from the clutches of console soon.

[reslari]

Every Great One Loses Its Child and Yearns for a Surrogate Mother

So here I was watching one of the dozens of Bloodborne lore analysis/plot breakdown videos I’ve seen in my life, when the producer of the video made an offhanded comment that lodged firmly within my brain and got my thoughts running a thousand miles an hour. It’s funny, in all the videos and text lore posts I’ve seen, I can not recall anyone positing that the “surrogate” may be referring to a surrogate mother. Oh, I know there is someone out there that’s said it before, I am hardly trying to take credit for the idea, but I thought I’d do a little thought experiment of what it could potentially mean that the term “a surrogate” refers to a surrogate mother.

Now, of course, the obvious answer to why most people don’t think of it that way is because the item description specifically references children: Every Great One loses its child, and yearns for a surrogate. The context informs you that it’s talking about a surrogate child.

But what if it’s not?

Every Great One loses its child and yearns for a surrogate (mother).

Every Great One loses its child. They’re beings of a higher plane of existence, with nebulous physical forms. Some of them don’t even exist in physical form at all (that we know of), so it makes a sort of sense: They can’t carry a child to term. Their bodies aren’t built for it anymore. Maybe they never really were. So the mundane, physical, even bestial idea of pregnancy is beneath such beings and their dreamy ascended plane.

Yet, even still, they yearn for children.

So they look back to the plane they left behind, the plane they once inhabited and bred with the Pthumerians upon, and they find the humans. They’re fertile, they’re tied to the waking, physical world, and, most importantly: they’re trying to make contact.

I recall once that Miyazaki said in an interview that the implication of the Great Ones is that the more advanced a civilization is, the lower the birth rate. What is more advanced than the very Great Ones? But this seems contradictory: If their society is so advanced that they no longer feel the need to reproduce, why then would “every” Great One lose its child and yearn for another? Why do they even care?

Unless they’re simply not capable of reproducing anymore on their own, despite wanting to. The higher plane they ascended to cannot support the creation of new life. The changes to their bodies preclude them from having these children. Their nigh-on immortality means there is no reason for them to want successors or children to carry on their legacies or family bloodlines, and yet, they yearn for that which they cannot have anymore regardless. Such a simple thing, as well: While there is variance in individual members, reproduction is an extremely common occurrence everywhere in the waking world, and is typically easy to do.

Great Ones are too advanced for simple asexual reproduction: They’re far more than single-cell organisms, so they can’t just clone themselves into a second being. Further, even if they were able to form a zygote without input from a second member of their species, they’d still need to form eggs or a placenta - to create amniotic fluid, the sea within - to nurture the growing fetus until it is ready to join the world, and that’s where they’re getting stuck. They cannot nurture these children.

But the humans have great fecundity, comparatively, and there are a number of them trying to contact the Great Ones. Just like the Pthumerians before, they’re perfectly suited to carry these children the Great Ones want to term.

Whether the humans want to, or not. 

I’ve seen some arguments going around the internet lately - and I’m sure it’s not a new argument, but it’s had some time in the limelight in previous weeks - about pushing to outlaw surrogacy, because it is commodifying women’s bodies. Consider that connection to the game, as the Great Ones use the humans for their own wants. Not even a need - after all, as I said, there is no reason for the Great Ones to even want to reproduce in the first place, the typical “ensuring the survival of a species by its continuation” instinct shouldn’t even apply here. Yet want to they do. They yearn for children. And they yearn for the people who can carry them, because they cannot any longer. It may as well be surrogacy tourism, to an entirely other plane of existence.

In exchange? The Great Ones have no use for traditional currency, so they can only guess what the humans would want in turn. Maybe they don’t care about that, either, but their mark does come in the form of wisdom, knowledge, the “Eldritch Truth”. Wisdom that the vast majority of humans cannot even understand or fathom, because they’re such “lesser” creatures than the Great Ones, and they don’t even speak the Great Ones’ language. Wisdom they’ll tear themselves apart over the interpretation of because multiple different schools of thought are going to pop up over the scraps the Great Ones leave behind.

What of the humans that don’t even want their bodies used in such a way?

That’s what makes this even more horrifying: I don’t think the Great Ones even care. They can hardly communicate with the humans. All the humans in Yharnam seem to want to contact the Great Ones, and there are some that find it wonderful, find it an honor. More, in fact, than ones that don’t. To the Great Ones, it likely seems the conditions of their exchange are universally accepted, even if that is far from the truth. Then, we are left with situations like Annalise and Imposter Iosefka actively welcoming a pregnancy by a Great One, but Arianna actively abhorring it.

So let us Teal Deer a longwinded explanation of how this can be applied:

Kos was pregnant when she was found washed up on the shore, or killed, and it doesn’t really matter where one stands on this idea. We know for a fact that the huge, skeletal, YEEEOW-ing creature we fight as a boss is a projection, or a form that the enraged Orphan wanted to take, not its actual body, given solidity by the Nightmare. When you kill it, the real form is the shadowy embryo-like being floating over the corpse of Kos. Only when that is slain does the Nightmare Slain message play and you get the message about the, “Sweet child of Kos, returned to the ocean...”

It’s easy to extrapolate, then, that the baby was never part of a viable pregnancy. Perhaps it did die alongside Kos when she died, but if every Great One loses its child then it was never going to be properly born. Perhaps, generously, you could say that it ended up like Mergo, a consciousness in a Nightmare Realm without a body. It certainly was never allowed to properly develop into a full being, all it could do was emulate the physical forms of the creatures that took it from its mother. Perhaps this means that Kos died before her baby did, even if the pregnancy was never going to be able to finish, and in this particular exchange the child did survive in a capacity it may never have been able to before. Kos’ life for her orphan.

But what of Mergo?

Mergo only exists in that Nightmare realm, too. The Yharnam Stone that you get for defeating Queen Yharnam in the chalice dungeons is, ostensibly, a crystallized fetus, encased in solidified blood. We know of Queen Yharnam as Mergo’s mother, so does it not follow that the solidified fetus is Mergo’s form itself? And its formless, voice-only existence in the Nightmare is not just a marker of possible parentage by Oedon, but also a possible indicator that it died, which means the process of using a human (or humanoid) being as a surrogate wasn’t going to work 100% of the time. Yet, it survived in enough of a form to be worth kidnapping. As long as the Great One reaches the “embryo” development stage, it seems, the Great Ones can begin to construct their own higher realm of existence, but if they died at this early stage, it seems they can only partially construct it.

Mergo and Kos' orphan are unborn, as well. You are in the nightmares of the unborn, in 2/3 of Bloodborne’s Nightmare stages, with the Nightmare Frontier (frontier, of course, meaning border) separating the two unborn Great Ones’ Nightmares from each other, held in place by a border guardian: An Amygdala. (Amygdalae are, after all, the Great Ones through which your Hunter passes in order to access two of the Nightmare realms. It makes sense they exist to sit on the border between Waking World and Nightmare, and between the various Nightmares to keep the consciousnesses from interfering with each other).

When the Moon Presence descends from the sky, what is the first thing it does? It wraps itself around your character and presses its face into your hunter’s stomach. Now, it is easy to assume that Great Ones can’t immediately tell the difference between male and female humans, between which humans could potentially bear a child for them, and which cannot, or, perhaps, that the Great Ones don’t even care to make that distinction. Still, the way the Moon Presence shoves its head into your hunters’ stomach was always rather peculiar, as though it is trying to either “bless” your hunters’ belly with child, or checking to make sure that your hunter is not pregnant (regardless of if they are even capable or not). The Moon Presence certainly isn’t going to be bearing any children - it’s a spine wrapped in meat, with the ribs poking out. It has nowhere to even hold a baby to gestate. Clearly, your hunter isn’t much able to, either, because in the end, they’re either held in stasis in the Dream, or being touched within and without by the Great Ones turns them into a slug. Or, well, what if...?

Let’s talk about some of the Kin, shall we?

We know Rom was made the way she is because of Kos, since Micolash won’t shut up about it. Given the comments made about Rom by the development team, we can presume Rom was, as a human, female. But we need look no further than the fact Rom is surrounded by spiderlings. They bear a passing resemblance, at least in the face, to the Byrgenwerth Spider herself. But if Rom has children - where did they come from? Or, to be most precise, who impregnated her?

Instead of answering that question immediately, let us talk about Ebrietas. In the Orphanage of Upper Cathedral Ward are all those celestial larvae. They have wing-like appendages that are reminiscent of Ebrietas’ wings, and they’re all turned toward the Cathedral, underneath which is Ebrietas, as though trying to see or reach out to her. Now, if those Celestial Larvae are her children directly, then she would likely not be a full Great One, and only merely a kin; supported by the fact she drops Kin Coldblood. After all every Great One loses its child. But Arianna gives birth to one of them, too, so it could very well be that some of the women of Yharnam gave birth to them and they’re attracted to Ebrietas for other reasons.

One of those reasons could reasonably be that, say, Ebrietas was their Great One parent. More of a “father” than a mother, as little as those words really mean in the biology of breeding with Great Ones. We know the Choir was using Ebrietas for their experiments into ascension, and it could also be reasonably argued that her blood was cut in with Oedon’s for blood therapy and treatments. That could give her easy access to ensuring someone like Arianna’s womb developed a Great One child. One that was hers. You also see her bent over the Altar of Despair, grieving, apparently, a body that looks suspiciously like Rom’s. In this scenario, there’s more than a small argument to be made that Rom’s pregnancy is from contact with Ebrietas. 

Yet, if you ascribe to the idea that Ebrietas is kin, rather than a full Great One, it paints an even bleaker picture. Ebrietas was ascended from a “lesser” being, was left behind when the rest of the Great Ones ascended, and now exists to bear children, of which she has had many. Left behind in a realm where conception and birth is possible - the Waking World. Combine this with the number of children that surround Rom, and... well...

What if the ascension to Kin (at least, of the ones who were blessed by the Great Ones, and not created like the Celestial Emissaries) is either caused by or done because they are used to carry Great One children to term?

In this bleak scenario, Rom and Ebrietas both are essentially broodmares for the Great Ones. Ebrietas likely for Oedon, and Rom? Rom could be for Oedon as well, but we don’t know how much contact with Oedon’s Old Blood she had - but we do know at least one Great One she was touched by: Kos.

The changes to their bodies could have come because they successfully carried for a Great One, though it’s not guaranteed. While we know that contact with Kos can turn people (and. dogs.) into fish-like creatures, Queen Yharnam was never anything but a Pthumerian (though, again, the rules could be different for the Pthumerians), so it’s not guaranteed. But a human that is continually impregnated, to be a surrogate mother for Great Ones that yearn for children then turning into a Great One by exposure (but not so much of a Great One that they can no longer bear children), who then continues to give the Great Ones the children they want is a horrifying enough fate.

But I can do one worse. I can make all of this even more gruesome:

Parasitism is a very common theme in Bloodborne. In modern medicine, someone who wishes to be a surrogate mother can do so through traditional surrogacy or gestational surrogacy. Traditional surrogacy would be as I described it before: Where the surrogate mother’s own eggs are fertilized and the child is carried to term. Being used for one’s own fecundity to bear a Great One’s child would be an example of the former, generally speaking. Whomever bore the children would be the human half of the infant’s parentage.

But there is a second type: Gestational surrogacy. In modern medicine, this is where In Vitro Fertilization comes into play, and the embryo is implanted into the uterine lining of a surrogate. The baby is not biologically related to the person whom carries it: it is a different couple essentially “borrowing” a fertile surrogate’s womb in order to gestate a child because the original couple cannot bear the child for any number of reasons.

We know Great Ones can, at the very least, conceive children amongst themselves. Kos was pregnant, after all. So Great Ones are capable of breeding and, at the very least, getting through the very first stages of pregnancy.

In the most bleak scenario, what is happening in Yharnam isn’t Great Ones breeding with humans to just make the humans carry their babies because the Great Ones can’t have children -

They’re implanting their own fetuses into the wombs of Yharnamites and forcing them to carry unrelated children to term.

Like wasps laying eggs in tarantulas, except they need not enter through a wound.

It would be easy, as well. Oedon exists within the blood; “formless”, but still existent. Small, abstract enough to transport a fertilized Great One egg, zygote, even a small embryo and transfer it into a Yharnamites’ body. Other Great Ones would have to do it in different ways, but it makes sense this way why Oedon is usually the one pointed at for being the Great One parent for most of the infant Great Ones in the game.

Thinking of it that way, it makes sense why Elden Ring’s Bloodborne callback reference to Oedon is the Formless Mother; Oedon was never actually a "he" as the item descriptions refer. Oedon is just another Great One looking for a hapless mortal to bear the children it desires, but cannot carry.

Every Great One loses its child and yearns for a surrogate, a mother to carry and bear its child because it can no longer gestate. A child it does not even need, but wants anyway, for utterly inscrutable reasons.

Hope that “Eldritch Truth” was worth it.

[val-of-the-north]

Moon Presence’s concept art is very striking to me, mostly because she hardly looks like what we saw in-game. She looks so... whole. Almost gentle in a way.

The contrast between the two forms is interesting. Maybe she used to look more like her concept art in the ancient past. Maybe her current state is the reason why she seems so bitter and perpetuates the hunt.