This Dark Souls Character Isn't Real 

3:54 they don’t credit the voice actors?

3:31 The primary flight feathers on birds are called pinions. Crows have 9 pinions, while ravens have 10. So, the difference between a crow and a raven is simply a matter of a pinion.

Snuggly lives in your backpack and only talks when she has to, like Kazooie

I've always thought she was inside the egg. This is why it asks (in a shivering voice) for something warm. She is cold and needs warmth to hatch.

My favorite bit of voice actor trivia is that in DS3, the same person voices the cute lil' invisible crow AND THE FRIGGIN' EVANGELISTS. Quite the register.

15:19 "It's been 15 years since Demon's Souls came out, and almost 13 since Dark Souls 1" DAMN

Snuggly so called long ago by an unknown player legend from a faraway country.

Bespoke: you're talking to the tree

8:08 "But it does show up as the character's full name on the FextraLife wiki." See, that's how you know it's 100% untrue.

This reminds me of the dog in 'Blasphemous' who is named "Nemo" in the game files but his name is never said in game so the community gave him the nickname "The Petable One" because the main character is named "The Penitent One"

Honestly, the voice acting makes her sound like a parrot, IMO. That particular "squawk" sound she makes is very similar to the typical noise we associate with large parrots, like macaws.

9:40 "musume" is normally "daughter" but like a lot of Japanese familial terms (e.g. obasan -> lit "aunt" but figuratively "[not young] woman"), it carries a more general reading of "girl" (it's an alternate reading of the character for "girl"). So "hawk girl" is a reasonably exact translation.

She's real to me 😭

Every time I see Johnathan Frakes telling me something isn't true, I immediately start smiling

Deciding to call the DS3 bird "Snuggly the Crow" as well is probably the worst offender as the first thing the character says is "Me! Me! Pickle-Pee!," leading any sensible person to assume her name is Pickle-Pee, especially because there's no reference of "snuggly" or "crow" anywhere in her dialogue. Really shows the leaps and bounds these fan wiki editors go to try to enforce their head canon on pages that should remain factual and proven by source. Thank you for your work and your pursuit of truth.

At 1:50 you can see that in the Demon's Souls subtitles she says "Caw", and that's universally onomatopoeia for a crow sound. Add that to the pile of things why people think it's a crow.

my completely speculative take here; she's the weird Double Winged Hawk thing in Demon's Souls. but she's one of Velka's Crows in Dark Souls series.

Its funny how berserk had a similar situation with "Band of the Hawk" vs "Band of the Falcon" because of the translations of a certain kanji iirc.

Crow can mimic human speech. Combined with liking shiny objects, I always assumed it was a crow or raven. This was long before Dark Souls 1 with the big cat or Dark Souls 2 with Shalquoir came out, so I didn't assume a talking animal past what is normal.

This reminds me a lot of the Band of the Hawk/Falcon business with Berserk, where after ages of translating Griffith's chosen bird as hawk he does something that makes it absolutely clear it was falcons all along. Of all the Berserk references in Souls games I don't think anyone expected or intended bird confusion to be one of them

The wiki edits are hilarious. I love the games and community but there is some weird things some people get hung up on. I always appreciate fan creativity but it can be really frustrating when people dig their heels in

The egg design they used does look more like that of Crows/Ravens than Hawks, but given the misnaming took place pre Dark Souls that's probably not a massive contributing factor to the overall confusion

Snuggly the Hawk Girl just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I remember hearing that fan-theory that the other three lord souls had a special title like the Dark Soul did (so the light soul, life soul, death soul, I believe), and thinking it was neat and interesting, though still just a fan theory. I remember hearing another fan theory later (something about nito? I forget, it's been years) that stood out to me because it took that previous theory as fact, and used it as a bit of credible evidence pointing towards what they were saying. The lesson I took from that at the time was that I should take everything the dark souls community says with quite a few grains of salt, because the standard of proof seemed really low - didn't realize that things were quite this extreme. She's still snuggly the crow in my heart, though.

Here's another blatant example of hawk erasure: in DeS, the birds encircling the Old One appear to be hawks with *two* wings (Remember that random lore bit about the extra ones disappearing as they grow older, perhaps as old as the OLD one?) but in the remake, though its hard to see what exactly they are, it seems like they've been made more white and seagull noises were also added to that area. The double-winged hawks were also changed to have a more crow-like appearence. Bluepoint crazy for that one..

Someone may have already pointed this out, but the Japanese phrase you're translating as 'hawk's daughter' - 鷹の娘 - does just, uh. actually mean Hawk Girl in this context. Yes, the musume/娘 kanji does mean 'daughter', but it can also contextually just mean 'girl' - any girl is, after all, innately a daughter. The trick is in how the kanji is pronounced when spoken - the context it's being used here would be pronounced 'ko' - which is normally written 子, but that kanji only conveys the meaning 'child' - using 娘 instead clarifies the gender - 'girl.'

So her name is Sparkly the Eagle and she's a raven. Got it!

13:21 I now have the image of Eileen the Crow(Bloodborne) huddled in the nest stuck in my head lol

You should've released this on April 1st to further the confusion, Then end the video with a segment on how using the pendant in the correct place reveals Snuggly's name

My favorite thing about wiki's, is how, ring of calamity increasing damage of karmic justice was on the page for like 8 years on ru wiki

8:14 That's an important distinction. Fuwafuwa means the fluffy one, while mokomoko means the fuzzy one.

The Garfield and friends reference was so perfect because that’s EXACTLY how I’ve seen Snuggly😭

12:48 well another one i can KINDA think of is the name of the Oscar of Astora. In the credits he has no name and it's only in cut content where he says it. Funny how that works

Also... hold on, we got official names for the birds in DS2- Dyna and Tillo... but are they also, despite what the wikis say, not crows?

Reminds me of how the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus are often referred to by names made up whole cloth by the community.

You can trust that guy speaking of that player of Great Renown. Their dad works at From Soft. He sleeps in bunk beds with Miyazaki and they talk about deep lore for hours before bed.

fun fact the eggs blue speckled coloration in DS1 matches pretty closely to a crows egg, were as a hawk egg is a light cream with brown speckles.

3:15 I'm almost certain it's supposed to be a raven. The plumage on the end of the tail seems more diamond-shaped, whereas crow tail arrangements are flat. Its chest feathers are more fluffy, as opposed to a crow's smooth chest feathers. It also seems to fly more like a raven than a crow, since it's mostly soaring.

Just FYI, 鷹の娘 can mean "hawk's daughter" but it can also just mean "girl who is a hawk". The の particle acts as a genitive case marker, which means it can both show possession (as in your interpretation) or simply "labeling" the second noun with the first. In my opinion the second possibility is much more likely. It's a similar case to the "Astora's straight sword" mistranslation, which should have been "straight sword of Astora" or "Astoran straight sword", where the の is once again creating a label rather than personal posession.

This reminds me of how people call the nameless knight of Astora that frees you at the beginning Oscar. His name actually *is* Oscar, but you can only see this referred to in the game files. Nothing in any Souls game refers to "Oscar of Astora" and it's likely that he was never intended to have an official name. But once the community had a name to latch onto, it stuck, and now tons of people know that NPC as Oscar despite the fact that none of them could've actually learned that from the game itself. (I actually might've learned this from an Illusory Wall vid and just forgotten, since I don't remember exactly where I heard it from.)

I feel like with the juxtaposition of the surprisingly large birds nest, with eggs the size of mangoes, with a "caw"-ing character that is implied to hoard items (for trade) and the giant crow just around the corner that carries you off, it's hard to not assume that the nest belongs to that giant bird, and thus the bird that wants to trade would also be a crow.

It wasn't ever the presence of the giant crow/raven or the like that made me feel Snuggly the Crow was the likely term, rather, two other things: 1) The prevalence of corvids in the game, from the giant one to the crow demons, along with the corvid colour palette being more in line with DS1's grim tone. 2) The naming convention. 'Snuggly the Crow' fits what we see from the FromSoft naming convention in things like Patches the Hyena. 'Hawk Girl' is out of left field for how they style things, though the Japanese 'Hawk's Daughter' from Demon's Souls does fit their conventions again.

Dude you've been making incredibly high quality content on these games for over a decade. Thanks for putting in so much effort because it really pays off.

One thing you never brought up and I imagine partially influences people’s perception is that: Crows can actually talk irl! Crows are capable of mimicry and are dark birds that fit with the dark setting more than say parrots who can mimic as well.

There's no way that the bird that takes you to firelink shrine isn't a raven after all their AC games lol.

An anonymous wiki editor saying "uhhhh a big important guy said it" after the wiki head honcho made up the nickname feels like a kid saying "well my uncle works for nintendo" but while wearing a disguise

Hmm, from what i understand it seems like we have in game credits referring to the "nestling" in DS3, but no internal evidence for how the games actually refer to "Sparkly" or "Snuggly" in DeS or DS1, only the context of the characters and the official external game guides, with the DS1 guide specifically only assuming the same name as the similar character from DeS. From that it seems reasonable to assume that "Sparkly" was definitely intended to be a "double winged" hawkling in DeS from the context and external verification, but the assumptions that "Snuggly" was also intended to be a hawkling seem to be based solely on DS1 guidebook's English tranlators own assumptions about the character from DeS lore apparently without considering the actual context of the character in DS1, which appears to be an egg (or invisible/hidden hatchling) in a nest nearby oversized _corvids_ rather than "double winged hawks" (which otherwise dont even appear in this game to my recollection, at least not around this nest anyway). Lacking further information, it seems to me like "Sparkly" was definitely intended to be a hawkling, but "Snuggly" could very well be intended to be a corvid hatchling/egg(ling?) that simply mirrors the DeS character in the same way many other DS characters do while still being their own unique character. As for DS3's Nestling i don't recall enough about the context atm to have any real thoughts as to weather they're hawk, corvid, or some other more locally relevant avian(?) 🤷 I am curious if anything can be gleaned from datamining the name of the scripts that manage the hatchlings' trading or the name of the model for the nests or eggs or anything else connected to them that might provide further clarification on the nature of their avian parentage 🤔

I think that the creators of dark souls would enjoy the discourse over the nickname. Somewhat like how the game refers to the eye of death of the basilisks as actually eyes despite them just looking like them, I think that referring to "hawk girl" as snuggly the crow would be welcome.

When I first found that nest in Dark Souls III long ago, I just thought it was a bird flying around the character, since there was no character/creature model (not even the player's character's head didn't look down) and when putting something down, I thought it "magically" turned into something since the bird would reject particular items and "magically" accept others. For the big bird in Dark Souls I, it could be a rook, they are related to crows and they live around old castles in Britain like the hub area. However, that's just speculation because their beaks don't look at all like the big bird.

On one hand, it’s great how you’re calling out the lack of reference for “Snuggly”. On the other hand, I’m fairly certain the other birds aren’t called Smooth, Silky, Picklepee, and Pumparum, and the “unofficialness” of these names should be more apparent than it is.

Compounding this harder is that people call the DS3 bird “Picklepee Pumparump” after the little chant she says when you give her what she wants haha. As for the voice thing, crows can imitate human voices to a point and I think that combined with all else you said about magpies and taking items and the transport bird is what really puts the cherry on top.

This right here is exactly why I love watching the videos by creators like you and The Tarnished Archeologist. Just when I think I've heard and seen everything possible, I learn that the character who caused so many accidental gravity deaths in my early playthroughs wasn't what I expected them to be in the slightest. I can remember always thinking she was hiding somewhere on the cliff face below, the possibility that she could be one of the eggs or a fresh hatchling, let alone an entirely separate species from Velka's crow, never entered my mind.

Also note that in Dark Souls 1 the eggs are bluish-green, like crow eggs, while hawk eggs are pale with spots. I can't image that that wasn't intentional by FromSoft to sow further confusion.

It's so incredible how you manage to breathe new life into this 10+ year old game with every video. It really feels like I'm still learning so much about it thanks to you. Keep up the dope videos (:

DS3 I just called it Pum-pa-rum

I actually did remember the name "Hawk Girl" from the official guide. But it also has "Sparkly" in parenthesis. It's weird because the guide has some inconsistencies and some things are incorrect too. But the game itself doesn't confirm this invisible character's name. It's hilariously frustrating how the name is inconsistent between multiple wikis which is their own issue but for a new player who hasn't played demon's souls, what can they decide on their name? Personally, I'd just say Hawk Girl but I agree the giant crow that travels you to Lodran does add to the confusion.

This video answered something I have been questioning ever since I saw the credits in DS2 referring to the trading birds as Dyna & Tillo, it was at that point I realized I had never seen the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls birds officially named

@illusorywall based purely off a vague memory of an old video, apology for not confirming this, but, It’s possible the renowned player was Marcus/ENB? I Don’t think he play tested DS1, but, he was known as a “renowned demon souls player” who did end up working for Future Press and playing development builds of other souls games. He was making videos on the game early enough to influence community sentiment on the game and the jan 2012 wiki reference? I Also personally recall him talking about his calling her “snuggly” in reference to the name “sparkly” in demon souls. I would fact check myself by skimming through his old videos but frankly I know a large amount of his stuff has been privated now and am unsure if it’d be worth the effort. But if you still have contact with him you may wish to ask?

What about the "crow's" nest in Dark Souls 2, the one in "Things Betwixt" just before you wander into Majula?

Illusory Wall: “Lore people don’t care much about Snuggly the Crow/Hawk. She’s not pivotal to the lore or anything, or is secretly Velka.” Hawkshaw: “Challenge accepted.”

I always kind of assumed Snuggly's name was player driven like some of the other unnamed characters were, but hers is just so natural that it really fits. I for one plan to stick with it for the long haul. The hawk thing is cursed though. I put that down to a generic bird filler name.

It makes sense that the bird nest on a cliff would belong to a hawk because that’s where hawks tend to live & crows don’t. However, in defense of the community driven character writing, aside from the main hints being the only bird players interact with is a crow, & the voice actor does “squawk” like crows (& ravens which get confused for crows all the time), I think it’s helped by the fact that you find the nest on a cliff next to grave stones outside a fortress filled with (un)dead things & birds like crows can be found around places like battlefields & cemeteries. Their nature as scavengers also helps build the character because you can easily picture a talking crow (or raven) asking for little baubles & shiny objects.

"Taka no musume" could also be going for something like "hawk maiden". Grammatically, the "no" can make the preceeding noun an adjective/descriptor, and "musume" is commonly used to describe a "young woman". So "hawk's daughter" and "hawk maiden/girl" are both valid translations.

I never thought about it particularly hard, but once DS2 came around, had it in my head that Ornifex had something to do with this - or there was just some silliness going on from the devs about where the voice was coming from. Very good video.

I assumed the giant bird that transported you to Firelink was a raven, because of Armored Core. In those games, you usually do some kind of initiation test before gaining the title of Raven and access to the Raven's Nest. The Undead Asylum is in a sense an initiation test before you get taken to the full game proper, so I thought they were making some sort of abstract callback to their previous flagship series. This speculation was made on my first playthrough long before I knew about Miyazaki and the development history of the games, but there are plenty of other design conventions that are curiously similar between both series.

The “transport bird” is a RAVEN, read Cornyx’s Garb from DS3. “Ravens are said to have once been Firelink messengers, guiding the undead to the land of ancient gods.”

I'd imagine her to be a regular ol' crow. Corvids are capable of mimicking speech and displaying intelligence as well as an interest in shiny objects.

We need talking bird-egg merchant. Maybe made from reused living jar model.

I don't know if they changed from the original version to the remake but the Demon's Souls in-game subtitles from the remake (as you showed on screen) literally show Sparkly's sound as "CAW" which is pretty universally accepted to be the sound a crow makes in English - so it's not even just down to trying to interpret the sound aurally. Also if you look up "crow eggs" online, the eggs in Snuggly's nest are deadringers for those. Hawk eggs not so much. Just a couple of additional things that probably lead people to believe that the trading characters are crows.

Love the idea for these past 2 videos!

a little surprised to not see it mentioned, but another reason for thinking the eggs belong to a crow rather than a hawk is the eggs themselves. the speckled blue-green eggs that we see in Snuggly’s nest in DS1 more closely resemble crow eggs rather than pretty much any hawk eggs

That's so confusing then, because hawks don't care about shiny objects whatsoever, but crows are crazy for them. Why would they even be interested??

I like the name "Hawk's daughter", the idea of a small hawk chick who can't fly yet so she spends her time trading for things is weirdly wholesome and reminds me of my old Pokemon card trading days.

I think this is all rather interesting. While yeah, we can't doubt source, and credits and official material; and in spite of whatever what wiki did; I think there's a lot of room to actually speculate more on it. In Demon's Souls it makes sense for Hawks. While we don't ever see one talk, it is the prominent bird of the game. Can be seen properly modelled, can be killed, etc. In Dark Souls 1, there are now Hawks in sight anywhere (with the sole exception I can think of maybe being the Hawk Ring, and Gough by extention); and an over abundance of crows. Velka's lore. The painting's crow people. Actual crows. The carrier crow. While I'm not saying it is right, if there's any one bird this game trains you to think about, it is crows. I think even if we got the character named or visible, people would still argue it is a crow. Now, if you consider Dark Souls 2 into the mix, it gets even more interesting. Because now we have A crow in Orniflex, we have A hawk in the Hawk's ring. But we have an over abundance of Falcons. There's the Falconeer, their falcons, the entire set. It is extremely early in the game and related to Sunlight medals. Which honestly gets me wondering if Dyna and Tillo are meant to be Falcons. I'm not saying this *is* the case, but it sure gets my mind working thinking that maybe the intention was for each game to feature different birds in this position, or at the very least have each game have a more iconic bird over another. But of course that's easily then disproved because DS3 goes back into heavy crow imagery; and so does Bloodborne. And then, funnily enough, Elden Ring also does go back to have a lot of prominent Hawks. Stormhawks are not only summons, but actual enemies, a key item in a quest, hawks are present in shields, in a notable group of soldiers and so on. Either way. It is a cautionary tale that I think is fairly important in all fandoms. The amount of fanfiction taken as fact in so many of them is staggering.

13:41 Or like Ornifex from DS2 (aka "Right down the road" lady) who talks and trades boss souls for boss weapons.

holy shit, snuggly being in the egg makes total sense!!!!!!! I never even considered that option, but that is obviously why they want warm and soft!?!?!?

9:40 娘 as a suffix can also be read as "ko" with the meaning of girl, so 鷹の娘 is to be read "hawk girl" as well

I'm Poggin' at the King's Field 2 area 2 music as the wikidot dispute.

Love how you snuck Crystal Teardrops into the video. 🧛‍♂️

That's the Deviljho tail thing from monster hunter all over again

A somewhat analogous example in Elden Ring would be how all of the Red Wolves are called Red Wolves of Radagon on Fextralife, despite only one being called this in-game. Proper nouns are just stickier because they’re more specific and have a bit of flavor. In that case, however, there may actually be some lore significance to the difference between them. Interestingly, the developer comments refer to them as Rune Wolves.

Love your videos, absolutely love these in depth looks into such miniscule details of this franchise i love

what do the japanese subtitles show on demon's souls? because "caw" is, at least as far as i know, associated with corvids, so regardless of what her VA sounds like or what's around, the script says "this is a crow". i don't know if japanese has different terms for different bird sounds to make this sort of connection though. also doesn't prima guide have a reputation for inaccuracies and miswrites, at least in other games? seems odd to use it as a de facto proof just because their reprint took away an "aka"

9:36 for the record ‘taka no musume’ could be translated either as ‘hawk(‘s) daughter’ or simply ‘hawk girl’, ‘musume’ does technically mean daughter but it is commonly used more generally to refer to any young unmarried woman

The big bird that transports you is probably a raven. It has a thinner beak, flatter tail fan, and it's able to soar (glide on the wind without flapping its wings). Crows have a thicker, less pointy looking beak, a diamond shaped tail fan, and are very flappy since they can't soar.

7:41 ". . .renowned Demon Souls player", to me anyway, has the same energy as "who has two thumbs and named that crow", but instead of answering himself he decided to wait until someone answered for him. In reality though, it's probably just someone trying to make their opinion sound more valid by making an empty appeal to authority ("experts agree" sort of tripe). Either way, I don't remember where or how I first heard the names of Sparkly or Snuggly, but it fit and I liked it and that was good enough for me. Cute names for cute birbs.

Hearing the guide book mention actually made me pull out the insane tome that I have known as the Dark Souls Trilogy Compendium, which also ends up calling her Hawk Girl! Fun little fact.

Caw. That's the sound a crow makes. That's probably what started everybody thinking it was a crow

That's crazy 😄 I was really convinced that name must have came from some obscure item descriptions I never read and never questioned it. Loved the footnote too haha. You are awesome to this community 💪

the way the phrase "snuggly warm and fuzy" is quoted seems like that is how the Demon Souls player called the bird.

whenever i think of a RU-vidr who does explanation/behind the scenes type video either, i think or they imply their a 3rd party who studies the topic from the outside. its jarring every time Illusory explains something he did in Souls history

I never realized the birds had 4 wings. That comment about the smaller wings being vestigial implies these birds could be evolutionary descendants of the 4 winged dragons, similar to how real birds are descendants of dinosaurs

Amazing research, loved it!

try this on for size: i'm pretty sure ds1 never explicitly confirms that the dragons' stone scales are the source of their immortality. arguably it implies it, but the consensus on that is fanon, unless i'm missing something big

"Hawk Girl" the Crow

Everyone come quick! A new Illusory Wall video just dropped.

11:55 I dunno if it's an unnecessary nitpick, but it's been said in other articles that Miyazaki was specifically attempting to read *English* fantasy and sci-fi. I couldn't find an article previous to this one that has that specification though, so I'm not sure if it's something subsequent articles just appended on a whim. It doesn't change the fact that he filled in the blanks on things left unexplained for him though, so the major point here remains. Thanks for the video!

You doing voices for the wiki editors is pretty fascinating :)

Fluffy chest feathers and a wedge-shaped tail, makes deep croaking calls at Firelink: the giant bird from the start of Dark Souls is almost definitely a raven.

Plot twist: the bird doesn't have a name because it's just a bird.