history of yharnam part 2: the old hunters, the fishing hamlet, and caryll’s runes

Posted on by Bea

the discovery of blood entailed the discovery of beasts, and the discovery of beasts necessitated hunters.

the original group of hunters, colloquially known as “the old hunters” to differentiate them from the common riff-raff, were shaped largely by the efforts the first hunter, a man named gehrman. it is unclear what gehrman’s role was prior to his work as a hunter, but he was likely a student, as he uses the title of “master” to address willem. we know he was a close associate of a student named laurence, that he had an apprentice named maria who was once a knight of the castle cainhurst, and was a practitioner of an art called “quickening“. his focus on agility and maximizing the amount of blood spilled laid the foundation for all hunters to come.

gehrman is the inventor of the “trick weapon”, the first of which was a simple magnetic lock and hinge that changes the burial blade from a one handed knife to a scythe. the magnetic force was inherent to the iron used in the creation of the blade; the burial blade and its sister weapon the blade of mercy were forged from siderite and take advantage of the magnetic force to “transform”. these, the oldest weapons of “the workshop” (gehrman’s workshop), served an additional purpose: these astral materials contain traces of the arcane. it seems that these two weapons are the only weapons that would be capable of severing a hunter’s connection to the great ones and, by extension, the boons that come with their attention.

not that those boons have been sought or discovered yet. the arcane world was only just becoming known to the students of byrgenwerth. as of now, the explicit purpose of the burial blade was to end the seemingly endless lives of the pthumerians and beasts for good. the blade of mercy appeared to have been created as a contingency plan in the event that gehrman fell to the undead curse of blood and was entrusted with a foreigner who could take a comrade’s life graciously…or at least thoroughly.

the old hunters are a bunch of freaks. only a handful are still alive in modern yharnam. otherwise, the player will only experience them by calling them as summons for boss battles. the in game lore for the mechanics of the summon system clarifies that these hunters that can be summoned have “long since passed from the dream” but will answer to the siren call of the hunt.

some old hunters the player will encounter as major characters or boss encounters. others appear to be nondescript nobodies…at first, anyway.

every chalice dungeon (save the last one) connected to the story has a secret, fully functional, but cut fourth layer that only became accessible once hex-editing was possible. several corpses on the fourth layer of the hintertomb, home to “cesspools of noxious snakes and insects”, can be looted for evidence of unusual creatures harboring arcane power. the mysteries presented by these invertebrates captured the attention of a separate faction within byrgenwerth, sparking the study and collection of “phantasms” present (or were once present) in the labyrinth. the discovery of the augur of ebrietas, a slug (snail? the empty phantasm shells could be reasonably assumed to have belonged to the augur) that summons flailing tentacles of unknown origin, and the arcane properties of pearl slugs drove the school’s continued plunges into the depths in spite of the danger posed. part of this research involved discovering the potential beneficial parasitic qualities of these creatures, which could inhabit soft tissue, like eyes and be used to harness bizarre powers.

while continuing to investigate the ruins, byrgenwerth became aware of a possibly pthumerian fishing village where a washed up carcass of an oyster/globster monster was teeming with otherworldly parasites and carried a stillborn fetus1. the so-called “kos parasites” resemble barnacles without their shell, and judging by the appearance of the villagers these barnacles have made themselves at home on what must have once been pthumerian hosts. its unclear if the fishing hamlet’s residents were transformed against their will or deliberately cultivated the look, but the result is a gaggle of fish-like monster people with physical appearances similar to the monster on the shore. whether of their own accord or because its the will of the creatures that have taken them over, the villagers actively cultivate millions of odd slugs for mostly unknown purposes; we do know that they are used as lamp oil on a day to day basis2.

upon arrival to the village, the school and its hunters helped themselves to a little bit of genocide just for fun. villager’s heads were cut off and “treppaned” open in the search for “eyes on the inside” by forcibly removing the barnacles from their skulls. the monstrous corpse was desecrated by the byrgenwerth researchers who took her child (as the villagers of the fishing hamlet chant) and the orphan’s “umbilical cord”, a string of flesh not unlike a human umbilical cord but lined with eyes. it is NOT a literal umbilical cord, the orphan still has that attached to his body, but a translation hiccup muddied the waters on the initial understanding of the nature of the “umbilical cords”.

the NA translation is “one third of umbilical cord” leading people to erroneously believe that its one umbilical cord split into three parts (made even more confusing by the existence of four umbilical cords in the game). the EUR release got it right: it should be “third umbilical cord”. the NA release calls it a “precursor to the umbilical cord” which makes no sense in or out of context. the re-translation project provided a much more comprehensible alternative: “Only infants have [third umbilical cords], even in Great Ones. Calling it an “umbilical cord” comes from that”. as in, they are not literal umbilical cords, but they are LIKE umbilical cords in that they are only found in infants. now you have an inkling of understanding why great ones keep losing their children; the children are host to something valuable.

“Provost Willem sought the Cord in order to elevate his being
and thoughts to those of a Great One, by lining his brain
with eyes. The only choice, he knew, if man were to ever
match Their greatness.“

careful inspection of the umbilical cord’s art reveals that it sits in a puddle of silver liquid. the villagers chant: “a call to the bloodless, wherever they be”.

but this wasn’t just any ol’ pile of fish goo they were fucking with, it was the corpse of the great one, kos (or as some say, kosm). kos’ wrath and retribution would come in due time, as this event birthed a powerful curse: the creation of a surreal plane of torment known as the hunter’s nightmare. the hunters responsible for the massacre and those who became “blood drunk” from overdosing on blood would be snatched away into a bloody, never-ending hunt in a warped and twisted facsimile of yharnam and the fishing hamlet. blood drunk hunters, who sustained themselves entirely on imbibing blood, could be identified by their rotting eyes.

“Lay the curse of blood upon them, and their children, and their children’s children, for evermore.
Each wretched birth will plunge each child into a lifetime of misery.”

but that all comes much later.

lady maria could not tolerate her role in the fishing hamlet massacre. as she was already sickened by the use of blood blades (in spite of her familial relationship to queen annalise of cainhurst), she threw her beloved weapon into the fishing village well when she could no longer tolerate its presence. she, with others, joined laurence, the medical student, when he split from byrgenwerth to found the healing church. its not explicit that the fishing village massacre was the reason for the split, as there were ideological differences brewing that also came to a head, but a one sided genocide SEEMS like a matter that would cause a splinter between one faction that is notoriously ruthless in its methods and another that tries to be in the business of healing.

i’m going to add an editor’s note that from this point on the timeline is muddled, confusing, vague and occasionally contradictory. people have moved heaven and earth trying to make sense of the inconsistencies, but the truth of the matter is that bloodborne suffered the fromsoft late game curse and was chopped up beyond recognition at the 11th hour for whatever internal development reason. whats interesting to me is the stuff they chose to keep that’s complete and utter chaff. there are extremely rare items that do literally nothing but sit in your inventory, or quests that are completely pointless. enemies appear where they “shouldn’t” and it difficult to tell if they are trying to impart some kind of information or if we’re just getting dragon-assed in lost izalith again (if you know….you know). its very odd and i think thats what draws people back again and again.

i can give you overviews of these events in the approximate order that they happened but there is no guarantee that they happened exactly in this order or in this fashion.

the schism at byrgenwerth came down to this: willem refused to use the blood until they understood it better and has become fascinated by the existence of great ones. laurence, on the other hand, recognized the blood’s potential as miracle medicine. the instantaneous healing powers were too enticing for laurence to ignore, but willem was steadfast in his belief that humanity was not yet ready to reckon with whatever it was that was happening here; one must “fear the old blood”. willem’s distaste for use of the blood is mentioned off-hand in the rune workshop tool description.

caryll runes side note for newbies: caryll runes are a gameplay mechanic that give you buffs you can switch in and out by using an iron brand on your consciousness. the runes themselves are transcriptions of “the inhuman utterings of the Great Ones”. all but a handful of the runes were discovered/transcribed by runesmith caryll and some were explicitly secret ones, hidden from public knowledge.

almost nothing explicit is known about caryll except they were a student of byrgenwerth. the workshop tool named for them is found on a dead hunter tied to a chair as the reward for surviving the witch of hemwick boss fight. people will try to tell you that the schmuck in the chair is caryll but that’s fucking stupid. caryll was not a hunter and there’s no reason why caryll would have the means or motive to pilfer their own tool from the hunter’s dream. i dont know why this guy has it. maybe hes just an asshole and stole it from the dream to be a dick. who knows. hes just griefing us lol. classic trolling

did he fall through the ceiling into the chair. what the fuck is this lmfao. its like the witches found a way to make an interrogation room lamp without electricity. do you think they went in the room above and jumped up and down until the floor broke.

all three translations agree that caryll runes “do not rely” on using blood, so its significant when blood DOES start to appear in the runes. one could read this as indication of caryll’s transition from byrgenwerth to the healing church after deciding to follow laurence, like most of his peers. some covenant runes are filled with unknown goos and liquids, all of the runes relating to a mysterious great one named oedon (whose existence is only made known through the descriptions of “his” items) are bleeding or “contain a nuance of Blood.”

i suppose we should do a quick oedon sidebar before he becomes VERY plot relevant. formless oedon is a great one who “lacks a form, existing only in voice”. we know very little about him except he has a chapel in his name in yharnam that we use as a central hub/safe zone and he likes blood and broads. hell, who doesn’t. hes a man (?) of taste.

according to the linked caryll rune, blood is the essence of oedon and oedon is always looking for good blood. the thing about oedon is that you might be a part of that process and not even know it; an “inadvertent worshiper surreptitiously seeking precious blood” (as they say).

willem sought “eyes on the inside”, which drove him and the others to defile the great ones. but what the fuck was he on about?

in one sense, to gain “eyes on the inside” is a cutesy way of describing “insight”, or the ability to see beyond the mundane. but the scholars were also being quite literal; in order to think on higher planes they were putting slugs in their fucking head. if we do some reading between the lines on the description for the “spark hunter badge“, the description of “a style of inquiry that […] closely followed the methodology of Byrgenwerth” is almost certainly “expose yourself to it” or “use living specimens” based on, well, everything they and their protegees do.

what happens to byrgenwerth after this is hazy. we’ll hop back in occasionally, but it too suffered from the fromsoft editing hack and slash. so trying to make concrete sense of it is a fool’s errand. let’s focus on the foundation of the healing church for a while.

 

1. this video provides a great look at the model of strange black mist emitting from kos’ corpse after the final boss fight of the DLC. this is probably what they took from the fishing village, not a huge old man baby who shoots lighting and jumps around like a frog on a skillet

2.source which leads to this image

history of yharnam part 1: the founding of pthumeru, cainhurst and the labyrinth, the discovery by byrgenwerth

Posted on by Bea

in order to make sense of the world of bloodborne, one must first make sense of the from software company “house style” or, at the very least, make an attempt to recognize the recurring themes present in their catalog of RPG titles. each addition has helped refine the central messages core to the ethos of the dev team through repetition. this makes the act of playing fromsoft games sound like a monotonous experience; fromsoft sometimes iterates in expected and annoying ways: there will always be a poison swamp, there will always be a shoeless babe, there will always be a guy waiting to kick you into a hole. but their means of obfuscating or re-framing these ideas are imaginative. a transformation into a plant has different implications and intentions depending on the setting; in bloodborne, it’s a desirable outcome caused on purpose to push human evolution beyond its bounds. in dark souls 3, it’s involuntary as part of a means of returning the world to its primordial form. if i told you that dark souls, bloodborne, and sekiro all had the same plot, you’d tell me to shut the hell up and then push me into a ravine. and yet, these games all share one very specific message that acts as the base point for the cruel, dying worlds we explore: if we could re-spawn like in a video game, it would be fucked up or what? bloodborne is no exception.

fromsoft’s creation process involves folding in real-life history and cultural knowledge that i think is lost on the majority of the western player base. i’m not sure how much of what they reference is common knowledge to japanese players, but i do feel confident in saying that bloodborne leans on these references harder than most fromsoft’s games. for example, i can reasonably argue that the history of yharnam began with a meteorite not dissimilar to one that fell in japan that was used to make legendary swords(not unlike the a select few in the game) comprised of meteoric, magnetic iron or siderite. and with the arrival of the cosmos came the discovery of the arcane.

untold eons ago, a humanoid race known as the pthumerians served slumbering mysterious, otherworldly beings, known as the great ones, “beings that might be described as gods“. the great ones spoke in “inhuman utterings” to those capable or worthy of hearing their speech. those blessed would become stronger and imbued with strange powers. at least one of these voices was successfully transcribed during the course of pthumerian history, as it appears on gravestones, altars, and as decor: “hunter“, a blood rune.

as the proliferance of the rune might suggest, pthumeru was a society revolving around the collection of blood. either as a consequence of living underground or due to becoming exposed to the deliberately vague notion of “the eldritch truth” as a consequence of their proximity to the great ones, they developed a unique and startling appearance: pallid skin, black eyes, and slacking jaws. they are very tall and gaunt with unsettling proportions. they vary in size and shape to one another, but all but the most diminutive tower over the average human.

over time, the pthumerians settled a capital city, pthumeru, and elected a leader who took the name yharnam, pthumerian queen.1 this ruler was given a ring imbued with special meaning by the great ones demonstrating her commitment to bear their child. this child would be known as a “child of blood” (the ramifications or meaning of this are not known). she still wears the ring today and waits at a bloodstained altar for the ceremony to commence. all that’s massing, it seems, is a groom.

 

what little we know of pthumerian culture we must glean from what we find in the chalice dungeons ourselves. their aristocracy wears red, they have the ability to spontaneously generate controllable flames, and their weapons are based on the real life meteoric iron swords from indonesia, the kris. fire paper is a pthumerian invention (obtainable by the player only after they obtain a badge for tomb prospectors) that allows the user to create a flame from nothing. the only enemies that drop this item are pthumerian labyrinth watchers who use flaming weapons themselves.

 

 

the serpentine shape of the weapons might be more than mere aesthetics: there are a scant few references to snakes (one of the fromsoft dev teams favorite creatures to fixate on) in a religious or elevated context in pthumerian culture.a “pilgrim” who traverses the remains of pthumeru in the modern day carries a rosary with a caduceus in place of a crucifix.

 

 
within the hintertomb, a location described as “unceremonious catacombs” without ritual significance, became a nesting ground for “cesspools of noxious snakes and insects“. these twisted clumps of snakes are a source of murky, purple slow poison, which is harvested and used as a coating in poison knives resembling the indonesian kujang. the item description strongly suggests that the poison knife is a scalpel used in a medical or research capacity that became a hunter tool/means of self-defense incidentally. in pthumeru, the poison knife is used as a weapon still by the labyrinth watchers; in the cosmically fascinated city of isz, it was used for a greater, secret arcane purpose (as hinted at by this otherwise common item only becoming available for purchase after obtaining the late game cosmic eye watcher badge). snake venom contains a blood clotting agent that turns blood into a jelly-like substance nearly identical to an item cut from the game’s final release: queenly blood2.

 

 

 

but THIS queenly blood is NOT queen yharnam’s queenly blood. yharnam’s blood is a red, rapid, dirty poison.

when the player arrives in the ruins of this civilization, evidence strongly suggests that a civil war broke out between at least two factions. the resulting schism pushed some pthumerian aristocracy to the surface3. here, they resumed their rule over their loyal subjects and became the modern day, blue-clad royalty of cainhurst castle. the evidence for the cainhurst/pthumeru connection is strong: living and hostile cainhurst knights with more modern armor can be found in the lowest levels of the pthumerian labyrinth. bloodlickers, a mosquito-like enemy that is exclusively found in cainhurst above ground, can be coerced from their hiding places in the chalice dungeons by performing visceral attacks and leaving blood splattered on the ground4. small, gold statues identical to the large, marble ones in cainhurst can be found in treasure rooms.

a collection of conspicuous portraits in cainhurst depicting the royal family and their knights and ladies includes a portrait of a bell-ringing “mad pthumerian” of the labyrinth, as well as a portrait of a man with the face of the cainhurst/pthumerian labyrinth exclusive enemy “the lost child of antiquity“5. the antiquated armor (old enough to be one of the few outfits unavailable to the player) worn by the man in the portrait can be found en masse scattered on the ground of specific chalice dungeon rooms. the skeletons of the pthumerians who once occupied this armor can be found piled into disrespectful heaps pierced by a labyrinth warrior’s great sword.

bloodborne is a game about dichotomies and divergent evolutions and, perhaps, the first true split began here: the cainhurst royalty and the pthumerian royalty BOTH aspire to have the mysterious and presumably powerful child of blood as a surrogate for a great one and both have knights in their employ that work explicitly to further this goal, putting them at odds with one another. today’s cainhurst royalty maintains some of the “pthumerian look” but not to such an exaggerated degree, with the resemblance fading with each removed generation.

 

Image

pictured are some canonical cainhurst royalty and their descendants in order of relation from left to right: annalise, queen of the “vilebloods” of forsaken castle cainhurst (top left), lady maria (top middle, a cainhurst knight and “distant relative of the queen”), arianna, woman of pleasure (right; she is also the most distant descendant and prostitute. her clothing identifies her as nobility but she makes no mention of her relation to the castle whatsoever, unless you count telling a female hunter that she “doesn’t want to drag them down too”.). the bottom image is concept art of lady maria during her boss fight with a more exaggerated look that did not make it into the game.

Figure : the evolution of the “hunter” rune as seen on gravestones in pthumeru

i’m inclined to learn toward believing that yahar’gul, unseen village and hemwick charnel lane were late pthumerian settlements on the surface in service of cainhurst. this is based on the enormous sizes of the corpses in yahar’gul, the appearance of chalice dungeon pthumerians and creatures occupying the hidden city, and the sheer size of the hemwick grave women. though it can be hard to see due to all the murdering you that they’re trying to do, they too are slack–jawed, thin, and pretty pale. there’s other things that only become apparent by the time the hunter comes to visit, so we’ll hold out until then.

pthumeru, and its sister cities isz and loran, rose, peaked, and died leaving behind shambling corpses of the cities they once were. though they were always a civilization of catacombs, bones, and blood, each area developed a difference single minded fascination that drove them to ruin. the careless indulgence of the blood, the maddening need to understand the cosmic, and the self-deterministic fall into savagery would all play out again in the far, far future. we are entering a cycle of stagnation. and with stagnation, fromsoft wants to hammer home to the player in every single game, comes rot.

anyway: a bazillion years later or whatever. the cainhurst royals rule over a land that includes the victorian england-ish city of yharnam, named for the forgotten queen of pthumeru (this city has become “old yharnam” by time the player arrives). the main appeal of yharnam is its proximity to a university of bold, weird research. i don’t know if it was before or after the establishment of the school, but i think yet another meteorite crashed into yharnam, opening a hole into the dungeons for the first time in who knows how long, delivering magnetic iron to the yharnamites, and introducing the hapless dopes to the cosmic for the first time. in fact, maybe more than one fell; there are a few locations in yharnam that are strange and hint at a direct proximity to the chalice dungeons. we’ll talk about it as we get there. for now, let’s stick to the lakeside university of questionable science.

the school of byrgenwerth and its scholars were once an archeological and historical research center headed by an older scholar by the name of provost willem. during the course of their studies, either by happenstance or the aforementioned meteorological event, they discovered the pthumerian labyrinths. i believe the progression that the hunter makes in the dungeons is intended to mirror the original excavation and exploration of the tombs, meaning that that byrgenwerth, much like the player character, began their journey on the outer edges of the pthumerian civilization/tomb of the gods.

if true, then their experience must have been as confounding as it is to the player. they would have encountered the ancient pthumerians in a desiccated state, witch-y women with the ability to re-animate corpses, and, most intriguing of all, a bizarre flora/fauna creature that defied all understanding. this alien looking creature is something special, a class of creature called “kin” that can, in ways not yet known to the scholars, tap into the arcane cosmos. this can be experienced first hand by the player when, upon death, the creature sucks itself into a cosmic wormhole leaving behind its titular glowing flower and a small, vestigial chunk of its body. this flower appears to be the reason why these creatures can be found reliably in the large, oddly lush and well maintained gardens of the dungeons. in the concept art, the flower has a much more distinctive twist, making it the first known indicator of anti-clockwise metamorphosis. just pin that, for now.

the floral creature also leaves behind smatterings of a precious material called “arcane haze”. but…mysteriously, ONLY the creatures being maintained in the underground gardens drop this precious resource. the sole example found outside of the dungeons, wandering the grounds of byrgenwerth aimlessly, does not.

some things only grow in the labyrinth.

the true treasure of the labyrinths, however, was not flowers or gold, but blood.

further investigation by byrgenwerth revealed an unspecified “holy medium” that would spark a pathological fascination with the ruins: a substance called ritual blood, which does not coagulate. there is ritual blood of a presumed similar quality on an altar found near the church of the good chalice, but obviously is not THE exact same ritual blood sample from this specific expedition. i believe the player was intended to intuit the connections between the ritual blood, pthumeru and byrgenwerth by introducing these new concepts one after another during a conventional playthrough. after you first read the word “byrgenwerth” and are able to ask about it, you are then instructed by an npc to fetch the pthumeru chalice (and, coincidentally, will stumble on the ritual blood needed to satiate the chalice along the way).

critically, i do not think the first encounter with “the old blood” was from an exotic source; like most ritual blood in the game, it was likely discovered in an ornate coffin housing a pthumerian corpse. while “a blood that never hardens” may not be a bombastic discovery compared to “a blood that twists you into a fucked up creature and gives you super powers”, all of the subtext in the game suggests that trying to understand the mystery of the blood was a process that took years of experimentation and countless lives. surely, as a bloodborne lore junkie/fan/casual knowledge seeker you can intuitively understand the allure of incremental discovery that drove the slow downfall of the byrgenwerth scholars? is there no moment more satisfactory than the singular internal emotional rush that comes with truly, deeply understanding even just one sliver of a mystery?

unfortunately, there was a little bit of a snag: attempts to dig into the next layer of the labyrinth (central pthumeru) were halted by the aforementioned fucked up creature with superpowers; the first encounter with a beast. this was a significant moment in yharnam history. not just because it lead to the transcription of the first6 caryll rune, but because of the implications of the discovery that failed to impress on the scholars: “The discovery of blood entailed the discovery of undesirable beasts”. that is to say: where you find blood, you will find beasts. where you take blood, beasts will follow.

okay, fine. there’s nothing canon that says it was SPECIFICALLY the beast-possessed soul (BPS) in the labyrinth. we’ve been heavy with the italics this whole section. but it’s strongly implied and most of yharnam history is intentionally obscure, leaving much to the reader imagination. just bear with me.

i believe the BPS was once a labyrinth ritekeeper turned by the scourge, which would have made it the first (unwitting) known example of a cleric beast. if we consider the similarity in height (when the ritekeepers stand), the canon knowledge that individuals with close proximity to religion (as in loran as well) transform into their own unique horned monstrosities, and that the fire throwing ability used by the BPS is unique to pthumerians, it doesn’t seem completely implausible. if you really want to get nitty-gritty into this theory, the BPS also has pale, white skin under its fur, black nails, a slender figure, and an open, gaping mouth (er, muzzle). but the question remains: for what purpose would this introduction to this concept serve at this point in the narrative/game-play?

if byrgenwerth followed the same or similar progression we do into the dungeons, they would have encountered BPS on the first layer of the central pthumeru chalice dungeon after exploring the entirety of the topmost pthumerian labyrinth. by now, the player would have almost certainly been introduced to at least one cleric-type beast explicitly labeled as such and encountered multiple references to the cleric beat phenomenon in item descriptions. consequently the player would, eventually, be intended to realize the significance of the horns on this new specimen. in my proposed timeline, the byrgenwerth scholars would have no knowledge of this facet of beasthood until it was too late. instead, this moment would spur one byrgenwerth scholar named caryll to begin to transcribe “inhuman sounds” in symbols and “beast”, a product of this unique encounter, became the first caryll rune. the only BPS outside of the chalice dungeons7 that the hunter will encounter drops this rune. it’s his roar after all.

consequently, once the power of this rune became realized, it was one of the first to become banned. in another, related rune, caryll elaborated that “beast” is a “horrific and unwelcome instinct deep within the hearts of men” but leaves the reader to infer what that instinct might be. the characters belonging to institutions that shunned beasthood became the birthplace of twisted and malformed monstrosities…yet, there are a handful of yharnamite beasts who were eager to indulge in what the scourge offered them whose transformations were far less dramatic, perhaps even enviable. one could conclude that beasthood is much more forgiving to those who accept it, BPS included. what role this deliberate beast played in pthumerian society is not immediately clear, especially as the number of beasts remaining in the entirety of pthumeru can be counted on two hands.

so what to do about undesirable beasts?

  of course, cainhurst already knew all about this dog blood bullshit. the royals were described as “long time imbibers of blood” in an item description of a weapon that has been around long enough to inspire other, shittier hunter weapons by the time you arrive on the scene. they already have a special class of servants (knights) who take care of any signs of beasthood bubbling up under their ranks with discretion. closer inspection of the kn ight’s garb reveals a blood red gemstone8 sewn into the cravat revealing cainhurst already had access to something the rest of yharnam was only beginning to discover: blood gems, little crystals that could be used to imbue weapons with greater power. whatever process causes the body to produce blood gems after death occurs nearly entirely in the chalice dungeons; there are hardly any blood gems to be found in the over-world. blood gems become stronger the deeper one heads into the labyrinth, terminating at “abyssal” blood gems.

cainhurst’s access to the dungeons might be in plain sight; there’s a weird valley at the entrance of the cainhurst map full of the worst enemy ever in the world, parasite larva, that dead ends in a strange way; its like a cave that collapsed. at its entrance is a corpse with a (unremarkable) blood gem to loot. perhaps this was once the entrance used to access pthumeru for blood and trinkets (and 8000000 statues, apparently), as evidenced by this body that has developed a weak blood gem from having died so close to the tombs. or maybe its just the royal worm pit. for the worms.

the miraculous abilities of the “old blood” in the labyrinth became the subject of fascination and research at byrgenwerth. at this point in time, the student body was appropriately wary of the substance. the overwhelming and horrific thirst for blood in pthumerian society is hard to ignore when there are corpses stacked haphazardly in enormous pools of stagnant red slime and rooms where exsanguinated bodies still hang from the ceiling in a loose pose that clearly evokes the “dangling, upside-down” nature of the hunter’s rune. this symbol from pthumerian society is a depiction of a body in the process of exsanguination. the quickest way to exsanguinate something is to cut a large artery, flip it, and let gravity take over. butchery 101.

its unclear if byrgenwerth was responsible for some/all of the central pthumeru bloodlettings or if they just learned the technique here. the potential benefits of collecting blood lead to the earliest incarnations of “hunters” as we know them. this rune would eventually be branded in the mind of anyone who “signs a contract” to become a hunter. if you think about it too hard you die and lose all of your blood (echoes). like when i try to do math.

1. the re-translation project’s re-translation of the pthumeru ihyll chalice item description states that the name “yharnam” is inherited by each queen.

2. source

3. the translated names at the bottom of this page identifies the rooms with empty cainhurst armors (number 10 in the list, arena) as “remains of a battlefield site”. this is literally the only interesting fact about chalice dungeon room names.

4. source

5. a rare, truly lousy translation. should be “bastard of cainhurst” (imo). as in the most dictionary definition sense of the word bastard as a child out of wedlock. the re-translation suggests “ancient bastard”.

6. the english release says “one of the first” but the japanese is more direct: it’s the first official rune that caryll transcribed. “hunter” and the hunter’s mark may have been grandfathered in as such later. or not. what do i know.

7. this didn’t fit well, but the BPS is an extremely odd character/creature and the game goes through great pains to demonstrate this. it appears only three times in the game and the story chalice dungeons: once in yharnam, once in central pthumeru as the first layer boss, and once in ailing loran as the first layer boss. that’s it.

BUT: using root chalices, there is a chance to spawn a special BPS as a roaming encounter who attacks not only you but other enemies as well. it can be healed with an item used to heal co-operators.

8. this item is not found in cainhurst in the released game, but its location in game files indicates it should have been.

10 Years of Making “A Ghost Story”

Posted on by Bea

 

on july 13th 2023, “a ghost story”, my webcomic, turned 10 years old. for people who clicked this out of curiosity and are currently thinking “she has a webcomic??” here are some quick boring numbers about the quantity of comic: there are 849 canonical pages of “a ghost story”. 900 even if you count the (unfinished, but nearly done) chapter 1 redraw. there are 9 finished “chapters” spread across 3 “books”. you can read it all for free. go do that! then you can read my overly dramatic retrospective or whatever.

i accidentally missed previous years anniversary updates, so this one legitimately snuck upon me and then clubbed me over the head repeatedly every time i tried to think about it. since the comic’s conception, i graduated college, moved to oregon, moved to rhode island, bought a house with adam, and got engaged. i cannot even BEGIN to convey the direct positive impact creating this comic brought into my life. and if you had told me 10 years ago that this seemingly impossible future of love and safety was made real because there is an audience for my cartoons, you would have to send me to the emergency room to get re-hydrated from the amount of tears that would start spewing out of me.

first off, “a ghost story” could not exist without its audience. i have tried and failed in the past to communicate the sheer enormity of my gratitude to everyone who has ever paid me the time of day when it comes to jack and maxine’s misadventures. all my attempts to impart the amount of sincere gratitude i have toward the people who go out of their way to read my little web 1.0 ass webcomic for a decade fall short. my message to everyone who has ever read “a ghost story” now or in the past or in the future, to everyone who has ever recommended it to someone else, to everyone who donated so that i could make drawing a comic my primary income, to everyone who has ever sent me words of kindness, critique, jokes, or questions, and most of all to everyone who has ever laughed at my comic…thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you!!! sincere interest in what i create has been the true force driving the comic forward for so long. that and the mental illness and such. my experience with comics has been a rollicking good time and i cannot stress enough how unusual this experience is within the field. I LOVE CREATING A GHOST STORY! IT IS MY PLEASURE!!

i have struggled to articulate in the past the joy that came with my personal experience with the Average Cartoonist Lifestyle. i end up sounding like a weird shithead, or being misunderstood as advocating for all artists to commit to living like lenny on the simpsons or, worst of all, feeling like i’m guilting people into donating in order to better my circumstances. i have made less than minimum wage the entire time i’ve made “a ghost story”. i lived on food stamps. i have had medicaid since i turned 24. i used to wear my gloves indoors in the winter because i couldn’t afford to run the heat constantly. i do not care. i was able to live according to my own developing moral principals, i was able to get the (um. extensive and still ongoing) mental health treatment i desperately needed, and i was given the irreplaceable gift to create without restraint.

part of why i can’t articulate your impact is because there are simply parts of myself and my history i do not want to share with anyone outside of a clinical setting. please read between the lines when i say: the creation of the comic heralded the happiest and safest period of my entire life, especially on a day to day basis. choosing to be a cartoonist as a career was the most defiant choice i had ever made in my life; frankly, it was explicitly for my own happiness and pleasure. but that choice would not have been an option at all were it not for you. it is a choice that changed my life.

being too candid about your life invites uncharitable scrutiny and/or else i risk becoming reduced to a barrage of descriptors about my life i have no control over; im hispanic/white, bisexual, mentally ill (and how!), and now am in the middle of grappling with the idea of having a chronic syndrome. all of these things and more have had considerable impact and influence on “a ghost story”, but anyone looking to relate to my work on those themes is likely to leave disappointed and confused. except for the mental illness one. i think that comes through. anyway: my point is that i always hoped that “a ghost story” stood on its own merits. i don’t know if it does. i would like to believe it does. or, really, that’s what i really want. i want to create something recognized by an audience as having value for their own relationship they’ve developed to it and not my own.

in my opinion, “a ghost story” is “salami” art (as stephen king once said: “I’m a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami”) . i too try to write and draw good salami. i want every page (even and especially the ones that are difficult or are boring or i simply don’t want to do for some reason or another) to underscore my appreciation for the “a ghost story” audience. for choosing to spend your free time on my comic, anything less than my best efforts and the best work i can provide would be disrespectful.

i had, and still have, a sort of single-minded mania about this comic and this story but i am in a state of nightmarish limbo at the moment. my body is currently not capable of keeping up with my brain, which is churning constantly and filled to capacity with ideas and things i need to get out of it. things have been rough. this winter was so horrible it finally drove me into a doctors office because my hands hurt too much to hold a pen for longer than a few minutes. it was ridiculous. this tendon disorder is creating more specific problems than just swollen joints and pain.  i get trigger finger in my pinky (alarming!), carpal tunnel in my wrist (annoying!), and the stiffest fingers you can imagine. im currently going through another flare so i will go back to the doctor again just to do something for my hands so i can keep doing comics. i don’t even care about the rest of my stupid joints. if i don’t draw i will literally go insane. my fingers feel fat and clogged (really silly i know) and i get antsy if i dont at least have a sketchbook available to me. i’ve been on vacations where ive had to stop at stores and get something to draw on. one, nothing wrong with me,

i’d be lying if i said i hadn’t been putting this off for reasons other than hand pain. ever since i could remember, reflecting on my own work makes my stomach drop into a pit. i struggle with talking about the comic itself to people without feeling embarrassed. when talking about it to another human face to face, it feels like i can suddenly hear how stupid i sound. i’m also in a period of feeling unmoored and undeserving of my station in life. i’m experiencing a level of comfort that has been previously unknown to me and 10 years of success feels like it happened to me by accident. most days i feel like i’m about to step on a rug concealing a huge pit that i’m never going to be able to get out of. you know the feeling that everything good in your life can just vanish instantly. that feeling. that’s also been chasing me a lot more relentlessly lately.

well, at least we’re getting some good laughs out of it. more years please. i enjoyed this round of years.

see you next year, if i don’t forget. don’t let me forget.

-bea

p.s. here are some things to look forward to in the comic: a fired gun, a personal injury, an arrest for homicide, a date for alice,

my right leg isn’t right part 5 – it turns out my whole body isn’t right (good news?)

Posted on by Bea

this has been the most convoluted ass journey to figure out what’s wrong with me (physically). but despite all odds and many, many months later, i have a definitive(ish) answer: palindromic rheumatism.

“what the fuck is that?” you might be asking. its basically the diet version of an autoimmune disease. proto-rhuematoid arthritis in some cases.

here is the short version: i have an autoimmune disorder similar to rheumatoid arthritis but with a better prognosis: no long term damage to my joints unless it progresses to RA (the stats on this are all over the place). this makes drawing difficult-ish until im on a treatment plan for it. i am not stopping making the comic, but may have to acknowledge that im not going to make deadlines as easily as i once did due to the realities of my health. thank you to everyone who has been a kind ear during this time when ive been extremely anxious about what an autoimmune diagnosis would mean for my job/hobby/passion. thank you to everyone who financially supported me in spite of my unreliability these past few months. i have said this a lot in public lately, because i’m still pretty gobsmacked by it: i genuinely did not realize i was in unusual pain, primarily because i was not aware that how i felt was not normal. i had assumed random aches and pains were part of the experience of having a human body or a result of me doing something wrong.

 

ok geeze

 

longer version: ok remember when this was about straightening my leg out. i don’t care about that shit any more. they can turn backwards now, whatever. the timeline of events has been roughly this:

  1. my fucking legs and knees hurt so bad when i climb stairs or walk up a hill. the muscles burn. this is not normal for someone at my age. i need to make sure my circulation is ok or im not getting diabetes.
  2. adam and i watch a video from a video game guy we like who talks about having a mystery illness with annoyingly vague but chronic symptoms: headaches, pains, fatigue, etc. i say “that’s just what it feels like to have a human body. i don’t think doctors can fix that”. adam is baffled by this comment, which i thought was something all of humanity agreed upon: it hurts to be alive and it fucking sucks. i run this up the flagpole and the vast majority of people i talked to do not, in fact, suffer regularly. ummmm. ok. just me then.
  3. get diagnosed with funky shaped kneecap and tight hip flexors. continue to try to do mild exercises but get winded VERY easily and have trouble catching my breath. getting really worried about my heart now. i feel very lazy and stupid for struggling this bad with something so basic when i am reasonably able-bodied.
  4. go on a trip to dc for 3 days and feel the best ive felt in years. i assumed at the time, it was just due to getting out of the house. i have no trouble walking up the shitty hills of DC. hooray!! maybe the exercise is finally working!!!
  5. come home from the trip and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i realize on the first bite that im having an allergic reaction to the fucking strawberries in the jam. every night i would make myself a pb+j with strawberry jam as a delicious late night treat. and most mornings i would pour myself a bowl of the special k with the strawberries to get all my vitamins and minerals or whatever. i have been spending the last 6 years of my life, maybe more, in a state of chronic anaphylactic shock. my legs hurt when i climb stairs because they’re not getting enough oxygen. feel even more stupid.
  6. an embarrassing number of problems are solved by simply not eating a fruit that’s actively trying to kill me. my legs are pain free, i can breathe better, my nose doesnt run constantly, i no longer have a chronic sore throat and tight chest. things are great! except since i got back from DC i’ve got this rash on my face and nothing seems to get rid of it. back to the doctor i go.
  7. my doctor asks me if i have lupus. the “house” disease that it never is?? that can’t be right. its never lupus. i look up information about lupus. it kind of sounds like i have lupus, actually. uh oh. in fact, now that i’m actually looking at the places that hurt, they’re kinda swollen.
  8. i get bounced around from specialist to specialist, from another doctor to an allergist to a rheumatologist who confirms via a very extensive blood work test that it is not lupus OR rheumatoid arthritis (RA). i go insane at about this point and i start to understand why “house” was so pissed off at the time. the shape of the rash is VERY specific to lupus, making differential diagnosis near impossible.
  9. the dermatologist gives me a face wash that takes care of the rash overnight. it was a yeast infection that simply decided to form itself in the shape of the classic “malar” or “butterfly rash” universally associated with lupus as a fun prank on me. fucking false flag!!! rash played me like a damn fiddle!
  10. on a call with my psychiatrist to renew my meds, she just fucking drops the answer in my lap after a quick look in her database after excluding lupus and RA. the rheum was right. i don’t have RA or lupus. i have RA lite that doesn’t show up on tests. this is the only thing i’ve ever felt sure of in my life because of the unique presentation of symptoms. she saved my brain from entering the unfathomable dark abyss that is self-diagnosis.

whew! isnt that just the dumbest shit you’ve ever read. the act of not eating a berry should not have had that much impact on my health. but like. man. i dont talk about this stuff unless its funny (strawberry TKO) because 1. its off-putting to everyone but people who revel in the idea of being sick 2. i value my privacy despite sharing all the stupid shit i do lol. i have to talk about this one because it directly impacts my work and i have a very kind and enthusiastic audience to whom i owe explanations for my flakiness for the past months.

 

my symptoms should come in the form of “flares”; i will be symptomatic for some time in between periods of remission but the duration of these is completely random. i just went through probably the worst flare ive had in recent memory and i probably have a little more time left with it before it finally fucks off. the unique features of PA that make me certain its the one are:

  • the swelling only last a few hours at most and sometimes it’s only a few minutes.
  • the swelling is not the same joint every time or consistent. it has favorite spots, like the tips of my fingers or my shoulder but attacks do not follow any pattern or occur after exposure or trauma.
  • multiple joints can be affected at once
  • my joints are normal in-between attacks.

transitory inflammation that clears itself up before the lunch hour is over is a really weird beast when you compare it to lupus or RA, which are persistent and damaging. its also impossible to show to a doctor unless i happen to get “lucky” and start bloating while in the office. so i still have one more tedious stop on this healthcare journey: getting a doctor to agree with me, some moron, so i can get the treatment i need. all i need to do is cross this final hurdle, because treatment works. i know because we tried. even strong NSAIDS are enough to keep me from feeling like my ankle is made of rotting wood or my finger tips from throbbing for hours. 

ill tell you this, now that i know it’s not normal to feel this way i can say out loud with no shame: it hurts like a son of a bitch.

thus concludes leg saga. what the fuck

 

i quit hiveworks

Posted on by Bea

intro: dont get your hopes up

look, i’m going to be straight up with you: there’s no messy drama or fallout that caused this. no juicy deets or salacious rumors to slurp down. you know if this were the case, i would have erupted across my various social medias in a frenzied rage with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop partly for entertainment purposes. instead, this will probably be a boring at best navel gaze where i try to walk the line between pragmatically trying to explain why i left and moral grandstanding. because leaving abruptly looks weird externally, i do actually have to explain why instead of just mysteriously leaving during a period of time where i am being an obnoxious asshole. a combination of disdain for the current cultural zeitgeist and a growing culture of disrespect toward audiences has culminated in my online behavior devolving into the online version of grabbing people saying stupid shit on the street and shaking them very hard. this is something an insane person would do. i know.

the commodification and increasingly blatant commercialization of an art format that could once arguably be compared to other amateur transgressive arts (ex: underground comix, tijuana bibles) is borderline heartbreaking. not to be too dramatic, but i want to start smashing things like im a monster from the rampage arcade game to scare the NIMBYs away before they start building escape rooms where the fetish web comics used to be. there is no place unspoiled by the poison of advertising and sponsorships. except…

 

 

trying to make money in comics is a fool’s errand. go make furry porn commissions if you want to make money doing art! you’re completely out of your mind if you go into the arts to make money. full on detachment from reality if you choose comics. they should commit you if you choose web comics.

 

at hive:

i think people have a wildly different perception regarding the popularity of A Ghost Story so i have approximate data to give people an idea. having culled the SHIT out of my analytics results to remove bot traffic, i think i have relatively accurate results, i get about 1000 unique visitors a month (generously rounding up lol), about half of them are regulars, and 10% of them donate to patreon (this is, imo, an unfathomably large amount lol. shocking and humbling. thank you for your continued support of me in spite of [gestures]).  i feel like a small comic 99% of the time, but man. 1,000 is a big number. i can at least reasonably assume, i’m PRETTY sure, that i was a comparatively small comic in hiveworks.

my monthly payout was roughly $100 a month (and merch sales, if applicable) and their services included web site help, dealing with any merch sales, and site hosting in exchange for running banner ads (which have been a fixture on web comics since the conception of google’s ad program; remember the homestuck bidding wars??). banner ads felt like a small and reasonable compromise to be included in something that felt like a weird pipe dream. in certain circles, a hiveworks invitation was a stamp of quality with prestige; i was very aware of the company i was invited into keep and was initially pretty concerned with how my presence reflected onto them and their work. i was going through some serious brain problems due to a deeply stupid relationship and, as a result, i did my best to keep my head down, stay out of people’s way, and focus on not bringing undue shame to something i was well aware i was completely unsuited for. i had (and frankly, still have) no idea why i was chosen as i had not applied. i cannot stress enough that i was under no delusions as to the quality of my comic lol. my perception was that someone had stuck their neck out to make a special exception for me and i was constantly on the verge of fucking it up and humiliating them.

it was a very off-balance exchange extremely in my favor, and i was aware of this. especially since, being frank and honest here, i was bringing absolutely nothing to the table for them. i don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but its a reasonable conclusion that i was more trouble than i was worth, given the infinitesimal worth.

the vast majority of hiveworks readers completely bounced off my comic, which makes perfect sense given the hiveworks audience is i think more interested in the genre they primarily host: fantasy and magical realism. in comparison, “a ghost story” is a slow, slooow burn about federal bureaucracy and being insane with extremely amateur art; i know what i am! and that’s fine! but i became a little resentful (and i tried not to! honest!) after 7 years of perpetually being put on a back burner. it felt like i was being strung along for reasons beyond my comprehension or as the baseline of acceptable awfulness for the website’s quality. someone has to be the “worst”, objectively. it’s not a great feeling to know it, coming to terms with it i think was much healthier than trying to fight it. it was a really good driving force to keep my mind off the nightmare of my life at that point and improve my art a lot.

AGS’ irrelevance was underscored by it being mentioned once over the course of 7 years on official social media networks, upon which a great deal of importance was placed. but frankly, there is nothing worse than dealing with the guy who sucks whining for the spotlight as though they are clueless as to why they are getting the shaft. so i simply achieved enlightenment by getting over it and realizing where i was in the hierarchy and how lucky i was to have so much shit done for me. i was (am, unbelievably. it never gets less wild when i sit down and really think about it) making enough through patreon that the $100 became my monthly fun money while i lived in oregon. it was welcome, but not essential.

a lot of real life, awful things happened that suck and couldn’t be avoided: one of the main points of communication and organization became terribly ill, COVID happened and obliterated shipping and manufacturing rates for apparently all eternity, uhhh the fabric of reality began to unravel lol. it’s been a terrible couple of years. i want to underscore this stuff so that people understand i was not wronged greatly in the grand scheme of things.

there are things that started to chip away at me over time, which made me question if i was a good fit at all. genuinely: the only thing i want to do is to try to live happily within my morals doing what i love to do. even and especially if it means living very broke. that’s the exchange i’m consciously choosing to make when i pick up the pen every day. due to the generosity of the people who support me or have supported me at any time (special shout out to adam, who puts up with this shit for some reason), i am able to do that. i contribute a proportional amount to the household now but tried to be (was??) 50/50 or 25/25/25/25 when i had roommates. i don’t want my one unyielding selfish choice to be anyone else’s burden.

i was told by another artist in hiveworks that my confrontational behavior could be a poor reflection on the brand, which became the tipping point in my choice to leave. to be clear, no one in charge told me this, but even conceptually i was not comfortable representing a company that i felt i was a member of out of obligation or inertia. i didn’t belong there and my presence was an active detriment instead of a tolerated nuisance.

anyway:

when the offer to leave was presented, i didn’t feel regret, or anxiety, or upset at all. i felt a placid sense of relief. i COULD leave. that’s TRUE. i had been kicking it around on my private twitter for a few months going back and forth with myself over what was more important to me: being able to take care of myself financially or doing something about my own hypocrisy that kept me up at night. if my incessant argument is that advertising based commercialization is a societal poison, then i need to put my money where my mouth is. and if i’m consistently annoying, i need to leave as a courtesy to everyone else.

i don’t regret my time with hive at all, but the overarching transformation from a collection of cartoonists to a brand is not where i want to take my art. i can’t bring myself to work even within the proximity of seven seas, a deeply abhorrent company. i am completely disinterested in wasting time or energy worrying about “the algorithm” because i don’t make comics for the computer’s sake and recognize that there’s a finite number of people interested in web comics in the world and an even more finite amount of money to spend on luxuries (because none of us have any money lol). i don’t want to repeat the familiar cycle of lamenting the death of art as we know it every 6 months.

people who are choosing to spend their limited funds supporting me are making a deliberate choice to elevate my presence in their life. i want and need to keep this in mind at all times, because it drives my attitudes toward what i want to choose to focus on. i want to keep my art (“art”) free with additional goodies being as reasonably priced as possible in the hopes that in this way we scratch each other’s back. making money drawing comics is a ridiculous privilege granted to me by people willing to sacrifice their time and money to me; i need to be thinking more about all that i have instead of worrying about what i don’t.

who fills the pot holes in “lore olympus”?

Posted on by Bea

 

the thing about criticism is this: you can absolutely think “too hard” about something intended to be light fare and the delicate balancing act of art criticism is about threading various needles to avoid as many retorts as possible accusing you of opening discussions in bad faith. one of the many ways to obliterate trust in your critical audience is to become so derisively nitpicky that your attempts to draw attention to the pre-existing holes in the setting or the structure of the story will look like petty sabotage. i recognize this is the risk im taking when i get set off by the existence of sports luxury vehicles within a fictional universe created entirely to cater to a specific sexual appetite. indeed, there is no type of pedantry more obnoxious than the sexual pedant.

BUT.

the work doesnt exist in a vacuum. if we’re going to be honest about the work’s intent (or, how the work’s intent explicitly reads to the audience), part of the fantasy is to be completely taken care of. i mean, who among us hasn’t dreamed of this, at least briefly. it’s one of the most fundamental of all human desires. but to be taken care of, in settings which are founded in capitalist societies (everyone groans at my shit), begs the obvious question: where is the money coming from?

author’s note so everyone knows im not insane (hahahaha): i’m not here to argue the virtues of communism over capitalism or imply that depicting capitalism favorably in your comic is a moral failing. it is not capitalism itself that i have a problem with (…in artistic depictions), it is the way that it is invoked within this comic specifically that bothers me; it demonstrates a terminal thread of thoughtlessness that threatens to unravel the entire setting, premise and moral ambiguity of what is being presented as a desirable fantasy. this element is the catalyst that sparks the degradation of the taboo into the unconscionable. 

look i’ll be up front: my primary motivation is that this comic sucks and im a hater. the anti-feminist overtones are their own kettle of fish but the runner up contender for most concerning (oooueerrrg, everyone is groaning again) element is the complete lack of class consciousness. look, i mean concerning in the sense of “why has none of this gone recognized by, like, anyone?” every time i show someone a real LO panel they react like i’m went out of my way to fuck with them in an ultra specific way. it has completely recreated the feeling of being the only person in my friend group watching riverdale, if riverdale were the crown jewel of the WB.

to strip the pretension from the phrase “class consciousness” and put it in plain text: the insertion of modern capitalism into the comic has necessitated the creation of an underclass to serve the gods (the focus of the comic). as a result, the comic has repeatedly needed to justify the abuse, exploitation and acts of dominance over the subjugated class in order for the main cast to remain sympathetic. the author is incapable of envisioning a world that does not operate on disparity, in spite of the immutable fact that the gods are the sole arbiters of seemingly infinite creation.

and i’m capable of comprehending that there are times when a work has grotesquely unlikable asshole protagonists on purpose. it could be argued that the fickle behaviors of the gods is SUPPOSED to be detestable and there are obviously times where that is the intended audience read. but this is not “succession” and the entirety of the work does not indicate that it is trying to create quiet commentary by inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions on the characters by simply presenting them with the truth of their actions and deeds. additionally, if the romantic hero also engages in that behavior and it’s unremarked on or encouraged by the author or the heroine, what is the intended audience read?

regardless, all this to say: i do not want to alter the content of the comic, but to verbalize how it reads to me as an audience member. the purpose of criticism is to demonstrate and encourage reflection and to help refine one’s own perceptions.

okay. right. the cars.

 

image

 

this is minthe. i could write 100000 more words about the treatment of her by the comic and, by extension, the author. her introduction is about as subtle as a brick: she serves as the evil whore foil to persephone’s virgin perfection. her introduction as hades’ randomly abusive, hyper-sexual, and cruel younger girlfriend is contrasted with persephone’s naivete, chastity, and sweetness. shes literally smoking a cigar and wearing lingerie. somehow she is not the hero.

 

image

image

 

like i said, there’s a lot to unpack with her but i need to stay on target. minthe is a nymph, one of many “beast races” (for lack of a better term) that populate olympus and fulfill menial tasks and jobs. for example, this guy runs a modeling agency.

 

image

 

a modeling agency that include car shows. or…dealerships. its not really clear. anyway: she is introduced to hades in a flashback through his brother zeus who sexually harasses her during her shift.

lol uh. or comes as close as he can without becoming objectively villainous instead of “rakish”. as a result, what plays out is all VERY schoolyard behavior.

 

image

image

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he executes a 0/10 prank that still kills for some reason.

 

image

 

and then it happens. “it” isn’t a singular event limited to just the example im about to give. “it” is the complete undercutting of the dramatic and logical tension within the story and “it” happens with alarming frequency as the comic introduces more and more modern elements. each additional luxury vehicle or department story or cell phone comes with the artist being forced to depict the people (or in this case, beast races) providing those services. the author cannot imagine a world where luxury is not predicted on service or a product, even or especially when the existence of the service or product does not make sense.

back to “it”…hades poofs away:

 

image

 

if gods can poof and fly (as its been implied some or all of them can), what in the hell is the purpose of the luxury vehicle on olympus? the beast races are sure as shit not buying them as they are explicitly the working class in every single one of their appearances. what does it run on? who pumps the gas? who services the cars? the streets of olympus have been paved so that cars can be driven so this would suggest the city’s infrastructure was centered around the use of vehicles. does he hire someone to drive him around in it, despite the fact that he can teleport? he and persephone clearly use it to get around even though she can fly. these cars are so successful despite having an extremely limited number of buyers, they make enough money to hire booth babes all day explicitly so they can be sexually harassed by the men (of a superior magic immortal race) buying the cars.

why does an entire seemingly unnecessary industry exist within the confines of the universe?

 

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all of the above questions are overthinking a basic logistical problem with the setting for anyone with a moral center: in order to be served, one must have servants. the entirety of the universe in LO is constructed around not a modern re-imagining of the ancient myth, but instead a lazy and depressing hodge-podge of various products and physical items the author places great value on as status items in the real world. and, sadly, this is not as a bit within the universe. this isn’t setting up any message other than the central one of the comic: love and worth can be quantified with a dollar amount.

hades’ department store (staffed entirely by beast races who are delighted and eager to serve their master) offers a purse that two beast race women drool over, only to be informed:

 

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this scene has a direct and obvious purpose: through it, we establish that hades’ store caters to the ultra-ultra-rich. this is a level of rich that is unobtainable to anyone except the pantheon of gods, whose unique abilities maintain the fabric of reality and thus set the terms for the world they unilaterally control. at best, minthe, a nymph, experiences a fraction of this wealth when sugaring for hades. on the other hand, persephone is the heiress to a cereal empire (who is eating the….?………you know what dont even get me started on that whole thing) so she is all but assured to be independently wealthy even if she was temporarily without funds during certain events of the comic.

 

image

 

back to the purse: hades and persephone arrive at his own department store so that she can have a restorative shopping montage. she learns a heart-warming lesson about how its okay to be rich in what i think is one of the most gratuitous and absolute dog-brained moments of the entire fucking comic, thus far, including the part where persephone gets big and accidentally steps on (real, human, ancient greek) people and has to go on the lam. her accidental manslaughters evidently require a tribunal and a trial of her peers, which is odd when contrasted with the justice meted out on the beast races indiscriminately and unilaterally by individual gods who act as judge, jury, and executioner.

 

image

 

granted these are not the nice gods (i can think of an event with demeter, persephone’s confusingly controlling mother, specifically, as seen above), but there’s an echo of this behavior when hades bullies two beast race women into divulging information about persephone. in one example, a woman purchases a hair comb from a pawn shop, ignorant that it was a gift from hades and persephone is the one who pawned it for emergency funds. when hades shakes her down and demands where she stole the comb from, she directs him to the pawn shop and he just…takes it. to give it to persephone again. whether or not she was made whole or is even okay with this is completely inconsequential to the author but left me, the reader, in a total lurch. the complete disregard for addressing this within the narrative is less shocking when taken into total account with everything else ive been talking about.

 

image

 

the sequence in which hades takes her on a shopping spree to both improve her mood and express his love was too grotesque for me on every conceivable level. it is not just the shockingly antiquated “women b shoppin!” stereotype presented as a healing process, but the open and shameless conflation of money and love, net worth and self-worth. what possible message could come from this except to reinforce that within the fictional universe of LO, it is the place of the lesser to fawn over what persephone is ultimately entitled to. it is her birthright as the protagonist/self insert and as a literal goddess who determines the creation of food…and nymphs. the underclass. the gods are responsible for the creation of their servants.

 

image

image

 

the industries exist because they are 1:1 representations of or conductive to what the author considers to be a desirable luxurious fantasy. i do not think there is a more complex reason than that, as that is the reason why the entire comic exists: as a personal love letter to the author’s tastes and desires. and frankly, that’s the point of comics. ALL comic artists should succumb to this desire. what continues to vex and haunt me however is the complete lack of reflection occurring despite the author putting these elements together and presenting them for an audience who then lapped it up without questioning what, specifically, was appealing about this and why. it is by sheer accident that these elements combine together to paint an unflattering picture of a culture that has created artificial disparity for no apparent reason than personal gratification.

image

 

my question, is this:

who fills the pot holes on the roads built exclusively so that the gods can drive their luxury cars? why do they do it? to get hades some pussy????

 

 

another successful goon project

Posted on by Bea

note: this was originally posted as an article on my newsletter uhhh. this month. lol.

 

this specific section is going to comprise the bulk of this newsletter. it’s going to come with some caveats: 1. this is very stupid 2. it is on-going and 3. i am involved(ish) and thus, a biased participant. so, read this with the grain of salt it deserves but i’ll be forthcoming about what i did. man, this intro makes it sound like i’m about to confess to a terrible crime and reveal where the severed heads are buried.

this is a long story, so bear with me:

a thread on something awful dot com dedicated to remembering stupid moments in goon history had a previously unknown fact shared with it about the goon mutual aid fund:

 

user “ass cobra” in cat jail

 

 

i’m going to use the op of the mutual aid thread to helpfully label some important things you may have to return back to for clarity. or laughs. this is plinkey.

 

 

the mutual aid thread is located in CSPAM, the (ostensibly) shitposting forum for (ostensive) leftists. personally, i think it is comprised of the dumbest collection of self-serving, emotionally-stunted, pathetic, rage-addicted tumblr-circa-2012 rejects that the internet could assemble. it should be no surprise that communists hate each other so passionately.

the first thing i noticed (when i stumbled on this thread ages ago) was the bizarre choice to use patreon as a charity platform. this will become important later for other reasons; at the time i thought it was just a very stupid choice because patreon ends up eating at LEAST 15% of your income. a combination of platform fees, processing fees, transfer fees, VAT, and, as of this year, USA freelance tax will leave you flat fucking broke at the end of the day. source: my bank account.

this might come as a surprise given the comparatively wild west nature of the forum, but the general rule on SA when it comes to salacious gossip is “put up or shut up”. that is, if you are going to make accusations against another poster’s character, you better be ready to back it up. using the (recently repaired) search feature revealed a concerning pattern in plinkey’s post history. get ready to scroll:

 

 

plinkey created the fund in nov 2019

 

this man’s intestinal lining must look and act like a fucking slip-n-slide by now. eating casino food with that much regularity would force the human body to have to adapt rapidly to harsh and unfavorable conditions. it’s possible, and sad, to think this may be the apex of humanity as we know it based on having the digestive prowess of a holstein cow.

if this were it, it would only just be pretty funny that the guy with the obvious gambling problem (who also can’t help but incessantly post about it like anyone is impressed) is the sole arbiter of a fund that gets $3k in income every month. if plinkey exploded tomorrow from overdosing on buffet lobster specials, that $3k would just keep accumulating on patreon forever without anyone else being able to distribute it. it seems kind of reckless to do this and to also be violently defensive whenever anyone brings it up.

plinkey had this to say in this defense:

 

maybe i’m different, but if there was someone who was demonstrably incapable of having the temperament, empathy, humility, or honesty to run a charity, i would not permit them to run that charity on my website. for example, this post reveals that, at the very least, plinkey will lie by omission.

 

 

i guess the novel coronavirus would throw a stick in your spokes when it comes to indulging in your public facing addiction. if only there were a legal way to gamble without leaving the comfort of one’s home…

 

ppv=pay per view. as in, sports streaming. perhaps to bet on. additionally, user smarxist is in hilary jail.

 

BUT EVEN THAT IS NOT ALL. according to the goonfund sob story, the fund runs out of money around the end of the month. we have no way of knowing this because plinkey stopped keeping public records after doing it maybe twice at the beginning of this venture. which is weird, because plinkey used donations intended to buy community members food and pay their rent on a failed democratic candidate/CSPAM pet project that only won 27% of the primary vote. why would he do that if they struggle month to month? why not save it up for goons who need help in upcoming months?

 

only after a LOT of people complained

 

now, i know what you’re thinking: “hey, you can’t use charity for that”. well, you’re right. but plinkey isn’t running a charity, by any standards. unfortunately, this is my contribution to this whole stupid sideshow. imo, there is quite literally only one reason why someone would opt to choose patreon instead of

1. filing the appropriate paperwork to become tax-free and keep your nose clean

2. setting up a charity paypal (not a regular account! they have charity ones!)

or

3. setting up a donation website with wordpress+a plug in that does all the hard work for you, which is what i suggested.

here is what i said:

 

user “fun hater” is in cat jail

 

i said meaner things too, but evidently i didn’t have to try very hard because posting like this has earned me nearly 2 weeks of probation.

 

user “fun hater” is in hilary jail as well.

 

it would take too long to otherwise document the absolutely mountainous pile of terrible posts made in defense of someone who acts like he’s the only person in the world who has ever been scrutinized for their behavior ever. inexplicably, he has some sort of psychic sway over the mods that has caused them to completely forget how to interpret stimuli and information. he and his fan club have been given infinite leeway in their attempts to sabotage a new fund being set up in the style of the one for the UK goons. plinkey has refused to provide any real documentation involving numbers and instead keeps posting emails from people thanking him for making the fund (which he specifically said he would not do, lol). meanwhile, an infinite supply of debate club dropouts scream and cry about how mean you are and how they DON’T CARE if he’s stealing. which is frankly, an insane moral choice for a communist to make.

but, dont just take it from me. you can read this all for yourself if you want here:

1. PYF Goon Sagas&Current Dramas

2. UNOFFICAL GOONBUCKS THREAD, GET YOUR UNOFFICIAL GOONBUCKS HERE

3.The forums slush fund should not be run by a gambling addict.

 

 

EDIT: 11/26/22: plinkey has abandoned the pretense of charity entirely, leaving the goons who were dependent on the fund twisting in the wind.

 

 

look, this was originally going to be just in a newsletter as a stupid thing that goons are throwing money on that anyone else would immediately clock as an obvious scam. it’s funny how obvious it is and how the mods somehow don’t know what the right course of action is. it’s funny how defensive people in the thread are about it. what’s way less funny is fucking over the people who threw down for you for no other reason than faith in their fellow man. this is a winter where people are losing jobs by the tens of thousands and are sharing tips with each other on how to stay warm without heat. fuck this idiot for real. this is putrid shit

there’s no one smoking gun that directly proves that plinkey is misappropriating the funds. but there doesn’t need to be. a reasonable person can look at all of this and conclude that he is, at best, completely unsuited for a leadership position, especially when there is money involved. as the saying goes: it’s not one thing, it’s everything.

the financial concern

Posted on by Bea

i’m not sure it’s possible to talk about this without sounding preachy, self-congratulatory, and/or smug. no one likes to talk about morality and trying to talk about morality and art with artists is like trying to talk to a really dense brick. the conversation often devolves into juvenile fandom discourse about whether or not it’s okay to jack off to children and i really don’t want anything to do with people who consider this a major concern in their lives. i’m trying to think beyond dicks here (impossible, i know).

one of the main things that alienates me with w/ regards to my peers is my primary effort being trying to maintain some level of moral dignity in a field that is inherently slanted toward exploitation and humiliation. i am aware of “how it sounds” to talk negatively about obtaining money in a subculture (web comics, but also comics in general) that is populated largely by minority artists who view it as an avenue for financial freedom that was once closed entirely to us. but: i have no idea where the perception of online art as a source of financial security came from; an artistic career is famously synonymous with poverty. why would online be any different? why would you not anticipate the years needed to build an appreciative audience for your work? or the years of “making your bones”?

as a result, many people (i’m talking the ones who don’t have external financial assistance from friends/family) obviously struggle to maintain a job based entirely on their own work. as a result of that, there seems to be a general presumption that all methods and avenues by which an artist makes money are virtuous because they provide income to a struggling person (you, the artist). to criticize the ways people make their money (for example, taking work from companies known to be abusive to their employees or encouraging the creation of art with a factory line, quantity-over-quality mentality) is read as an attack on the viability of the profession itself. to express disgust with how someone earns a living is perceived as, in the most dramatic instances, wanting artists to starve, suffer, or die (as if the only options in life are to take bad jobs or die; there are alternatives! come on! its intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.). somehow, the same people who are deeply convinced that art works influence reality cannot be dissuaded that the jobs they choose to take have consequences outside of the immediate financial comfort it offers to them, the artist.

i refuse to entertain the notion that a subculture built on mutual support and a DIY punk attitude should become a safe house for the financially driven. i do not believe it is acceptable to expect and defend every instance of an artist making a financially beneficial decision over a moral one. to criticize an artist for their financial/moral decisions is not an act of targeted cruelty unique to them only. i do not support a mainstream web comic scene based on gaining the respect of corporations or finding validation in brands.

freelance artists today are blessed to live in an era where becoming an artist for a living is no longer a empty pipe dream that only a tiny handful of already wealthy and connected people can obtain, but financial success is absolutely not even remotely guaranteed despite the accessibility of the career to new artists. the world at large remains hostile to arts funding and the creation of novel ideas and visuals is not of financial interest to the people providing careers (which i’ll define as “a full-time job where you get health insurance”) to artists. when you choose to become an artist for a living, you are making a conscious choice to prioritize your artistic passion over security. and i understand you, if that’s you.

no one becomes an artist to become rich except for maybe the biggest, most naive dopes on the planet. you would have to ignore over 100 years of american sneering at art and the mere concept of paying for it. you can see it in the naked contempt our peers have for art that is genuinely unusual, off-putting or “undeserving” of its status in the artistic canon (i remember some truly idiotic posts about “the comedian” aka “the banana duct taped to the wall”. no one who hated it bothered to research the artist, his work, and what he’s trying to achieve. i’m being mean now: there’s a gaping void where their intellectual curiosity should be that they  filled instead with the emotional equivalent of packing peanuts.)

we choose to be artists knowing that financial stability will never occur unless you win the literal or metaphorical lottery. to be an artist as a living is to prioritize your emotional needs over practicality. AND I GET IT. i draw for a living because i think i would be in a padded cell otherwise. there is nothing i wouldn’t give up to continue doing what i do because it’s fulfilling something nebulous and impossible to define in me that gratifies me more than any meal, any medication, any good nights sleep. there’s something wrong with my brain lol. this kind of attitude is certainly not normal.

there is nothing certain, stable or beneficial to being a freelance artist; you will need to make peace with poverty and uncertainty. you can skip this if you don’t want my life story: i started my comic in 2013 while finishing school and working a graveyard shift at the university library. i graduated and drove a small uhaul of my crap up to oregon where i lived with 3 other people who taught me how to sign up for food stamps and medicare. using government benefits, careful spending, and basically only spending my fun money on weed (lol this part i dont recommend but it made “being alive” better), i lived near portland for 4 years on my own money before picking up and moving to rhode island 3k miles away using my savings i’ve built up since i started working at 15. i’ve been living with adam for 4 years (! wowzers!) during which, for about a year, we made approx. the same amount of money lol. a dual income helped, but we were still scraping by at the time. i used my remaining savings last year to put a down payment on our house. it is literally only this month that i am starting to feel financial comfort but its because of adam’s job (which he has worked crazy hard on. manual labor is a class all of its own). however, with the 15% of my income the u.s. government takes, an economic downturn that leaves our supporters with less fun money to spend, and a society that seeks to reduce art’s virtues down to its financial worth, it is a horrible time to be an artist. i have been realizing that if i were still living with roommates, the current american economic landscape would have made it near, if not entirely, unfeasible for me to have continued working as an artist full time. and i used to work with my gloves and coat on so i didnt have to run the very expensive heat during the winter. i was already cutting a lot of corners.

when confronted with the question “then how do we make money off our art if we are expected to ALSO reject jobs on moral grounds?!” the answer is: you don’t. you already are not going to make a living off of it unless you are willing to chase down major corporations for literal years to get the 200 dollars they owe you. you live in and are arguing for the right to contribute/support, without criticism, to a society that does not believe your work has value beyond making the maximum amount of money possible. if i had to, i would rejoin the workforce at least part-time and do art on the side like literally everyone else on the planet has ever had to do (and as i did when i was building my audience). i realize that suggesting this to artists today is like suggesting they lay in the road and die. but if we are going to operate within reality then we need to accept some universal truths:

  1. no one is too good to work minimum wage.
  2. a practical solution to a problem (no money) is not an argument that your work shouldn’t have financial value.
  3. there’s nothing anyone can do about people not purchasing your work. if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell. there is no guarantee that your work will connect with an audience with spare cash or the desire to fund more. that’s entertainment!

if my options for artistic financial fulfillment were limited to propping up the success of companies i am morally opposed to, i would drop art as a job. i would go back to doing it for my own gratification only and start churning out literally a thousand drawings a year. i’ll work for a company that crushes pigeons into cubes before i’ll ever work for dc/marvel (and let’s cut this off at the head: im not chomping on sour grapes here. i am not jealous of people who work for major comic corporations. when you ask them how union building is going they completely flip the fuck out because they know any sign of solidarity in public threatens their bag. and im supposed to applaud this?? lol)

i have to anticipate this: people will bring up being marginalized as a reasonable excuse and im not really sure what the fuck is up with you that you think life works like a points system and you’re just evening out an unseen scale. fuck you! hold yourself to a better standard!!! don’t throw up your hands!!! is a web comic subculture that revolves around making money, creating algorithmically exploitative works, and sharing tips on how to maximize your output (while doing the least amount of actual work) the community you want to ally yourself with? because i really really don’t and feel mortified to be associated by proxy.

my general negativity and constant stream of criticism (lol i know. i know. i dont like being this way either. i feel perpetually aggravated by the inherent evil of life) causes people to make assumptions about my financial status, my upbringing, my political, and moral beliefs and my racial background (and so on and etc). in fact, i will admit i am still burned abt being called privileged over suggesting that there’s more to life than money lol.i think this is a cowardly reaction to someone challenging you and a frantic flailing attempt to justify yourself to others by forgetting the lesson hammered into you by nearly every single literary, visual and audio artwork ever created. i guess now we have confirmation that art has 0 effect on reality.

i feel like a dick, regardless. complicated.

i dont really know what i want from this except to get it out. actually, i do know: i just need a check on how detached this mentality is from “the scene”. if this is met with universal booing, i can be placed back in my habitat so i stop bothering people who fundamentally don’t agree with me.

but man. the only thing you take with you to your grave is your reputation. when they bury me, i hope they say “she was a rotten bitch but at least she gave a shit”

post too long. die now.

dark souls lore: izalith family tree, gaping dragon, the soul

Posted on by Bea

you can also trace the path of the undead dragon! its not as satisfying as i remember it being but let me show you:

at the top of this image you can see where he’s hanging.

i turned the layers off here but he tumbles into the abyss

i thought he fell into the dragon ass lava lake but no dice. it’s pretty far off

rip to the poor sucker from astora who died before you

The Soul:

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE

my right leg isn’t right – part 4

Posted on by Bea

i haven’t updated this in a few months in order to let some data (for lack of a better term) build up. i have a lot of information, most of which i think i remember. if the point of these posts was to provide information for other people i might have already fucked up. anyway: things are mostly better! today and yesterday specifically have been horrible because i just got back from a trip that involved A LOT OF WALKING. as a result, my hips exploded.

first, back in april, i had another leg appointment! with the leg doctor guy. the ortho. yeah.

 

swag

 

after he studied my MRI and x-rays, wiggled my leg around, and then murmured “that’s so strange” multiple times under his breath, the doc gave me a very reassuring diagnosis of “i don’t know, pretty weird!”. if i were paying for this visit i think i’d be mad about how often i get the “pretty weird” diagnosis, but i recognize that it’s a polite way of saying “your life is very bad and there’s not anything medically i can do about that”. sometimes, it’s the honest truth. they’re not magicians. they can’t improve the material conditions of my life or whip up a cure/relief if it doesn’t exist.

thankfully (“thankfully”) i am poor enough to enjoy what literally every other nation on earth has access to: free medical care. and he did come up with a temporary solution for the pain. a knee brace! getting it from the doctor meant i didn’t have to do any of the (extremely daunting for someone who pathologically cannot make small decisions) work of trying to sort through a sea of different braces in a CVS aisle. it fits perfectly AND my day to day pain dropped dramatically. it was immediately evident when walking up stairs; the persistent “pulling” pain in the back of my calf was almost entirely absent instead of being razor sharp. it’s not intolerable pain without the brace, just annoying. now its not a bother at all.

a combination of the knee brace on bad days, doing p.t. when i remember to (my body now craves being stretched with the inexpensive resistance bands i purchased), and taking it easy (hehehe sorry! can’t do shit! doctor’s orders!), i’m starting to notice some nice changes to my gait. i used to walk up the stairs on my tip-toes and now my full foot hits the step. the muscles that were once too tight to do so comfortably are starting to unclench. it’s been nice to get some noticeable results. the worst possible outcome would have been everything remaining exactly the same and realizing that i was just kind of experiencing life as it was intended for me. b-bummer! time to raise that wellbutrin dose again!

my biggest complaints about my current below-the-waist situation (before i ground my hips into dust) were that my pelvic floor was/is so tight that it physically hurt and that my erector spinae muscle that covered the most lower part of my back right above the center of my ass began to feel TERRIBLY tight. it felt WEIRD in an unpleasant way. downward dog or downward facing dog (i think these are the ones) yoga poses have been relieving the ass cramp. the cramp in my nether regions is mostly a result of anxiety more than leg problems. however, the p.t. has been helping with the process of untangling the several decades worth of painful cramping i’ve let accumulate over the years.

there’s new, normal “i’m out of shape” pain in my legs now from time to time, but the pain is manageable with an over the counter pain med and goes away in about a day. it’s a specific and different type of pain from the one in my knees and, now, in my hips. i just got back from a disneyworld vacation and epcot is still designed with the idea that every human being is a long distance endurance runner. that place is horrendous to get around. there was a LOT of walking done two days ago and my joints still feel like someone is grinding glass in them. my knee was actually fine (save the one very painful hill in epcot; i see now my knee problem is triggered by going up in any capacity), which is a relief. one less thing to worry about.

however, i think i will go back to the ortho and ask about my hips lol. [wobbles pathetically like a t-rex out of the room]