Morgan Pinder
“I’m nauseous… It’s progressing… Oh God, it feels awful but it proves that I’m chosen. Don’t you see? How they writhe, writhe inside my head. It’s rather rapturous.”
These are the bizarre cries of the imposter Iosefka after being impregnated by eldritch deities known as the Great Ones in FromSoftware Inc.’s 2015 gothic fantasy video game Bloodborne. In the second half of the game, which is heralded by the descent of the blood moon, the player-character[1] is able to sneak into a previously quarantined hospital to find that the doctor, Iosefka, has been replaced by a mysterious imposter. She convulses on all fours on an examination table awaiting the birth of a cosmic horror that will never come. If the player-character kills the imposter Iosefka, her body disintegrates into nothing, leaving behind a gruesome artefact, a section of umbilical cord. This is an invaluable item in Bloodborne. Indeed, there are four “third of umbilical cord[s]” to be found in the game and consuming three of them will allow the player to access the “true” ending[2] of Bloodborne, reinforcing the significance and visceral materiality of birth in the game.
Bloodborne is just one example of a video game that revolves around horrific narratives of reproduction, birth and the birthing body. Given the sheer volume of monstrous mothers and “hideous progeny”[3] in video games, one might infer that video game developers are terrified of reproduction, maternity and antenatal processes (Pinder). Indeed, horrific and visceral depictions of maternal figures are a staple of monster and narrative design in “scary games” (Perron). Horror video games follow in the tradition of the horror genre as “a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women” (Harrington 2). From the ludonnarrative “broodmother” (Stang) who births swarms of monstrous enemies, to the unnatural mother who serves as a nurturer and incubator of a vessel of evil, it is the abject and horrific reproductive potential of the female body that is a key cause of anxiety.
Figure 1 The imposter Iosefka on an examination table in Bloodborne (2015)
Previous scholarship on this topic has focused on the fear of maternity and reproduction primarily in the context of psychoanalysis, but I wish to refocus this discussion towards the toxic thread of ecophobia, or irrational fear of nature (Estok), that runs through videoludic depictions of reproductive monstrosity. Whilst the psychoanalytical works of Barbara Creed and Julia Kristeva are vital to studies of monstrous femininity in video games, ecocritical[4] approaches consider the often-overlooked implications of our relationship with the non-human (Harrington 6). This is where we find the intense ecophobia that is present in viscerally horrific depictions of birth and the birthing body.
In Tanya Kryzwinska’s discussion of the Gothic in video games, they assert that one of the key elements that makes a video game Gothic is the simulation of symptomatic responses in the player (Krzywinska). In Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne the primary symptomatic responses that are associated with reproduction and reproductive feminine bodies are that of revulsion, nausea and disgust. Disgust is an “evolutionary response” that has advantages for the continued evolution and survival of humans as a species (Estok). It motivates us to avoid the consumption of unsafe food, for example. As Estok notes, a survival-based aversion to slime due to its connection to death and decay is not always ecophobia, but a fear and disgust of slime in relation to its role in reproduction certainly is. It is in the bodily fluids and excretions associated with conception and pregnancy that we encounter ecophobia (Estok). Not just ecophobia, but a deep-seated misogyny that conflates the reproductive potential of the female body with the putrefaction and material ambiguity of the types of slime that pose direct threats to the human. The fear and disgust elicited from slime provokes an irrational, ecophobic fear of the birthing body and its progeny as experienced in games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 (FromSoftware Inc.) that utilise the technologies of disgust to elicit horror and discomfort from their players.
FromSoftware Inc. as a development company has an established space in the fantasy video game landscape, with punishing gameplay that rewards persistence, pattern recognition and adaptability. Bloodborne (2015) and the Dark Souls series (2011-2018) couple intense player versus enemy (PvE) combat with grotesque fantasy imagery. This grotesque imagery elicits fear and disgust through technologies of body horror and gothic “thingness”[5] (Hurley). The enemies in these games challenge the boundaries and impermeability of the human and non-human form through their aesthetics, narrative and function as video game antagonists. FromSoftware’s partial rejection of many gendered binaries in the character design of their more cosmic and fantastical horrors does not preclude them from deploying technologies of monstrosity that rely on the policing of boundaries of “natural” reproduction and fecundity. Rather than the spectacular visually monstrous bodies of the gigantic enemies of the game, I wish to examine the more conventionally human women who are made monstrous through their reproductive function, rather than their appearance. In doing this I have chosen to focus on the “Mother of Rebirth” (Dark Souls 3) and the impregnated victims of the Blood Moon (Bloodborne) to interrogate the ecophobic roots of the fear and disgust that the fecundity[6] of these maternal figures elicit from the player.
FromSoftware Inc. relies on modular narrative delivery[7] to convey the vast majority of its storytelling which leaves the narrative of the games open to interpretation. As Schniz notes, Bloodborne is an example of “emancipatory” storytelling which encourages collaboration between players to piece together a complex and scattered narrative delivered through in-game item descriptions, character interactions and other environmental story telling (Schniz). Bloodborne and Dark Souls lead designer Hidetaka Miyazaki has explicitly outlined his intention to maintain mystery and ambiguity, prompting players to use their “imagination to bridge those gaps” in the narrative (Massongill). This makes a canonical and definitive narrative of these games impossible, causing ambiguity and a reliance on inference.
From Software Inc. games share a preoccupation with a loss of selfhood and a focus on the ultimately vain attempt to regain wholeness or divine purpose through the brutal harvesting of materials from the bodies of others. In the Dark Souls series, it is souls that the player collects when killing an enemy. But Bloodborne is more preoccupied with the material body. In Bloodborne the commodity for extraction, regeneration and empowerment is blood. Bloodborne establishes from the very first cutscene through the act of supernatural blood ministration that the locus of fear, disgust and desire is the body. Bodies are transformed by blood, invigorated by blood and made mad and monstrous through the blood of ancient gods. If body horror is horror in which “corporeality constitutes the main site of fear, anxiety and sometimes even disgust” (Aldana Reyes), then at its very core, right down to its game mechanics, narrative premise and even title, Bloodborne is body horror. But it is not until the mid-point of the game that the locus of horror shifts from blood as a dangerous resource for extraction, to the processes of fertilisation, gestation and birth made monstrous through the involvement of the Great Ones. As the blood moon descends the true horror of Bloodborne becomes apparent, the women of the story become unwitting surrogates for the eldritch creatures that lie just out of human perception. As a book in the library of the transcendental learning institute of Byrgenwerth explains: “When the red moon hangs low, the line between man and beast is blurred. And when the Great Ones descend, a womb will be blessed with child.”
The imposter Iosefka is not the only woman in Bloodborne to be impregnated by the Great Ones. Arianna, a sex worker who the player has the opportunity to direct to the sanctuary of the Oedon Chapel, is impregnated during the blood moon and also drops a “third of umbilical cord” if killed. The other umbilical cords can be found in the proximity of the animate doll who provides the player with upgrades and the spectral Queen Yharnam who appears to have had a child cut from her womb and is bleeding profusely. The Queen haunts various areas of the game including the entrance to the nursery of her child, the infant Great One Mergo. She is prevented from attending to the baby’s cries by the formidable “Wet Nurse”, a monster defined by her role in sustaining the child. Her anguished cries and those of her infant permeate through the game space until the player silences them once and for all.
Three of the umbilical cord item descriptions begin with “Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate” before cryptically alluding to the origin of that particular section of cord. For example, the description of the umbilical cord procured from Arianna after she births a writhing Great One reads “…Oedon, the formless Great One, is no different. To think, it was corrupted blood that began this eldritch liaison.” The term “corrupted” is referencing Arianna’s fetishised and dehumanised status as a sex worker, and this umbilical cord item description seems to confirm that she was unwittingly impregnated by Oedon himself when she sought sanctuary in his chapel. Odeon’s formlessness means that Arianna may not have known what was happening to her and the role her body is playing in a cosmic struggle for genetic continuity and control. Her lack of knowledge and consent is also hinted to with her confusion as she begins to experience the adverse effects of her pregnancy and her confused horror when she gives birth to a monstrous slug-like creature.
Whilst arguably Dark Souls 3 is more preoccupied with the metaphysical, such as the soul, the character designs of those that inhabit its world are often designed to provoke fear and disgust. Not least so those that have undergone transformation or been granted rebirth. The term “Mother” in the Dark Souls series has shifting meanings. Often “Mother” is associated with the rank of a woman within a religious order. But in the case of Rosaria, Mother of Rebirth, it also carries with it associations with a nurturing and reproductive role. Her motherhood is tinged with tragedy as her first-born child cut out her tongue in order to silence her. She is the leader of the covenant of “Rosaria’s Fingers”[8] and she plays a nurturing and transformative role in the lives of those who worship her. The grotesque creatures who fiercely protect her are called “man-grubs,” wrinkled mounds of flesh with some remaining humanoid features.
Her followers bring her tongues in exchange for transformation, yet another commodification of the material body. The mechanical function of this transformation is that the player can exchange a “pale tongue” in order to change their character’s appearance or “respec.”[9] If this process of rebirth is completed too many times the subject will be transformed into one of the grub creatures that guard Rosaria. The player is protected from this fate by a hard limitation of five rebirths, after which a message reads: “Further rebirth is not possible during this lifetime. Persisting will transform you into a grub.”
Figure 2 Rosaria, Mother of Rebirth nursing a man-grub in her chambers. Dark Souls 3 (2016).
Rosaria sits silently in a hidden chamber of the Cathedral of the Deep cradling one of her slug-like children, surrounded by empty cribs. The non-player character Leonhard refers to her as sitting in “her festering glory,” inviting associations with ecophobic reactions to slime as signifiers of “death and putrefaction” (Estok). The squelching noises of the grubs form the soundscape to her chambers. It is the spectacle of her children and the horrific bargain that she silently strikes with adventurers that happen to cross her path which makes the figure of Rosaria monstrous. It is not her corporeal monstrosity that is the threat to the humanity of the player-character, but what that body is capable of doing, of rebirthing those who seek transformation until they are no longer identifiable as human.
The emerging presence of a litany of larvae and mollusc-like creatures throughout the course of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, such as the man-grubs in Rosaria’s chambers and the slug-like infant Great Ones present a direct threat to the integrity of the human form. They are the things that “writhe” inside the imposter Iosefka’s head, the dangerous swarms of enemies that patrol cathedral corridors, and the helpless foetal creatures that drive their mothers to insanity. Birthed from human women, they represent a displacement of human foetuses with something so wholly alien and different. These are ecophobic representations of a loss of human specificity and destabilisation of anthropocentric power structures. By birthing hybridised or supernatural creatures, the women of these stories become vessels for the desires of forces beyond human control.
Such supernatural reproductive horror aligns with a movement in ecohorror away from the exterior and towards the interiority of the human subject (Tidwell). Ecohorror focused on the interiority of the corporeal form has much in common with body horror and dwells on the vulnerability and permeability of the human body. In this contemporary form of ecohorror, parasites, bacteria, and, in this case, monstrous offspring are the antagonists. They lurk within the body confronting the audience with the fear of the not-quite human within.
Figure 3 The slug-like form of the player-character in the true ending of Bloodborne (2015).
It is perhaps fitting to end this article with the true ending of Bloodborne. After consuming the sections of umbilical cord and beating the final boss of the game the player is confronted with a secret final boss, Moon Presence. A massive cosmic horror who is inextricably linked to the blood moon and the supernatural pregnancies that follow. Upon defeating this enigmatic final enemy, the player character becomes a slug-like creature. Perhaps a fledgling Great One. The player-character is no longer a human beast hunter, but a slimy, writhing representation of a loss of human specificity and agency.
Notes
[1] Referred to as a ‘hunter’ by non-player characters.
[2] Bloodborne has three endings and the ending the player experiences is determined by their actions in-game.
[3] A term used to describe the ill-fated creature of Wollstonecraft-Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein.
[4] “Ecocriticism” is a theoretical lens through which to interrogate the implications of encounters with nature in media.
[5] Used by Hurley to describe the uncomfortable ambiguity of a figure.
[6] Potential to birth many offspring.
[7] “Modular narratives” being a non-linear form of storytelling including the use of narrative that can be discovered and perhaps even understood in isolation, but form part of a broader narrative.
[8] “Fingers” refers to the members of the covenant operating on behalf of Rosaria or being an extension of her influence—yet another example of FromSoftware Inc. using the corporeal body as a metaphor.
[9] Change player-character skills.
Works Cited
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Dark Souls series. FromSoftware Inc., Bandai Namco Entertainment, 2011-2018. Video game series.
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Massongill, Justin. “Interview: Miyazaki on the Limbs and Lore of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.” PlayStation.Blog, 13 July 2018.
Perron, Bernard. The World of Scary Video Games: A Study in Videoludic Horror. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018.
Pinder, Morgan. “Mouldy Matriarchs and Dangerous Daughters: An Ecofeminist Look at Resident Evil Antagonists.” M/C Journal, vol. 24, no. 5, Oct. 2021.
Schniz, Felix. Skeptical Hunter (s): A Critical Approach to the Cryptic Ludonarrative of Bloodborne and Its Player Community. Game Philosophy Network, 2016.
Stang, Sarah. “The Broodmother as Monstrous-Feminine- Abject Maternity in Video Games.” Nordlit, no. 42, 2019.
Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary and Nick Groom. Frankenstein : Or `The Modern Prometheus’: The 1818 Text. OUP Oxford, 2018. EBSCOhost.
Tidwell, Christy. “Monstrous Natures Within: Posthuman and New Materialist Ecohorror in Mira Grant’s “Parasite”.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 21, no. 3, 2014, pp. 538–49.
Special thanks to the community at Bloodborne Wiki and the Dark Souls Wiki for their diligence in documenting item and non-player character locations.
