rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
I broke my stupid foot and spent the past week in bed. Playing Bloodborne again would have fixed me; but, since the game is a PlayStation exclusive that’s not available on Steam Deck, I settled for the next best thing and watched a few movies that promised a similar vibe.

It Follows (2014) is a horror movie about an eldritch creature that stalks teenagers in a suburb of Detroit. The conceit is that the creature can look like different people, and its target can only notice it at the edges of their attention.

Read more... )

Dark City (1998) was released a year before The Matrix, and it’s very close to the same story.

Read more... )

The Head Hunter (2018) is an hour-long art film that I discovered by reading a Reddit thread about “movies like Dark Souls.”

Read more... )

The Ninth Gate (1999) is a supernatural mystery in which Johnny Depp pieces together a demonic ritual for a wealthy client by tracking down and comparing the last surviving editions of a forbidden book.

Read more... )
rynling: (Gators)
HUNTER'S MARK: A Bloodborne Anniversary Zine
https://huntersmarkzine.carrd.co/

Hunter’s Mark is a free, digital, open-call fanzine celebrating Bloodborne, announced publicly on the tenth anniversary of the main game and to be released for free on the tenth anniversary of the Old Hunters DLC.

It seems like there are no applications for this project; you just sign up and tell the mods what you're submitting. Sounds good to me!

I've actually been looking for an excuse to write about Rom the Vacuous Spider. Before she was a giant horrible creature, Rom was a scholar at Byrgenwerth College, and I'd like to take a shot at telling her story. My idea is that Rom desired a longer life and deeper insight for the sake of scholarship, and that she was obsessed with the "publish or perish" cult of academic productivity. If nothing else, I've been keeping a running list of fake book titles that might appear in Bloodborne, and this would be a fun opportunity to share my delusions. I'll call my story "Progeny," because... Idk, a swarm of spiders is as good of an analogy for academic publishing as anything.
rynling: (Default)
I’m not sure how to describe the game Indika save to say that it’s like Dark Souls, if Dark Souls were a no-combat walking sim set in 1910s Russia. It’s an incredible game, but I’m going to need to take some time to process it.

I was actually thinking two things when Indika randomly crossed my radar on Steam. The first is that I’m starting to get nostalgic for the PS3/PS4 era of graphics (ca.2010-2014) where games were very pretty but not yet completely photorealistic. “The original 2011 release of Dark Souls” is a strange liminal territory to aim for in terms of graphics, but Indika occupies this space quite well.

The second thing I was thinking is that it would be cool to see a spiritual successor to Bloodborne set in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. The religion is incredible, the vibes are immaculate, and it would be a pleasure to be horribly murdered while exploring that style of “Russian Revival” architecture. Indika is more Dark Souls (ie, empty ruins) than Bloodborne, but it scratches the same itch.

By the way, a friend was recently saying that Spain would also make a good setting for Bloodborne, and you know what. That would be amazing too. Fuck yes.

Nosferatu

Dec. 26th, 2024 11:56 am
rynling: (Mog Toast)
I really enjoyed Nosferatu. This is as it should be, seeing as how the movie was created for me specifically. I'd have to watch it again to be sure, but I'm fairly certain that some of the dialogue and a few of the mis-en-scene frames were directly lifted from Bloodborne. Honestly, Nosferatu is Bloodborne if Bloodborne were overtly horny.

You may be shaking your head and thinking that not every Gothic story set in Germany is Bloodborne. Maybe, you might suggest, Bloodborne was in fact inspired by the original 1922 Nosferatu movie. This is incorrect. Not a lot of people know this, but many European Gothic Revival artists and architects cite Hidetaka Miyazaki as a direct source of inspiration. (source)

Read more... )
rynling: (Default)
While doing research on Bloodborne lore, I stumbled across a fanfic novella that's probably the best variation on "Shadow over Innsmouth" that I've ever encountered.

It's not necessary to be familiar with Bloodborne or Lovecraft to appreciate this story, which is a grim mystery that unfolds over the course of a series of interviews. So I thought I'd share:

🐟 https://archiveofourown.org/works/45502579/chapters/114490609
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
Bloodborne Plot Notes
http://soulslore.wikidot.com/bb-plot

I found an amazing summary of Bloodborne's story that can be read like a novel. The writer agrees with me that Rom was once human. Which is neat. All things considered, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be a giant moss-covered spider living in a beautiful lake surrounded by dense forest.

Anyway, it took me a week, but I finally figured out how to kill her.

Read more... )

I understand that many people experience a sense of accomplishment after defeating such a difficult boss, but I don't feel that it's really necessary for Rom to be as hard as she is. Most of what it took for me to defeat her was level grinding, and I had to do several hours of it. Ah well. Moving on.
rynling: (Default)
The Religion Of The Healing Church In Bloodborne
https://burnttongueblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/the-religion-of-the-healing-church-in-bloodborne-lore-study/

The Healing Church, eager to study the Old Blood and attain evolution through it, looked at the power controlled by the Catholic Church or a Catholic-like church, in the surrounding country/continent/world and used it as a blueprint to create their own organization – an organization that would inspire religious fervour in the local populace, and allow them the finances, power and freedom to experiment as they saw fit.

I'm onboard with this reading. It supports my own interpretation of Bloodborne lore, which is that the timeline of the events leading to the game is quite short, probably only about 30 years. The Healing Church only recently supplanted the primary religion in Yharnam, but this shift resulted in the city's relative isolation in the midst of an industrial revolution.

The Bloodborne DLC apparently sets up the timeline of what happened and who the major players were. I really appreciate this summary and analysis essay:

What's going on in Bloodborne: The Old Hunters?
https://www.eurogamer.net/bloodborne-whats-going-on-in-the-old-hunters
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
On the other side of the hillbilly-infested snake forest is Byrgenwerth. This is what I thought would be "the haunted university," but really it's just someone's lake house. It's a very aristocratic lake house, to be sure! But it's only a single building. At this lake house are about a dozen people whose heads are lotus seedpods filled with eyes, a giant centipede with a vertically slit mouth filled with teeth, and an old man staring at the lake.

Read more... )

Based on bits and pieces of lore I've picked up, I assume that Rom used to be one of the scholars who hung out at Byrgenwerth. Again, as Byrgenwerth is someone's country estate, there must be a large university elsewhere. Willem, the old guy who hangs out on the balcony overlooking the lake, was apparently a professor who brought a bunch of grad students on a field trip to study forbidden knowledge. One of his students, Laurence, became obsessed with the blood of the Great Ones and went on to establish the Healing Church. Rom was probably another student. I guess she got obsessed with the eyes of the Great Ones and, in an experiment she performed on herself, unfortunately turned into a giant spider. Rom originally being human is just a theory, but grad students do be like that.
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
I haven’t figured everything out yet, but I think this is what’s going on in Bloodborne…

Read more... )

It’s hard to say, though, and I could be wrong. There’s very little text in the game itself, and this text is extremely fragmented. Based on what I’ve played so far, I get the feeling that it’s entirely possible to see everything there is to see in Bloodborne and still not pick up on what’s going on in the background story of the game.
rynling: (Terra Branford)
In case you'd like a visual reference for Vicar Amelia...

Read more... )

...who is the goodest girl.
rynling: (Default)
Lore & Connections
https://www.bloodborne-wiki.com/2016/09/lore-connections.html

Bloodborne Exhibition at Victoria and Albert Museum
https://www.bloodborne-wiki.com/2018/12/bloodborne-exhibition-in-victoria-and.html

GDC 2016 - The Gothic Horror Music of Bloodborne
https://www.bloodborne-wiki.com/2017/02/gdc-2016-gothic-horror-music-of.html

Sometimes I'm like, "the internet is finished," and then sometimes I find a small but extensive archival project like this that gives me hope for the future. Peace and love on planet earth.

Yarn Town

Mar. 7th, 2024 07:41 am
rynling: (Terra Branford)
Yarn Town
https://www.freegameplanet.com/yarntown-download-game/
https://maxatrillionator.itch.io/yarntown

Created by Max Mraz in the rather impressive Solarus engine, Yarntown is a homage to FromSoftware’s 2015 Bloodborne game, which recreates the entirety of the Central Yharnam area in a Zelda inspired top-down style. It’s a lot easier than Bloodborne and the Zelda-esque combat is fairly simple, but it’s nice to return to Central Yarnham and wander those gothic streets from a top-down perspective.

You know that Junji Ito "this is my hole" meme? Listen. This hole was made just for me.

Yarn Town is the debut project of the person who went on to create the Nintendo Switch game Ocean's Heart (which I love). As far as I can tell, they developed their GBA style engine, Solarus, just to make this Bloodborne fangame. I have built a small shrine for them in my heart.
rynling: (Default)
"I wonder what a map of the Forbidden Woods would look like," I thought to myself. And, to my delight, I found that a kind deactivated user on Tumblr has drawn a map:

Read more... )

I looked at a real map of the game (here). The forest is indeed actually quite large; but, due to the layout design and level of detail, it feels infinite. It's really impressive.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
So I’ve seen a lot of theories about the identity of the "runesmith of Byrgenwerth"
https://skelayton-lord.tumblr.com/post/167523600216

I'm not sure this post is going to make much sense to anyone who hasn't played Bloodborne. It doesn't make much sense to me, to be honest. I found it by googling "what does the Memory Altar do," and obviously this isn't an answer to my basic gameplay question, but it's as good a place as any to start looking for lore.

What I'm picking up on is that whatever happened in Yharnam is the end result of the studies of a group of scholars at a university called Byrgenwerth. Among other things (that I am still trying to piece together), these scholars decided that it was a good idea to literally open people's heads via craniectomy and carve runes into the inside of their skulls. Or something of that nature:

She heard the utterances of the great ones and had their runes literally burnt into her skull, just as we learned that Willem's goal of lining brains with eyes was in no way metaphorical. She heard these arcane utterances, and it literally left marks in her skull. Same with the hunter's mark - it is actually in the head of our hunter.

As far as academia goes, that sounds about right to be honest.
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
Read more... )

Anyway, after Cherry cleared out most of Old Yharnam and opened a shortcut back to the central courtyard, I realized that you can actually climb to the top of the clocktower and confront the man shooting at you with a gatling gun. It turns out the bastard also has a sword. He’s strong, and he took down Cherry in three hits.

I’ll come back for him, though. I know where he lives.
rynling: (Gator Strut)
After fighting and defeating Father Gascoigne, Cherry gained access to the Cathedral Ward. This area is patrolled by tall, creepy men who look like how I imagine American Puritans (here’s an image, cw for horror), but the inside of one of the chapels is a haven where you can send NPCs. Questlines in Souls games tend to end in terrible deaths, so I’m going to have to google this before I make any decisions.

If you go into the basement of this chapel, and then into the sub-basement, and then into the sub-sub-basement, you can pass through an unmarked side door and emerge into another section of the city called Old Yharnam. This neighborhood is less fancy than Central Yharnam, but trees and grass actually grow here, which is nice. Cherry was enjoying the scenery and minding his own business when he got mowed down by gunfire. Some asshole mounted a gatling gun onto the railing of the clocktower, and he’s made it his business to make your life miserable.

It was annoying to die, of course, but I was highly amused. I always love when you have a fantasy setting with swords and magic, and then someone shows up with a machine gun. Like, good for him.
rynling: (Default)
'All Horrid' – but not all German
https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2014/11/all-horrid-but-not-all-german.html

Apart from actual literary influences, the fact that 'Gothic' was still a synonym for 'Germanic' or 'Teutonic' was no doubt another factor in the identification of Germany with things gothic, as was the Germans' continued use of gothic type. [...] But perhaps another, although less easily demonstrable, explanation is that Germany simply lent itself more readily to gothic imagery in the popular imagination, with all the necessary forests, mountains and mediaeval buildings to furnish the scenery.

Picking apart literary history and references is something I love to do, but I'm also a big fan of Occam's razor. Perhaps it's not "easily demonstrable" (which is fair), but I assume that the literary genre about old castles in dark forests filled with wolves is associated with Germany is because Germany is in fact lousy with old castles in dark forests filled with wolves.

Anyway, the British Library article I linked to is about Jane Austen, but this post is about everyone in Bloodborne having a German or Alsatian (from the region of France on the border with Germany) name.

ETA: Okay I did more research and now I would very much like to visit Alsace.

Read more... )
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
The sewer section of Central Yharnam is relatively small, which is a shame, HOWEVER. One of the tunnels has a pig! A giant sewer pig!! Of course it’s in an advanced stage of rot, and its skin is sloughing off in a very unsettling way, but what a joyful thing to find in the sewers.

Read more... )
rynling: (Default)
Cherry found his way into the sewers, which feature:

- giant rats
- goopy filth
- legless zombies
- splashy footstep sounds
- handsome curved architecture
- long tunnels with flowing streams
- the reflection of water onto the walls
- a mildly unhinged woman in a crow outfit

Anyway, it's a bit of a truism that "you have to be aggressive" in Bloodborne, but I'm bad at video games. Thankfully, I've found that larger enemies will get stuck in doorways and on ladders, and many of them won't progress past the borders of their roaming territories. What you can therefore do is trigger their aggro, run to a safe place, and attack them from a distance. Idk man, I'm just here to admire the architecture.
rynling: (Terra Branford)
Read more... )

To test the extent of the change in world state, I had Cherry go back and talk to all of the people hiding in their houses. The game apparently assumes that I’ve defeated the Cleric Beast, because the guy who sounds super sick apologizes that the gate at the end of the bridge is closed. He tells Cherry that he might be able to go a place called the Cathedral Ward through the aqueduct.

This was music to my ears. A sewer level? So early in the game?? Just for me????

I’m so happy! Now all I have to do is find the entrance.

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