Hey all want to add that I don’t go into every narrative detail in the souls games because the video is 40 minutes long, that being said I don’t explain the dark sign curse. What I’m trying to say about the dark sign crucible is that it’s the age of man pouring into the tree. Thanks.
I think life's crucible is just where lifes being forged? a bloody sun that houses heaps and varies of life essence and information, like a blazing red star dripping lifes.
Don't know if you go into this later as I am currently watching your Elden Ring collection, but I would look into the inorganic chemical interactions between Mercury and the 3 principle metals: Gold, Silver, and Copper; as it can be used to both destroy/tarnish/corrupt these metals as well as purify in certain processes. I feel that the white or dark fire or the Godslayers/black knifes is meant to be this Mercurial process in one of it's forms. I also think Marika realized her shady dealings and attempted to atone with the breaking of the Elden Ring, so there's that hole to dig.
Watched a recent video that shows how the nameless eternal city is directly beneath Leyndell, in the space where the void is behind the main gate we can’t enter through. It lends even more credence to the idea that the tree Siluria is guarding is the primordial tree that preceded the erd tree. I know it’s been 7 months since this video was made but just wanted to leave this here for anyone interested.
"Society was red but it is now gold" literally fills in an entire backstory to my int-faith, golden order+ancient magic caster character, who's been exclusively mixing gold head and torso gear with reddish gaunlets and leg pieces all game. Lore-accurate fashion souls luck FTW 😭
I don't wanna be in the room when she gets drunk at a party and someone asks what the souls games are about. Time gets convoluted and you're suddenly stuck in an endless cicle of wanting to get away but also wanting to know more.
Another thing, I think that Omens are related to the Crucible and should be considered as a literal omens (signs) for the coming back of the crucible state. Morgott beside having horns have also a tail and Mogh have wings.
I wonder if the horns of the Omens could eventually grow into a tree-like form like the Ancestral Spirits' antlers and maybe create life in some form. It could explain why the Dung Eater refers to it as a blessing, although his ending doesn't sound good at all. The fact that both Morgott and Mohg can grow dragon-like parts could mean they eventually could become dragons. Since both have royal blood might mean dragons were some sort of royalty.
The only only(?) Obvious connection between the "Primordial crucible" and the omen/misbegotten are the the 3 crucible talismans. And the theming seems to be potentiality: alloy in a crucible is pure potentiality. A blend of everything that could be, while at the same time being nothing. The chimera-like omens remind me of that; undifferentiated features.
@@theologamer but misbegotten etc, are differentiated, just composed from different parts. From esoteric point of view each part, ie eagle wings, lion limbs, snake scales are related to a specific element (wind, fire, water) so those creatures are more "perfect", as the elements are manifested and controllable. From the point of view of Elden Rings law of casuality thats bad (at least from the fundamentalist perspective), because progress (casuality) means separation (as everything came from one will and has been separated to many), union is kind of regression.
I think the black gooey shit that Elden Beast plunges Radagon into at the end of the game is related somehow. Marigon goes in as a person, comes out as a sword, and then comes back out as a person again, and the beast itself seems to be made up of it, just a nervous system covered in goop. I think it's some kind of primordial life soup that mutates and changes anything it touches.
@@4pfBulmond As does the Godslayer's Greatsword and Inseperable sword. There's definitely some DNA/Genetics theme going on. There's also a big marriage theme going on, with the theme of two people becoming one, and quite literally when it comes to Marika and Radagon. And it's not just Elden Ring, DS2 and DS3 have a really big marriage theme going on. I'm not sure who, but some other youtuber made a video going over the marriage theme and what it implies in the Souls games, and it was really interesting.
I don't think the black goop is connected to the crucible. the only other times we saw it is inside the towers, ascending and descending, and when Ranni brings the player to the lake with the moon in Rennala's fight. I think it is connected with some cosmic concept, like gravity or cosmic travelling. seems like a fantasy wormhole or fantasy anti-matter.
10:05 About flamable humanity - humanity is the aspect of dark and from alchemical perspective darkness represent something on which flame "sits" and give fuel to. Like black coal "births" (light) flame and sustains it. While watching I've got an impression that hollowing in dark souls could mean that people are ready for being a new place to put a new flame inside of them to birth a new era - some hollows in DS3 literally transformed into trees.
The Kiln of the First Flame seems like it was a dome once. The structures inside seem to have been built after the flame started to subside until it became tiny. Then Gwyn linked it and it blew everything away.
By the way, i was playing Sekiro and one of the Key Items for the story's progression is Lord Takeru's "Aromatic Flower" said to be Flowers of the Everblossom, Grafted by Takeru, who took the branch from the Divine Realm as a parting relic, wich explains how Lord Takeru brought a Sakura Tree from The Divine Realm, (he turned an ordinary tree into The everblossom) and why it withered away when someone took the branch and the flowers from it, so yeah graftting has been in From Soft's mind for a long time now. 27:00
i get this whole greattree translation debate but there are a few times in the game u literally see the greattree, including on the erdtree door itself, there is a carved relief of the erdtree sprouting from another more normal looking tree, presumably the greattree
You should read The Theologians by Jorge Luis Borges, a short story that I feel handles a lot of the same themes as Elden Ring such as duality, blasphemy, eternity and symbolism of snakes and wheels/circles. I got reminded of it several times as I played through the game.
So refreshing to find videos on fromsoft that aren't just boring hour long retrospectives that just rehash the same talking points they learned from watching other dark souls reviews from years ago. Yes shots fired But seriously been binging this channel recently and these videos are so interesting and presented in such an relaxed and fun way. I love all the idea and connections you find. Thank you!
Some bits of this remind me of the few Native American myths I know. Like, for instance, the story of the first bears I think it's the Cherokee this comes from maybe? Where the first bears were originally humans who gave up eating human food and living as humans do, and over time they grew fur and hunched over, transforming into bears. This explained why sometimes bears walk on four legs and sometimes on two, and their position straddling the line between the human and animal worlds made them very special for certain ritual purposes, buuuut... at the same time, it made bears the butt of a lot of jokes because the reason they stopped being human in the first place is because they were lazy and being a human is a lot of work. And it also meant that because they were so human, they were the only animal whose spirits the hunters were not afraid of, so they could kill them without performing the proper protection rituals to avoid being cursed as revenge Also, the story of the first flame is of a tree on an island being struck by lightning and burning up from the inside. The animal spirits realized the power of the fire and several tried to swim or fly across and collect it, but they all failed and were left with permanent reminders. Like the crow who was burnt black all over, or the owl who got grey rings of ash all around his eyes. Eventually it was the water spider who wove a basket from her webs, walked across the water, and plucked a coal into the basket to bring back across to the other animals
Interesting observation about the Ancestral corpses and trees. In fact, another corpse with similar distinctions are the corpses of everyone’s favorite fingers, The Two Fingers. Food for thought.
20 bucks Radagon did the rumpy pumpy with the Misbegotten Queen to try and make Captain America supersoldiers with his Ganondorf head instead of her dog head. 20 bucks more she's a hybrid experiment herself connected to wolves being the OG creature or something, you tell me.
I came back to watch this video a second time, one because I wanted to make sure I fully understood your take. But I also came back for the well placed "woooooo woooow" in the video.
Finally got around to watching this! amazing exploration of Miyazaki’s themes. I have thought for a while that the Crucible was some sort of real, tangible container and that it might have taken the form of a tree - and your video hardcore cements it for me! I am no expert in the souls series’ lore, so your insight and analysis of repeated motifs is so valuable and I think makes it pretty unarguable that there was a great big ol tree that was the crucible before the Erdtree came along. I’m damn impressed! Loved it!
You have a lot of interesting things to add to the conversation. I was just watching one of your videos that compared elden ring to Norse mythology and you've brought up many concepts and connections that I've never thought or heard from anyone else. I'm glad I found your channel 👍
Yea I never went in for the "shared universe" theory. You hit the nail on the head, the "shared universe" is Miyazaki's head. Everyone wants everything to be the MCU.
Interesting to see how the DLC will elucidate the Crucible, considering what we see on the Shadow Tree is basically a spot on depiction of a crucible. Maybe it was a piece that was missing until now
I'm late to the party but firs FS game that introduced trees as a symbol of prymordial life was in King's Field IV (or Return to Ancient City). Then Demon's Souls used slightly similar concept later. In fact a lot of ideas original Dark Souls had was mix of both Demon's Souls and King's Field IV. Great video overall.
I agree the MIyazaki games don't share the same Universe or share it in any meaningful way. But there are themes and ideas repeated. The whole output reminds me of an anthology TV series like Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, or Del Toro's new Netflix show. Exploring similar themes at a multitude of distinct angles without being constrained by an overall connecting narrative is often the best way for creatives to get the most out of their abilities in a constrained (often by budget) medium like TV or AAA games.
Something youv made me realize in these past 3 days of wayching your stuff is that these games are far more intense then i thought. Im coming from a mysticism/ritual magic etc background. Makes sense why these gsmes always feel like theres something bigger going on and i love the game
These videos are awesome and have tons of good information in them. That being said, the rambling nature of the video, combined with the funny, but random, nature of the editing make these videos incredibly hard to follow. At least for my ADHD brain.
Yeh yeh I feel it. I wish I had more time to dedicate to these. As it stands now I work full time + some so it’s currently me filming off the cuff and just sending it to my editor with no notes and praying it makes any lick of sense
omg! 2:20 first time i've heard somebody else acknowledge the focal length compression on the backgrounds. good eye brian!🎉 by the way, this was absolutely used in dark souls 1. you can notice it simply by looking back at the firelink bonfire from the stairs leading to the waterway duct to undead burg. fromsoft's engine seems to be tuned for that trick since demon's souls.
Excellent video! Both very fun and enlightening! So I suppose the lesson is that the tree is the symbol chosen by Miyazaki to be the crucible because by being a Tree of Life/World Tree whatever is prepared in its interior (the new order) is then distributed to the universe through its veins, branches and roots. This also connects nicely to the importance given to the Erdtree's sap as a medium to spread the Golden Order's blessings and to the burning of the Erdtree also serving the purpose of "heating up" the crucible before preparing the next age. PS: Are you going to make a "post-mortem" video like for Godwyn? I have a couple of questions but they mostly relate to the Misbegotten and Placidusax and their connections to the crucible.
Awesome! 1- the community has noticed that there is an awful lot of Legendary Greatswords being carried by Misbegotten warriors, do you think this has any particular significance or relation with the crucible or how the Misbegotten came into contact with it? 2- Placidusax is said to have been Elden Lord in a previous age, does it mean he had his own crucible to "forge" his age? Is there anything in Farum Azula that might be it? And come to think of it, might it have some relation to the isolated tree in Deeproot Depths you pointed out?
Oh my God i shouldve started watching this when elden ring lore channels where kicking off. What was I thinking? This is great to watch for more details.
I love how you ended with the intersex symbolism for Miquella and Marika/Radagon and were like "wow! I love video games!" bc that was also one of my big takeaways from Elden Ring 🤣
In the section about the demon of hatred, he didnt cut off his own arm. He was about to become shura but ishin noticed and cut his arm. Whats going on with the sculptor is that due to the countless foes that he has killed he has accumulated a metric fuck ton of negative karma which is why he makes buddhas. Making a buddha is supposed to take away some negative karma or give you some positive but the sculptor is sooo far gone that he can only make wrathful buddhas and has made countless of them. Eventually the wrath, hatred, negative karma, which is signified by flame overtakes his body and he becomes an oni. This is how oni are usually created in japanese stories. Humans that do horrible shit end up going crazy and becoming oni
I want to come back and make a comment about the Deeproot Depths, the Mausoleum knights, the Black Moon, and the Crucible knight when my brain is braining better.
The Numen came from outside the lands between, like Astel, the elden beast, etc. They built the eternal cities when they got to the lands between, but they did not come from there.
I know theres a lot of stuff which says there is no continuity between DS and Elden Ring. and almost definitely it is not related. but the labour of trying to connect the two is an involving creative exercise. like there is so much incidental stuff which if u squint looks like a transmutation of some phenomena in Dark Souls. that power-structure of the world is held together in _seals_ , where before you have this very non-mathematical, inefficient free-burning kind of combustion, which just burns for as long as it does and then peters out. Gwyn, on a gamble, basically invents or discovers mathematical abstraction. If something can be said to have an _a priori_ truth, then it is true irrespective of your thinking it; and this concretely looks like perpetual motion. He finds out about this really cool, renewable power source, and all he uses it for is his slap-dash contingency plan-It'd be like discovering nuclear fusion and using it to power your car. the golden order can expand in the way it does because once a principle is _mathematically_ inscribed, it just keeps going. in this form this is all obviously pure cracktheory, but i think it still marks an interesting philosophical shift in how Miyazaki conceptualises power; that it seems slight, but it actually lets him play out the different philosophical scenarios (endings) with greater like epistemic clarity. the endings make coherent philosophical arguments because power is coherent in Elden Ring.
Not all the way through the video yet so I’m not sure if it was mentioned but there is actually at least one, possibly two crucibles in the logo for Elden Ring. If you look at the very top you can see what looks like the rim of a crucible pouring out gold which then forms a rune and before that at the very bottom it almost looks like the rim of a much larger crucible.
Marika being from one the eternal cities makes sense maybe when astel attacked was when she was first introduced to an outer god and then from there met the greater will
Aspen all share a root system, so these patches were basically each one plant. Or maybe all of it was one. That’s also why they all turn colors at the same time.
Great Video!! Also I could be wrong, but I thought the Numen were from outside the lands between, and the Nox and Numen were seperate with the Black knives and Marika both being Numen? :o
I like your stuff. You handle the material with intellectual integrity. Anyone know what "Empyrean" is in Japanese? I keep seeing the English word defined simply as "of heaven" but the etymology is more literally "in fire." See the "pyre"? If the Japanese also connotates fire.. that certainly adds to this topic of crucibles.
Ok, as i understand that The Tree in each game represnts a big THING that can influnce the world around it thru its roots. Having your will in that tree allows that you to shape the world, basically becoming a god (king Allant and Demon Slayer in the dark ending). In DS3 Dark Sign pours the will (the fire of the light) of the gods in that tree, while at the same time obstructing the men's will (the fire of the dark) from influncing the world, while burning on dark flames to continue influncing the world (you can interpret as people still believing in gods, worshiping them). I always interpreted that dark sign in the sky as gods cursing the world just as they did with men. The world dies and resurrects again and again, while souls becomes less abundant, as if the world itself hollows and in the end of this hollowing is ash, just like hollows becoming ashen ones, the world itself turned into ash by gods' endless will. On this note it is a good to point out word "hollow". Erdtree is hollow and hollows are, well, hollow, don't have will of their own. It is good to hear that Margit, the person who is probably the closest to understanding the Erdtree says "Emboldened by the *flame* of ambition", sincce we want to basically put out will/flame into the Erdtree. It is also good to point out that every type of flame in the game has a goal of burning something: the giant's flame wants to burn the Erdtree, the blackflame wants to burn the gods, the Flame of Frenzy wants "incinerate all that divides and distinguishes' and, even tho it is not said in the game, i do believe Mohg's flame also has a purpose and my interpretation is that he wants to burn away his blood connections and build the world on authority, where those, who server him are held in the highest regard.
Yes, that’s the narrative explanation! The sign pouring into the kiln is representative of the Pygmy age beginning and the age of flame ending. As it should have been before Gwyneth tried to prevent it with the brand. That’s what’s specific to dark souls, but he uses this symbol again in Elden Ring at castle sol to refer to an eclipse. All these things have specific narrative reasons for existing but in the video I’m just looking at the themes / mechanics of his symbols! They occur when an age ends and a new age arrives
Interesting that you bring up the philosophers tree by conincodence Im watching 2 anime that reference the sorry for spelling tree of qliphoth or something like that which I think is another name for the philosophers tree in Fullmetal alchemist it's the tree that can give you crazy abilities in alchemy, a philosophers stone and take you to the afterlife or underworld. In black clover it's a gateway to the underworld! Cool since the erdtree is hollow and you can enter into the crucible a kinda different realm where Marika is all powerful
You are absolutely going to want to read about the Kabbalah in regards to the qlippoth. Essentially, they are the broken version of the Tree of Life, the ten sephiroth that are vessels of light, emanations of God. Anime tends to represent the Kabbalah in a bastardized form via Western occultism (Crowley, the Golden Dawn, Theosphical Society). Miyazaki for sure has some contact with these concepts via Berserk. When researching this stuff I would keep in mind that the Western Magical Tradition is rife with cultural appropriation and try to stick to original sources as much as possible. You can't go wrong with anything written by Gershom Scholem. I just read a fantastic zine about this very topic and can pass along the link if you're interested. Cheers!
Your style of discussing Fromsoft lore is like "schizophrenia - the good ending". I mean it in the kindest way possible. Never stop with the wild speculations that feel incredible right and true but with very little backing them up!
I do agree that it's a very interesting comparison between the catholic church indoctrination or eradication of pagan believers and the golden order's indoctrination or eradication of other belief systems and peoples.
Can you ask your editor to mix their quirks to where they’re not louder than your speaking voice? Like I understand you both have an editing style yall like and I’m not gonna front on that but at the least can there be something done about the extremities in volume level between you and the clipped in stuff? They get in the way of the pacing and tone of your dictation. Thank you 🙏🏽 great spreadsheet and lore breakdown.
So we're going to do some work on the audio setup in general. :( My current mic is a USB mic and when I record wwaves already really struggles making it loud enough in general. I'm going to invest in an audio mixer, and a better mic soon! That way the editing and audio will be better!
Great video, wish the editor would chill a little though. Gets a little distracting when you're saying something important and a sound effect just kinda plays out of nowhere.
NW of the Lake of Rot there's a root network or something; id expect something to have been there at some point given their love of waterfalls and how big the one just south of whatever that network is.
I'm loving this video so far but I think I need to split the watch in 2 or 3 sessions. The editing is a bit distracting and making it a bit difficult to synthesize everything when a random noise, camera zoom, subtext or meme is flashed every few seconds. The pics on top of your lore descriptions are helpful though since they're a visual cue to represent what you're describing.
For sure! It's literally just my friend and I youtube poopin since we're not taking it too seriously. But I think if we did visual bullet points to summarize what Im saying every so often it may be helpful.
@@quelaag Thank you for the reply and I want to reiterate that I still absolutely enjoy the vids. I wanted to make sure I include what I did like and not just complain since editing a video can be very time consuming and I'm sure your editor is working hard and trying to make the videos enjoyable. Thank you both very much for putting in the work.
I've long thought that the great one in Demon's Souls isn't supposed to be a tree, but represent a bag worm, aka moth larva. That also kind of jives with all the larva we see when we hit black tendency. We're making the world more 'demonic'
Maybe you've answered this elsewhere (or maybe it's commonly used and I just don't know about it), but what software do you use to put all these notes together?
there are crucibles in the capital of Leyndell too, they are all over the place but you can find 2 of them outside the Remembrance of Godfrey bossfight
So...if past is red... and new is gold...Is that also a connection to Marika/Radagon for Marika has blond golden hair and Radagon red one? Is this some form of split personality thingy where Radagon wanted to restore the old order somewhat past but his Marika persona took over and the events we know happened? The whole Radagon and Marika thing just crashes my brain.
The main thing that makes me doubt the damaged tree in Deeproot Depths is some sort of pre-Erdtree separate Greattree is that it’s extremely small and the roots all over Deeproot Depths don’t really appear to be its roots. They’re much bigger than it and don’t seem to be growing out of it, or even have once grown out of it in the past. You’re definitely onto something with the red “primordial gold” stuff though. The Helphen stuff is really wild, it’s so rarely referred to and feels like it should be a bigger deal than it is If the Erdtree was dying and going to be replaced when an Emypyrean succeded Marika, how come this isn’t addressed in any of the Mending Rune endings? You talk about Goldmask’s realization being not just that Marika was clinging to power but also that the Erdtree had to go, but in his ending it’s still standing and seems to have had its pre-Shattering luster restored. Oh, also! Minor point but with Izalith, it’s pretty clearly stated that her goal was to recreate the First Flame (presumably after it started going out) in both her Lord Soul and the Chaos Storm pyromancy descriptions.
Are you talking about the tree we find Siluria at? Becauae I thought she was reffering to the giant, seemingly cut off, stump that we can see on the underground map in the nameless eternal city. That stump seems to be have belonged to a tree even bigger than the erdtree, and it's next to the erdtree, not directly under it, which would put the erdtree geographically in the same position as all of the competing braches of the crucible that grow out to the side of the central column, as we see demonstrated by Siluria's spear's model of the crucible. With the Erdtree just being the one of those branches that outcompeted the others and became the trunk of the new incarnation of the Erdtree. Which might support the theory that the modern incarnation of the erdtree grew out from the stump of a previous iteration. This makes
Also, about Izalith, the idea that she was trying to recreate the first flame has long been disproven as a mistranslation on the localization team's part. The japanese script makes it clear that Izalith was tring to make her own version of the first flame for herself, out of ambition, not out of deperation, let alone desire, to save the first flame. The civilization of Izalith itself has a lot of evidence to suggest that it wasn't destroyed by the eruption of the chaos flame and the resulting demons that were born. Rather it seems that Izalith made the chaos flame and at first didn't have control over it, which was the chaotic period where she birthed ceasless discharge, who has no control over his own flame and is instead burned by it, but then she gained control over it with the help of her daughters, and she used that flame to birth the first demons who had control over their flame, the demon firesages, who even learned flame sorcery, as the first step in her attempt to create a hybrid civilization between witches, demons, and humans that actually functioned at first, but then got wiped out by Gwyn and his army of Black Knights because he naturally saw the creation of another flame as a threat to his own supremacy.
