So is this damn writing process. Today I have good news, bad news, and a conciliatory gift.
The good news is that I have at this point pushed through two episodes of writer’s block on Part 4 of the Sevenfold Gyre. The bad news is that it is still far from done. Right now, it’s about 40% the length of Part 3, but since these have been getting longer with each installment, that’s no guarantee that it’s 40% done. Part of the issue is that the first two pieces were pretty tightly conceived before I wrote them (and if you are familiar with the material I’m referencing in the series, you know that Part 3 was preordained as well). We’re now reaching parts of the story where I only have shells to fill in. Quality-wise, that seems to be fine so far, but it’s taking awhile.
Also, an astounding amount of life has intervened in the past few weeks, so that’s inconvenient too. That said, we’re always working on things here, so while you wait and I write, enjoy these concept sketches Rae made for the roaches:
Bottom image: “Roach Party”, concept by Rae Johnson
Since I’m riding the strugglebus with the latest chapter of Sevenfold Gyre, you get a shitpost today. This toes the line regarding how political I’d like my writing to be, but the subject matter is highly relevant to this blog.
“Git Gud”, for me, is as much life advice as it is meme. It’s a simple message, profound in its applications if not in its essence, but not everyone is a Dark Souls diehard. For the game, it’s a response to an often punishing difficulty (for the non-gamers in my audience, Dark Souls is a hard game). For life, it’s an assurance: Your situation is under your control. Life is difficult. Work sucks. Writing is a bitch. The solution is panacea: You gotta git gud.
For me this is extremely empowering. Is it true? Probably not. 50% at best, and sometimes it’s more comforting to hear the opposite, that it isn’t all your fault–keep that in mind before you sling this at someone struggling with their mental health. I open with this because it’s personal to me, and perhaps you might be able to make use of this dubious proverb. But it’s not why I’m writing this piece. I’m writing it because every asshole on the internet seems to have piped up on this exact subject, and, near as I can tell, they’re all wrong.
I.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has been a massive success in every way possible. That’s an absolute, I know the phrasing is uncomfortable, I’ll clarify: That isn’t hyperbole. It meets/exceeds expectations as a successor to the Dark Souls series, its critical reception has been stellar, and it’s on track to be From Software’s best selling game of all time. But, as I’ve said before, it’s essentially a Dark Souls game, with all of the fuzzy narrative depth I alluded to in that post and all of the aforementioned punishing difficulty, and now that it’s not just in the mainstream but dominating the mainstream, you have a chunk of folks paying attention that might never have played this game by choice five years ago.
Enter Asshole Number 1, a games journalist who patches his game in order to beat the final boss then crows about it in his review. Asshole Number 2, and a legion of fans blast him for it–probably deserved, if only for the profound misreading of his audience–and then every other asshole takes to their preferred outlet to yell about whether the game should have an Easy mode, and then a vocal faction starts saying that it’s not about an Easy mode, it’s about handicapped accessibility, so it’s a social justice issue.
There isn’t enough alcohol in the world for this.
II.
“Who’s in the right?” No one, they’re assholes, and all of the noise is the rough equivalent of going out at night and screaming at the moon. Yeah, I’m doing it too, but I told you right off the bat that this was a shitpost. But actually, the basis for my venom is that there are multiple dynamics at play here, and everyone seems to be getting tripped up thinking that they are all one thing. Since it’s the most charged, let’s start with the accessibility side and work backwards.
Sekiro is a hard game, probably harder than Dark Souls, definitely faster, more reflex-oriented. There exist people that, due to a variety of maladies, are physically not capable of playing this game. “Should From Software make the game accessible to those people?” is a giant, angry vortex, so let’s start with something easier: Is it imperative that every game is accessible to everyone? I hope we can agree that the obvious answer is “No”, if only because it is literally impossible with today’s technology (e.g. you can’t make Sekiro playable for blind people). That’s a straw man, but its blazing corpse at least confirms that we are swimming in the middle of a blurry, grey line.
Next rung up, is it imperative that every game is accessible to everyone where possible? That depends on how you look at it. If you want to check legal precedent, a certain standard of handicapped accessibility is mandated for buildings open to the public (in the US, at least), but you wouldn’t be wrong to suggest that games and public spaces are not precise equivalents. This is also where you run into questions of responsibility. I’ll tell you right now: If Sekiro’s difficulty is preventing you from playing it, you are totally able to install the same damn mod that Asshole Number 1 used for free. And if the issue is that you have no arms, people have rigged up Darks Souls on DDR pads. You’re welcome to as well.
If you are actually handicapped, you probably think I’m being a complete jerk right now. You are correct. I am being a jerk, but as a side note, that’s the type of reaction any system is going to give when you vocalize a complaint that doesn’t line up with what exactly is wrong. The issue isn’t that Sekiro is truly gated, the issue is that as a society, we have decided that not being dicks to handicapped people is a good thing to do, and games like this are made, more or less, in ignorance of that cultural consensus.
III.
“So From Software should add accessibility options to their games?” Honestly, I don’t think so, but I’ll admit to some conflict of conscience. Isn’t it great that mod developers protect us from having to make difficult moral decisions like this? “But wait, what’s the argument against adding them?” Uh, orthogonal. “What?”
Whereas the Dark Noon series is devoted to Dark Souls’ literary elements, it should still be mentioned that From Software’s games are masterclasses of mechanical design. In particular, they have perfected the “hard game”, and I know that up until now, I have been building up how hard these games are. That was not totally honest of me. Dark Souls and Sekiro are not easy, to be sure. I find them difficult, but I’m also not that good at games. I’ve had to make double-digit attempts to kill many of the bosses throughout the series. Meanwhile, a close friend of mine beat Dark Souls 2 without stopping at a bonfire. If you’ve played the game, you know how absurd that is, but for those who haven’t, that means (with some nuance) that he never once refilled his health bar. And I don’t mean to belittle his accomplishment, but it’s not like he was the only person to ever do that either.
So yeah, Dark Souls/Sekiro is hard, but there are tons of harder games. What really sets the series apart is how rude it is to the player. The game world is inherently dangerous, the easiest enemies can still kill you if you’re sleepwalking, and should you screw up, you get sent back far, with heavy potential penalties to your accumulated experience. It’s frustrating, and that is crafted 100% intentionally. At some point, usually very early, you will make a mistake, you will fail, and you will encounter a wall of adversity–rather than difficulty–that you will need to overcome. And when the intended audience encounters that wall, they lean in.
I want to be abundantly clear: Almost everyone is physically capable of beating these games. Most will not, and there isn’t any particular shame in that. My wife is totally good enough at games to beat Dark Souls, but she likely never will. She doesn’t want to, crashing into a wall of pain over and over again isn’t her idea of a good time. So is there anything wrong with accessibility options? No not inherently. Using them to remove physical barriers is completely reasonable. It’s just that using them to remove the wall of adversity means you’re playing a different game, and From Software didn’t want to develop that different game. I won’t make strong claims about the value of one or the other, but I don’t think that’s a moral failing on their part.
From A History of the Wars Fought-Under-Shadow, by Romesse of Khet:
Even before the Iron Queen championed the Prophecy to the intelligentsia of Spar, the Diarchian view of magic’s scholarship was already curiously close-minded. The University had come of institutional age soon after the destruction of Thago, when the attentions of the Diarchs and their generals were fixed upon the applications of organized fire and water magics for future war efforts. This, intentionally or not, seemed to form the basis of the scholars’ narrative, pairing political expediency with an already-prevalent explanation that mana was an expression of the earth’s natural, elemental energies.
The practice of magic, even then, was hardly limited to the four elements the University recognized, but it was geographically convenient to anchor its study there. Spar itself had a social comfort with fire magic, and its neighbors in the Riverlands to the west, as well as the Endless Dunes to the south, had strong traditions of water and earth magic, respectively. Alternatives were scarce or much farther afield: The Lie-magic of Khet was separated from the Diarchy by nigh-impassable mountains, and the arts of manipulating blood and plants were squirreled away in the countryside, the trade of hedge mages and medicine women. Of course, the University was aware of these. It did not dismiss their existence. It merely rebranded it.
The theory was this: The earth’s mana could be drawn to a number of ends, but the elements were channels it flowed to most naturally. With limited access to anomalous data, the scholars at first concluded that mana directed toward “impure” magics–for they classified the non-elements as combinations thereof–simply would not flow as readily, weakening the magic’s effect. However, as tensions between Spar and Khet escalated, and knowledge of Khet’s shadowmen became more common throughout the Diarchy, the consensus shifted: Non-elemental magic was not weaker, per se. Rather, it was more prone to “distortion”, a vague sort of misfiring or unintended disaster. Still, though the University concurred on a value judgment for this debatably imaginary phenomenon, scholars could hardly agree on a quantification for the risk it posed.
In effect, the Iron Queen provided a resolution to this dispute. After the Decree of Magic, the fear, the nature of the distortion, had been linked to the Prophecy, to an existential threat. It was concrete, and needed no further debate…
Top Image: Prophecy, by Quinn Milton, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
Another housekeeping post, as long term plans are becoming increasingly material.
I brought up in the very beginning that this blog is meant for investment of a sort. I’ve been writing and working on creative projects for some time, and having an outlet has been a motivator for me to do so faster and more regularly than I otherwise might. That said, working on these projects is not an end in itself. The War Torn/Rale project in particular is heading for publication at some point. In the long run, the ruleset for the game (not posted here) will be refined, prettied up, and marketed to the sorts of people who enjoy those sorts of products. This might be you, or it might not.
In the shorter run, the fiction and art is going toward a book, and as such, I will be providing less of it for free. This isn’t a big issue for the fiction. I post unedited work here–by the time it’s published, it may be similar, but it won’t be the same. The art is a different story. Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been watermarking the (full) pieces that I’ve already posted. This is why.
What does this mean for you? Well, if you don’t really care about any of that, then very little. The art will be slightly uglier, but I intend to keep updating at roughly the same frequency, with roughly the same quality of material.
On the other hand if you do care about that, because you want to read the future book, the watermark is insufferable, or you just really like this blog, then take a look at our Patreon. Backers get the un-watermarked art and “free” copies of any material we publish. I’ll also probably be posting some extra writing on the feed there to keep it interesting for the people kind enough to contribute.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I continue to get questions on it. So far, all of the fiction I have posted to this blog has been in the world of War Torn/Rale. This, for some, has been pretty confusing. The events of those stories span thousands of years of fictional time, and I’ve been telling them in an order that does not remotely resemble a chronology.
Enamored as I am with the Dark Souls style of relating fantasy via primary sources, I will only do so much to help you all with this, but while it will be an exercise for the reader to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, I will give you frame to work with.
In the beginning were the Old Times. In the end were the End Times. The intervening periods had more descriptive names. The chronology is this:
The Rise of the Great Cities
The Era of Spar
The Reign of the Blood God and Free Magic
The Dereliction of the Blood God
The Era of Heroes and Horrors
The War of the Roaches
The Era of Scavengers and False Gods
The Desiccation and Era of Grit
The Mud Wars, culminating in…
The War of Fallen Trees
The War of the Freaks
The Destruction of Haven
This is not really the way the world died–that is something more nuanced–but the terminology will hopefully give you some anchor for the events of the various stories.
The boy was raised to be clean. His father was heir to the largest domain in the Riverlands, bastion of the Pure, and in his grandfather’s house, all chose: They would be made clean, or they would be expelled. Grandfather taught him to vomit all but the barest taste of his food from his guts, taught him to scrub the grease from his skin until it bled. He was taught that his body was sacred, that it must not be contaminated with the grime and gluttony of lesser folk. When he failed–and he failed often–Grandfather broke his bones and seared his back with hot iron.
The boy was raised to be resilient. When he was ten, his mother and father departed to lead the Bloodfish’s armies in the war. Grandfather would not hear a word otherwise. Lord Ka had brought the ways of the Pure out of a great, lost darkness, mustering the strength to force upon the wretched the cleanliness they were too weak to maintain in themselves, and Lo Markhan, the hero of the Riverlands–Grandfather–would help him realize that revolution at any cost. The boy was alone, bereft of any shield from the marquis’ ferric discipline. He learned to hide his pain, bind his wounds invisibly, make himself seem a model of Purity, for to be expelled was to join the roaches and Lo Markhan’s other creations of mud and bile.
The boy was raised to be strong. Grandfather had studied the fey-magics of the Feathermen in the Bloodwood, and his house was filled with death-infused creations. Some of these were for the boy, like the dish he was made to vomit in, the gown he was given for dress, the bandages wrapped around his seared skin. They lapped at his suffering, hungry, as if one day, finally sated, they would wake, but of course they never did. Instead that suffering flowed into the house, accumulating in foreboding presences that loomed when Grandfather was away.
Other objects, the boy was never to touch. There were shackles in the cellar that slowly gnawed the flesh of whomever they held, spools of thread, gifts from the Dragon of the West, that wormed into any skin unfortunate enough to be nearby. These were meant for Grandfather’s guests-of-low-regard–prisoners, perhaps, or idle, sadistic diversions–but there were still other oddities whose cruelty was not quite so direct. The boy’s favorite was a painting in the sitting room near where he slept. It was an arid, hilly landscape, unremarkable as a work of art, but fascinating in the way its pigments and smudges danced and drifted across the surface. Birds flew in the painted sky, dust blew, and branches swayed. It confused him, even as it filled him with wonder: How could this expression of beauty be at home amidst Grandfather’s other trinkets? The boy understood these creations to be fueled by suffering, maiming, the pursuit of Purity, but that darkness did not seem to be there in the painting.
It was a visiting emissary of the Dune Men, a tall, intense man with yellow eyes, intrigued by the child’s interest, who finally revealed the answer: The painting was a prison. Years ago, Lo Markhan had assisted in the subdual of the Saraa Sa’een, a terrible, wandering monster responsible for centuries of destruction. This painting was possibly his greatest creation, a cage of color and fiction that would keep the demon bound forever. That was it, the boy realized. This beauty was still of death, but death was not confined to the ugly austerity Grandfather so revered. His bewilderment was gone, but wonder remained.
As he grew into his teenage years, the boy was allowed to travel beyond the house’s boundaries, down to the villages of Grandfather’s domain. There, the customs of the Pure were merely one of many superstitions, and the darkness that watched him always seemed to abate. He walked among the villagers, queer but unobtrusive in his gown, absent the regalia and symbols of Ka or his manor. Among them, he found companionship, a sense of commonality in survival–even flourishing–in a world the boy felt so acutely to be immersed in death. On his days of escape from Grandfather’s house, he joined them in their goings-on, he learned their sayings, he ate their food, he even fell in love.
One day, he and a peasant boy caught a rabbit in the woods. The cooked it over a fire and shared it. Overcome by an affection the boy had never known under his grandfather’s roof, he kissed his companion, and the peasant boy kissed back. The two made love into the evening until the responsibilities of reality set back in, and, flush and delighted, they parted ways. But that delight soon soured–the boy had not been attentive to the time. He would arrive home after dark, and Grandfather would certainly notice. Suddenly welling with dread and acutely aware of the rabbit fat still flecking his lips, he made his way back to the manor. He needed to find his dish. He needed to vomit.
But when he arrived, Grandfather was waiting. He tore the boy’s gown from his body, struck him with knuckles like horn, raped him until he bled, and again, and again.
“Is this how you like it?” he asked, his breath hot against the boy’s ear.
The boy did not eat for days. He did not walk for weeks, and even then, he needed a cane. He did not return to the villages for some time, and he never saw the peasant boy again.
But he wasn’t broken. He simply understood: He was raised to be strong. He began to grasp at the death he felt writhing in his broken body, in the house, in Grandfather’s demented trinkets. He found he could speak to it, and it would make things change. Perhaps it was his startling memory of first love in the forest, perhaps it was simple coincidence, but he found it easiest with plants. He could make them grow, flower, entangle constrict. He practiced first with the vines growing on the manor walls, snatching insects from the air, crushing them, savoring the odor of their pain. Then he embedded those vines in the lungs of a manor worker malingering in the shade on a hot day. He watched the man claw at his throat, eyes wide, gasping as the leaves emerged from his mouth. In that moment, he understood his grandfather’s cruelty, and he understood his strength.
He was raised to be resilient. As the war grew more fierce, Grandfather’s attentions became ever more drawn to it. The boy began to look for a particular opportunity, a pretext for removing the marquis from his sorcerous bastion and separating him from his lieutenants. For a single day, he slipped away, finding the commander of the Bloodfish’s enemies in a remote village. He made the man a proposal: Attack the domain of the Dragon. Lo Markhan would marshal his forces to defend his ally, and the boy would ensure the marquis would never arrive to the battlefield.
The commander did as the boy proposed, and when Lo Markhan departed to join his troops, the boy met him in the forest at the edge of his domain and entangled him in thorny branches. He planted a briar in his grandfather’s throat, and it grew rapidly, bursting through the skin of his face and chest. In his final moments, Grandfather could not speak, but he did not need to. The boy knew he was meeting the old man’s expectations.
He was raised to be clean. When the soldiers returned to the manor months later, they found a new marquis there, decadent, flamboyant, everything his grandfather had not been, save for cruel. The new marquis had found a diversion in the torture of his subjects, and he had begun to tax the villages of his domain for meat and wine and able-bodied men to satisfy him. Some of the soldiers rebelled against Le Markhan, the sickening She-Lord of Ka, but they were defeated, tortured and executed in the village squares by the marquis’ thorns. Those that survived left without a backward glance, but to Le Markhan, it did not matter. He did not much care for Ka or his war.
He ruled there for many more years, leeching the despicable world and its despicable people for all they were worth. He, himself, was despicable–he knew that. But he had been taught that cruelty somewhere.
I’m now composing the ongoing Dark Souls series while playing through Sekiro (slowly), and being able to note the similarities and differences, immersed as I am, is a pretty interesting experience. It’s also pretty plain at this point that getting at the juicy, literary meat of the game is going to be way harder for me this time around. Dark Souls and Bloodborne were riffing on philosophical frameworks (Christianity, Lovecraft, Nietzsche) that I am coincidentally familiar with. Sekiro has structurally similar roots in Buddhism and sort-of obscure 1960’s ninja-historical-fantasy, about which I know approximately fuck all. Accordingly, the following are working notes, a surface reading of a game I still haven’t finished, an attempt to get the ideas on paper where perhaps a pith might become more visible.
Literary References
Miyazaki himself cites the manga Basilisk and the works of Futaro Yamada as an inspiration for elements of Sekiro’s world. For those unfamiliar (myself included), these began with a novel published in 1958 called Kōga Ninpōchō, a historical fantasy about rival clans of superhuman mutant ninjas who get caught up in a Romeo-and-Juliet-style love triangle. I was totally unaware that this style of storytelling had roots that old (contemporary with Tolkien, even though the first English translation seems to have been published in 2006). More research is needed–discoveries like this keep me humble as to how little I really know.
Historical References
The setup of the game is that near the end of the Sengoku period, Isshin Ashina stages a coup and takes over one of Japan’s warring regions. Twenty years later, the story begins. Neither Isshin, nor his grandson Genichiro appear to have been real people, but the Ashina clan was. Translating some historical details: The region, known also as Ashina in-game, was likely the Aizu region historically, and the aforementioned “end” of the Sengoku period is probably the first of such points recognized by historians–the conquest of Kyoto by Nobunaga Oda. Twenty years after this point, the Ashina clan was defeated decisively by Masamune Date who then seized control of the Aizu region. Timing checks out.
It’s also likely that the family personas are based on real people. Based on the timing and details of their life stories, it seems likely that Isshin and Genichiro are meant to parallel Moriuji and Moritaka Ashina respectively. Moriuji’s reign was considered to be a golden age for the clan, whereas Moritaka (not Moriuji’s grandson, but not his son either) succeeded him and, proving unpopular among his retainers, was assassinated. Spoiler: This is more than vaguely similar to Genichiro’s fate in the game.
Buddhism/Literary Motifs
I know embarrassingly little about Buddhism, and I hope to do more reading before formalizing any of this, but the narrative is clearly moist with its secretions. The repeated theme of death and rebirth seems to be a clear expression, but it almost certainly goes deeper. The Sculptor’s obsessive drive to carve the Buddha (and its relationship to his previous life as a shinobi), the relationship between Kuro and other sources of immortality, even the significance of Sekiro using a prosthetic for a left arm–they scream meaning, and I bet much of it is tied up in philosophical traditions very different from the earlier games.
Aside, Miyazaki apparently took a backseat on writing for this game, so it probably will not have the same tone anyway.
Sources for my information include the linked interview, Wikipedia, and Samurai Wiki.
It’s been a little while since we’ve been here. If you need, check out the previous posts in this series first. Also, because you can never sit down and read just one thing, I linked an article in my first essay on this topic. If you haven’t read it yet, you should now. It was always relevant, but it connects the philosophical parts of this to our reality better than I ever could.
A little under two months ago, I started this blog, and the first substantive thing I posted was about choices in video games. This will be about choices as well, in video games, in life, and, more deeply, in what we value. It will be a turning point–the previous essays have been getting at the metaphors underlying Dark Souls’ setup. Now, we get to ask the question: “Why?”
I.
I’ve talked a lot about “Truth” in the last two essays without really getting into what it means. This is meant to be respectful. The only sense in which I am the first to say any of the things I’m saying is the sense in which they relate to Dark Souls (which is still a little surprising, but I’ve beaten that horse enough already). Still, since this runs the risk of sounding completely insane without clarity on that concept, I want to be explicit: Truth is something that humans value–we all intrinsically want the things we believe to be true. This starts, obviously, with perceptions of reality, but then it goes and starts a bar fight with religion and science. For those interested in the hard sciences without a background in philosophy, it may be difficult to believe, but the advances in scientific thought that propelled us from the Middle Ages to modernity were based heavily on metaphysics. This starts with the question “If I can’t trust what I see, how can I know anything?” but the high-level ends up being this: We created/reinforced gods in service of Truth. We then ask whether we need gods and, unable to see their purpose, begin devaluing them. Then comes the best part: Some asshole asks whether we need Truth.
“Is this still about Dark Souls?” Sure, just replace “Truth” and “gods” with “Flame” and “Lords”, and we’re hunky dory. More pointedly, in Dark Souls, that asshole has a name: Kaathe.
Darkstalker Kaathe is a primordial serpent. He goes way back to when the world was mist and trees and dragons, and this means A) he has a complicated relationship with the Truth and gods metaphor that I don’t really want to get into here and B) his age grants him a view on the situation that doesn’t have a good real-world analog. Anyway, he starts a cult, they kill a lot of people, and the powers that be flood a city on top of them. This is the advent of nihilism in Dark Souls. The details actually are pretty interesting, but the Abyss is going to get its own essay. Kaathe is coming up here because he’s the one that offers you an alternative in your quest to save the world. Oh yes, you were on a quest–didn’t I mention that?
II.
That isn’t a gotcha at all if you actually played Dark Souls, but I know for a fact that some of you have not. Recall from the intro:
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed Darksign.
The plot of the game–which we’ve avoided discussing up to now–is you exploring Lordran in fulfillment of some vague prophecy that no one seems to have respect for, but then you complete the first piece, ring some bells, and a giant snake blasts out of the ground where you first showed up. His name is Frampt, and he tells you that your purpose is to succeed Lord Gwyn and link the Fire, prolonging this golden age. He’s not terribly specific about what “linking the Fire” means, but man, becoming the successor to God? That seems pretty neat, and so this becomes your quest: You must gather the souls of the gods and use them to open the way to the Kiln of the First Flame, that you may link the Fire.
That goes about as swimmingly as things can go in Lordran until you find Kaathe at the bottom of the Abyss. He has a counterproposal for you: Why don’t you just…not do that? Gwyn went and linked the Fire, sure, but he was a pussy, scared of the dark or something. It’s not like an Age of Dark would actually end the world or anything. This is when he lets you in on the piece of the creation myth that doesn’t get repeated:
If you remember the other gods from the second essay, you remember that they each represented something. Gwyn was light, the Witch was chaos, Nito was death, but there was another, “so easily forgotten”. The pygmy found a special soul within the Fire, the only one named without a possessive: the Dark Soul. Gwyn is not happy about this for reasons that aren’t really clear without the metaphor, and he goes to great lengths to ensure that the descendants of the pygmy don’t flourish and the dark does not overpower the light. On the first count, he clearly failed–you’re here after all, but you can’t say he wasn’t motivated. To stop the guttering of the Fire and the coming Age of Dark, he used his own body as fuel..
There are a number of metaphors here, let’s unpack them:
First, note the obvious parallel to Christianity, but also note the dramatically developed context. In this version, God still sacrifices himself, but there’s an added element: fear. That he fears the dark here means he fears its impact on the metaphysical–it is not simply love for another substrate of reality. So what danger does the Dark Soul pose?
The Fire is Truth, light emanates from fire, and that makes Gwyn a manifestation of true things. The Dark Soul, then, is what’s left. Not-true things. Lies. “Seems bad.” Oh, really? I’m sure it does, but can you make a case for it without appealing to Truth as a value? Lies are easy to detach from the types of harm we hold to be bad based on other values, but still, they feel wrong, it stings your character to lie to others, and for some reason, you can’t lie to yourself. Truth is king, we’ve put everything else in service to it, and, of course, why would the Fire embrace its own death?
And so, Kaathe offers us a choice: Immolate yourself, the successor to the gods, in service of Truth, or walk away, embrace the lies, and usher in an Age of Dark.
III.
About the most famous thing Nietzsche ever said was “God is dead”. Sounds about right. Death and Chaos are toast, you murdered them on your way here. Light is in the process of burning, soon to be spent. All of that may seem good or bad to you, but to Nietzsche, it was an inevitable result of that initial enshrinement of Truth as our highest value. It brought us through the Stone Ages, to antiquity, to modernity, to the point where we are capable of contending with the forces of Gaia on a nearly even playing field. Truth has brought us power even if we’ve had to sacrifice human meaning to get there, but that was a long-term decision. Now, finally, we have the opportunity to course-correct. Truth is going out, and the sun has reached its median in the course of human history. Nietzsche called it the Great Noon, but as you might guess, the Dark Souls take is a little different.
Interpreting Nietzsche’s options from Lou Keep’s essay, you can translate them to the Dark Souls metaphor like so: The last man is letting every value burn to nothing, ceasing our advance to power, and living on in the twilight until at last we die. Affirmation is embracing the Dark, learning how to lie, and adopting a new hierarchy of values in Truth’s place. Of course, affirmation could mean that we are affirming an ideal that does not exist (which isn’t ideal), or it could mean affirmation of the here and now. The problem is that it’s very hard to do either if we can’t lie to ourselves.
However, Dark Souls allows for two other options, one of which isn’t well explored by Nietzsche’s framework (which we’ll save for last), and one that…well, that he was reacting to in the first place. That one, we’ll discuss next.
Top Image: Screenshot from the launch trailer for Dark Souls 3, I do not own it
There is a story I’m planning to pair with this piece, but for reasons I will not discuss just yet, I likely won’t post it here. Instead, I wanted just to show it to you all:
Rae did a fantastic job with this one, and while the scene is in some ways powerful enough to stand on its own, it also drips context.
I’ve mentioned Spar previously, if briefly, here. The head-brandishing individual is one of its Diarchs–the Right-Hand Queen, specifically. This one, known to history as the Iron Queen (or to her contemporaries as…less savory names), ascended to the throne at a very young age alongside an older, more experienced Left-Hand King who sought to make her politically irrelevant. He arranged that she be sent to the front lines of war for over a decade while he consolidated power at home, but instead of quietly allowing her generals to direct the campaigns (or dying), she became a brutal warrior and an accomplished battlefield tactician, leading her to countless victories and a homecoming in Spar as a hero of the people. Nonetheless, the political elite, the Left-Hand King included, found her vulgar and imperious and feared she would upset the balance of power in the city.
A turning point came when she and the King attended a private demonstration at the academy. A traveling scholar had found a child, prodigious in a strange reality-bending magic practiced in the north, very different from the elemental magics espoused by the Diarchian scholars. Of the twenty or so that went into the room, only the Queen left alive, holding the head of the child in her bloodied gauntlet. She took it to the speaker for the Diarchian senate and presented it to him, with reference to the prophecy all had heard and few had taken to heart: This is what magic has done to our kingdom, I will defend us against it, and you will stand in my way no longer. But even as she holds the child’s head in her right hand, we can see something in her left: the crown of the Left-Hand King. No one knows what happened in that room, no one knows whether the child’s magic truly caused this tragedy, but it hardly matters now that there is no one left to oppose the Queen’s rule.
Top Image: Blame, by Rae Johnson, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
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