Transcript
Speaker: And then asks the child, says, what is your opinion, child?
Speaker: The child says, what is an opinion?
Speaker: And the hunter says, an idea that deforms itself into thinking it's a fact, which just Twitter.
Speaker: You are Twitter.
Speaker: You are burnt.
Speaker: Oh, you cannot handle the truth.
Speaker: My friends.
Speaker: Are you listening?
Speaker: Tucker Carlson.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And today we are talking about the first Bloodborne trade paperback titled The Death of Sleep.
Speaker: Our first trade paperback, our first game, our first get good game.
Speaker: Get good game.
Speaker: The first get good game.
Speaker: Get good game.
Speaker: It's the first among those.
Speaker: Yeah, the Triple G. Because, you know, Resident Evil and Halo, they're like, you can kind of, you know, you can kind of walk your way through those.
Speaker: But Bloodborne... The whole entire purpose of that is to, yeah, you've got to be... You can't, like...
Speaker: Like I've tried Bloodborne before.
Speaker: I've tried playing it before.
Speaker: And it's not for me one of those games that you can have like a podcast on in the background or something like you really need to be concentrating because you're not getting any input beyond.
Speaker: Oh, sweet Jesus.
Speaker: I have to jump and dodge and attack.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: It's a mess.
Speaker: Bloodborne is the equivalent of turning your radio down when you're about to make a turn on a intersection.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But but as a game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You find yourself in a neighborhood that you're not familiar with.
Speaker: You get a little turned around and you instantly turn down the Stone Temple pilots because you need to focus.
Speaker: Shut up, STP.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Scott Whalen.
Speaker: Rest in peace.
Speaker: But I've got to concentrate.
Speaker: I can't read the street signs with the music so loud.
Speaker: I may have gotten lost in a rural area recently.
Speaker: There may have been a recent happening.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker: We don't need to get into it.
Speaker: But yeah, but I'll tell you, from what little experience I have with Bloodborne, I will say that the graphic novels they're doing are quite lovely.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it is the art.
Speaker: I will is pretty much it is as Bloodborne as it can be without it being the exact art from Bloodborne.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, it's it's they they do a good job of of imitating it in the right way, if that's even the right word.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this trade paperback, The Death of Sleep, encompasses the first four issues of, I guess, the Bloodborne comic book series that...
Speaker: Titan comics is publishing.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: I, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker: I was, I was having trouble finding specific information as to whether they are still, um, publishing new ones.
Speaker: I don't think they are because they've got the four volumes.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, the first, the first volume of it was, uh, published September, 2018.
Speaker: And there are four issues per volume.
Speaker: So that's 16 issues.
Speaker: That's like a year and some change.
Speaker: A year and a half worth of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So theoretically, this is this is all she wrote quite literally.
Speaker: But but we are going to be covering volumes one through four in the next four episodes.
Speaker: Isn't that right, Kevin?
Speaker: It sure is.
Speaker: So why don't we get right into it?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's brought to us.
Speaker: The first thing I noticed, it's brought to us.
Speaker: It's written by Alice Kott with artwork by Peter Kowalski, which immediately stirs.
Speaker: I'm not sure these folks are from around here.
Speaker: Instincts on my part.
Speaker: No, I believe they're Polish.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, no, Alice Coates.
Speaker: I'm actually, I'm looking at the creator bios in the back now.
Speaker: Oh, smart.
Speaker: No, Alice is, he is from Los Angeles and Piotr is from Poland.
Speaker: Okay, so, okay.
Speaker: All right, so we do have a distinctly Eastern European sounding name for our writer.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then Colors by Kevin Enhart.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I saw that.
Speaker: I just noticed that.
Speaker: He's one of the colorists, and that is very close to my name.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not, but it's very close.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: Here's the thing is that I don't see, I actually never see my name spelled the way my name is spelled that often out in the wild.
Speaker: I see variations.
Speaker: You know, you have your Amelia Earhart's.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You have your, there's been several Earhart's with a T at the end.
Speaker: So, but I still get a kick out of it when I see someone within striking distance.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's especially when they get the first name in there, too.
Speaker: They get the first name in there.
Speaker: I've actually been receiving emails and we're already off to the races on not talking.
Speaker: It's not talking about the best podcast you guys have ever listened to.
Speaker: We are receiving emails from this guy and I don't know who he is, but the emails are written all in German.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it they are their order confirmations for things.
Speaker: They are I've gotten several of them.
Speaker: And I think it's I think it's somebody it's somebody in Germany sending emails to a Kevin Erhard thing.
Speaker: thinking that they spelled it right and they might it might be with a t at the end i don't know if i'm doxing the kevin you know hard to no joke to which these are supposed to be addressed but that happened to me yeah oh really yeah and because my last name keeling is a way more common name in great britain
Speaker: than it is over here.
Speaker: If I meet someone with my last name, it's weird.
Speaker: But the impression I've gotten from other folks overseas is that it's a far more common name over in England, especially.
Speaker: And I got an invoice from a hardware store a couple of years back with my name on it.
Speaker: And basically, they'd gotten the same email as mine, but it was a, I don't remember what it was.
Speaker: It was like a.uk email.
Speaker: email address or something like that.
Speaker: And somehow it had gotten to me.
Speaker: So I don't know if they're scamming.
Speaker: I don't know if that's because I got to be honest.
Speaker: That's kind of a that's kind of an interesting scam.
Speaker: I don't know what the next step would be, but it is.
Speaker: I I can understand very rudimentary German.
Speaker: So if I tried hard enough, I could read it or translate in Google Translate.
Speaker: But I'm not going to do that because I
Speaker: These emails are not for me.
Speaker: No, these are not your emails, sir.
Speaker: I am going to just let them sit there.
Speaker: Let them sit there.
Speaker: So Bloodborne.
Speaker: Bloodborne.
Speaker: Speaking of England, Bloodborne.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Because that's what this takes place.
Speaker: Well, yes and no.
Speaker: Yharnam is more or less a, I want to say 19th century...
Speaker: England, like London-esque town.
Speaker: We don't have a lot of shots of Yharnam, wide shots of Yharnam in this book.
Speaker: We do have some courtyard scenes and some of the architecture and stuff like that.
Speaker: But yeah, Yharnam could be a stand-in.
Speaker: Well, and the clothes, you know, you've got a lot of kind of tri-corner hats and stovepipe hats and waistcoats.
Speaker: And there's a very, yeah, there's kind of a very, I don't know, 19th, 18th century kind of vibe to it.
Speaker: I'm not good with years and fashion.
Speaker: I'm not good with fashion of any kind, really.
Speaker: So I just know it looks vaguely like people living around or past the Revolutionary War.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's got a lot of buckles, a lot of buckles, blunderbusses.
Speaker: There's buckles everywhere.
Speaker: Buckles everywhere.
Speaker: Our main character, the hunter, that's the only name that we're given for him so far.
Speaker: Or her.
Speaker: I was about to say, it's kind of vague there.
Speaker: Yeah, actually, the androgyny is commented on.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: At one point.
Speaker: But we start out with our hunter.
Speaker: Basically ruminating on the fact that they have been, they've done all this before.
Speaker: They're walking through Yharnam, killing people who are just attacking them.
Speaker: There's beasts out on the street.
Speaker: Everything's on fire.
Speaker: And everything is just...
Speaker: supremely familiar to them and that it's, it's happened before.
Speaker: This has all happened before.
Speaker: And, but they can't, the hunter can't really place their finger on when or why, or what exactly is going on.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's, it's all familiar.
Speaker: It's all the same, but different.
Speaker: It's the, it's the bloodiest version of deja vu you've ever seen.
Speaker: Deja vu with werewolves is basically what you're looking at.
Speaker: That's basically what you're looking at right at the beginning.
Speaker: And it turns a bit when the hunters invaded into a church, a church-like building, by another group of hunters, except this one, the leader of which...
Speaker: is not interested and actually mentions like the, is, he's the only one that kind of gives a moral judgment on anything that is happening in the story.
Speaker: Basically the position of, yeah, the hunt is bad.
Speaker: This is not a good thing.
Speaker: We shouldn't be killing these beasts.
Speaker: Because they're people.
Speaker: They're people.
Speaker: They are people.
Speaker: Even though they are cursed, they are afflicted people.
Speaker: They are still people underneath that beastly form.
Speaker: Now, and that's what he talks about with the healing church.
Speaker: And speaking as someone who hasn't who hasn't played the game as much now, I know Bloodborne is intensely vague when it comes to, you know, the world and that sort of thing.
Speaker: But a couple of times in this volume, it comes up that the church is this kind of enemy force for a lot of people that they have strange rituals and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Does that hold up to what you see in the game, basically?
Speaker: Um, one of the things that I've, that I took away from the game and just, we're going to be spoiling elements of Bloodborne as we kind of talk about this, because we can't talk about the graphic novels without spoiling bits of the story of the game.
Speaker: That being said, the game is not one of those games where it's, it's, I would call it spoiler proof for the most part because you're not playing it for the storyline.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The storyline is, is neat if you can suss it out, but that's not your, that's not the draw to the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yes.
Speaker: And no, one of the things that I take away from the game is that all the institutions are bad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: Basically, no organization doesn't have blood on its hands, basically.
Speaker: Everybody is... Nobody is good in Bloodborne to an extent.
Speaker: They've all done things that have...
Speaker: kind of egregiously advanced the plot to where it is today, including the healing church, the hunters.
Speaker: Now there's a whole bunch of, here's, here's what I recommend.
Speaker: If you need to, if anyone's listening and, and find some of these vague terms that we end up throwing out neat or enticing to learn more about, there's a guy on YouTube and his name is Vati Vidya.
Speaker: Vati Vidya.
Speaker: And he has these videos that will explain literally every ounce of lore in Bloodborne, including what the hunter's relationship to the church is.
Speaker: I forget, there's a school, the School of Mensis.
Speaker: and how they are related to the church, who Lawrence is, who there's a bunch of characters, and it's all intertwined together.
Speaker: And we're going to, we actually run into...
Speaker: we run into mentions of a few of them in this book.
Speaker: So the first, the first mention is, is the institution is the healing church.
Speaker: And yes, the healing church could easily be blamed for what's going on currently because it's all about the blood.
Speaker: All about the blood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The blood is a constant, uh, uh,
Speaker: the search for pale blood and in order to transcend the hunt, transcending the hunt.
Speaker: And that's the first time we, we get a hint at why our main character is feeling a bit of a, a wolfy zombie deja vu here because they're stuck basically in this cycle.
Speaker: It is the worst groundhog day you can imagine.
Speaker: You can imagine is terrible.
Speaker: It's just terrible.
Speaker: And no amount of falling in love with, with, uh, uh, what's her name?
Speaker: Andy McDowell.
Speaker: No amount of falling in love with Andy McDowell and proving yourself to be a good person is going to change things.
Speaker: You've got to get the pale blood.
Speaker: You gotta get the pale blood.
Speaker: You don't need to learn French and French poetry.
Speaker: No, you just need to catch the kid falling out of the tree.
Speaker: You just.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the kid has to have a horrible, terrible, flaky scalp and milky blood and vaguely albino features.
Speaker: That kid needs some pert plus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're, we're introduced to this kid, the child.
Speaker: Uh, and I gotta tell you, uh, the Mandalorian child was way cuter.
Speaker: Uh, same basic idea in a way though, like this, this child with crazy powers of some kind that needs to be protected by our hunter.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: But something about the child and the child, they say the pale blood will help the hunter transcend the hunt and to entice the hunter to take the child and protect him, her whatever it is.
Speaker: They show that the child's blood is indeed milky white.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's really gross.
Speaker: It's very, super gross, very Android in aliens kind of shit.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's what is the name of the wrote the androids from alien isolation?
Speaker: Oh, the the the worker Joe's.
Speaker: Working Joes.
Speaker: Working Joes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: They're basically working Joes.
Speaker: They are.
Speaker: This kid is this kid is basically a sentient working Joe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't have not done have much in the way of great conversation or anything like that.
Speaker: But, yeah, still vaguely robotic in a way.
Speaker: And I guess the idea is that, you know, help this kid out and you're going to move past.
Speaker: the over and over and over again, right.
Speaker: Uh, that you have been basically getting really used to.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's really weird, uh, to be completely honest, because it does have weird.
Speaker: It's so weird because it's like, we've seen this story before.
Speaker: You know, we've seen the heroes got to help the young ingenue or what have you and everything like that.
Speaker: But it's just got and this is basically the same story with this very ugly world surrounding you.
Speaker: And no, no hope whatsoever.
Speaker: I think and I think that is what makes the story attractive in a way is that it is a very basic story.
Speaker: And this isn't this this isn't necessarily this isn't the story of the game.
Speaker: This is this is a story set in the universe of the game or the world of the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But what makes this particular four issue arc so interesting is that, yeah, it's that.
Speaker: save the, save the kid, save the world.
Speaker: But really it's save the kid, save yourself and escape the world.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You're there's no, there's no, there's no saving this place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: The, the world that you are in is doomed period.
Speaker: Uh, they all seem to know it too, but they, but what else are they supposed to do?
Speaker: So they're just constantly fighting back, uh, despite the fact that there's really nothing to do.
Speaker: Uh, so our hunter takes on, uh, this, this, this child, this, this, they call it the pale blood child here.
Speaker: Uh, and the first thing you gotta do is get the hell out of that town.
Speaker: Basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the, so he, the, the hunter doesn't,
Speaker: Yeah, and spoiler alert, he fails.
Speaker: He fails immediately.
Speaker: For those of you who have played the game, when what shows up is the blood-starved beast.
Speaker: Blood-starved beast.
Speaker: Yes, that is the trademark visage of the blood-starved beast.
Speaker: This disgusting creature which leaks poison out of its pores.
Speaker: And basically it looks like it has been flayed.
Speaker: And the skin, but the skin was not detached.
Speaker: It's just kind of like flopping over its head.
Speaker: It's wrapped up in its own entrails, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But all of its guts are not where they should be.
Speaker: It's got terrible posture.
Speaker: Let's face facts.
Speaker: Terrible posture.
Speaker: just bent over, just a real hill of a back there, not doing itself any favors.
Speaker: And I was thrilled because...
Speaker: The reason that I'm frustrated that I can never get very far in Bloodborne is I'm a monster guy.
Speaker: I love monsters.
Speaker: I love monster designs.
Speaker: I love all that stuff.
Speaker: And this this this Bloodstar Beast is the first example of one of the many, many monster designs that I have seen from Let's Plays of Bloodborne or just stills, that sort of thing.
Speaker: I know that that game is full of kick ass monsters.
Speaker: And this is the first one.
Speaker: that we get to see of that stripe anyway in this trade.
Speaker: And it's actually great.
Speaker: It's a great choice to use the Blood Starved Beast because for a lot of people who play the game, the Blood Starved Beast can be a bit of a wall.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's probably the third boss you can run into.
Speaker: So it's a pretty early encounter.
Speaker: It's relatively early on.
Speaker: It's also an optional boss.
Speaker: You don't never... There's no... If you are just playing the standard game, there's no reason you need to kill it.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: People can just get stuck on the blood starved beast because of how fast it moves.
Speaker: It's spewing poison everywhere, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And our hunter decides to just try to take it on and gets poison breathed until his skin and his fats and his muscles and his hair are gone.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, basically, basically this this thing pukes up acid on him, her and and leaves nothing but a skull and creepy pale child.
Speaker: Child is just kind of watching with this strange bemused grin.
Speaker: And then we get the weirdest part.
Speaker: We get the big black and red.
Speaker: You died screen.
Speaker: You died screen from from software games where it says you died.
Speaker: Which is, which I was not expecting that there was a level of breaking the wall there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a very, it's almost Deadpool level of meta meta fourth wall breaking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That you,
Speaker: Just out of this out of left field with this grim, dark setting.
Speaker: Suddenly you get the you died screen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and and the hunter wakes up.
Speaker: Now, I've seen this setting before.
Speaker: So tell me what what's this setting the hunter wakes up.
Speaker: So the setting that the hunter wakes up in is the hunter's dream.
Speaker: So basically the hunter wakes up and the doll is standing over top of him.
Speaker: And the doll is basically this, this creation, this creation of Garamans.
Speaker: Um, and I might be wrong about that.
Speaker: If I get anything wrong about bloodborne lore or whatever, um, you, the audience is free to email me at, um,
Speaker: Kevin was wrong about Bloodborne.
Speaker: And here is why.
Speaker: This is a real email address at.
Speaker: Angelfire.com.
Speaker: Rmail.angelfire.com.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They can send all the complaints there.
Speaker: And we have a new email address every episode for complaints.
Speaker: Only because that's just the way we set it up and it makes it a lot easier to categorize them.
Speaker: And if you don't hear back from us, just hang out.
Speaker: It'll come.
Speaker: We'll be there.
Speaker: Just watch the screen, though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just make sure you don't leave, though.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: You need to keep an eye on that email.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stay there.
Speaker: It'll be eventual, but it'll be.
Speaker: Please allow us to reassure you that our answer will be the best answer you've ever received in your life.
Speaker: Just hang tight and don't cheat and play a video game or something like that while you wait.
Speaker: We require your concentration.
Speaker: So, we wake up in the hunter's dream here.
Speaker: Wakes up in the hunter's dream.
Speaker: The doll is standing over the hunter, and we get introduced to the doll, and the doll, who is literally a doll.
Speaker: She's a living doll created by Garamond, the smirking gentleman sitting in the wheelchair.
Speaker: Yeah, with one foot.
Speaker: Yes, with one foot, which is probably the reason for the wheelchair, let's be honest.
Speaker: Yeah, oh, sure.
Speaker: And Gariman reiterates the MacGuffin for the Hunter.
Speaker: Yeah, the pale blood MacGuffin.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The pale blood MacGuffin.
Speaker: That's all it is, is pale blood is a MacGuffin and pale blood is this child is apparently chock full of pale blood.
Speaker: Chock full of it.
Speaker: Remains to be seen because that's just a guess because the child's blood is white.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: I mean, it does hold up.
Speaker: I mean, it scans when you look at it from a purely superficial level.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pale blood, white blood, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the hunter heads back, heads back into the back into the hunt, the the never ending nightmare of the hunt.
Speaker: And instead of taking on the blood star basically really relives that opening moment a few times.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Instead of taking on the blood star of beasts, the hunter decides, let's escape out the back.
Speaker: Yeah, finally, finally breaks the pattern that clearly they've been on countless, countless, countless times.
Speaker: The hunter finally in this multiverse says, let's let's let's get the hell out of Dodge.
Speaker: And yeah, they skip out the back and just head out into the woods.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's actually the end of the first quarter of this trade paperback.
Speaker: That's the first issue.
Speaker: So as far as setting up, what did you think in terms of setting up where the story is going?
Speaker: I thought it was interesting because I know enough about Bloodborne, which is almost nothing, to be fair.
Speaker: But I know enough about Bloodborne to know that it is a like you mentioned before, if you want to know the storyline, it's there to be found.
Speaker: But it's kind of like Five Nights at Freddy's where you got to rely on people on the Internet who are willing to do the deep, deep digging.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To find out all this stuff and put it together.
Speaker: The people who could be solving murders with a level of attention to detail that they are putting towards these video games and their lore.
Speaker: You got to kind of rely on those people.
Speaker: And so and they did a good job of giving you a little bit more, but still keeping you in suspense.
Speaker: I think it was a good
Speaker: opening and i think pretty solid i think one of the neat things and some people mention as we were talking about the story is um it's esoteric and ephemeral the the the nature of it but
Speaker: On its on this surface level, supremely simple.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: You have a goal.
Speaker: Get the thing and get out.
Speaker: Everything else is window dressing.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think I don't think a person would need to have played the game or know anything about the game to to appreciate it so far.
Speaker: There are little things like the you died screen that might be a little easier to understand the the the kind of fourth wall breaking there.
Speaker: But outside of very small details, I feel like a reader, first time reader, never never having experienced Bloodborne in the past could probably get something out of this still.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And as a little Easter egg, not really Easter egg, but the character at the beginning is a guy named Dejura.
Speaker: And he is, that's the hunter that is...
Speaker: not interested in killing the beasts anymore.
Speaker: And this kind of actually sets the events of this story to be before the game itself.
Speaker: Because Dejura ends up taking residence in a place called Old Yharnam, which he basically turns into a beast sanctuary in the game.
Speaker: And when you find...
Speaker: When you stumble into Old Yharnam, Dejura warns you to turn around and go back the way you came.
Speaker: If you keep advancing into Old Yharnam, he opens fire on you from the top of a bell tower using a minigun.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And he is able to basically track you anywhere you go in old Yharnam from that, from that vantage point.
Speaker: Oh man.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Good God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, so we've gotten, so we do have, we do have bits that the lore heads are going to be excited to see then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Beyond just the aesthetic, you know, and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Beyond the aesthetic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right, so we're into issue two, and basically at this point, there is these, it's kind of set in this wooded area that is outside of Yharnam.
Speaker: I forget the name of the woods, but it's not super important.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not super important, but we get we get in some some more of the instead of just your standard werewolf fare.
Speaker: Now we're getting into the weirder things.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Regarding Bloodborne.
Speaker: And that's and that's something I did read about or rather I've seen videos about that topic, how Bloodborne starts out as kind of a classic story.
Speaker: horror aesthetic with werewolves and, you know, zombies and stuff like that.
Speaker: And then eventually something shifts and you're in a Lovecraftian mind horror kind of thing.
Speaker: And this definitely seems to be getting into that because, you
Speaker: These two are crossing a bridge and they find just some figure walking the streets across the bridge with a torch in one hand, a sword in the other.
Speaker: And instead of heads, it has this absolute branching mass of tentacles.
Speaker: Yeah, it's basically dozens of snake heads.
Speaker: Oh, that is what that is.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: And I mean weird like literary weirdness.
Speaker: Very, very cool.
Speaker: It's this mass of snake heads and then he kills that and he turns around and there is just a tangle of gigantic snakes and it's just weird.
Speaker: It is not like...
Speaker: It is weird in a way that is, I guess is the word uncanny could be used.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because they are clearly...
Speaker: It's clearly like these are that's just a big snake.
Speaker: And like, well, it's a lot of snakes and they're kind of all connected to each other.
Speaker: And it's just a big mass of them.
Speaker: It's a rat king of snakes.
Speaker: It's a rat king of snakes.
Speaker: And on the surface, you're just like, oh, it's a rat king of snakes.
Speaker: But then you're like, it's a rat king of snakes.
Speaker: That's large.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It kind of comes at you in waves.
Speaker: The.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The weirdness of what he is seeing.
Speaker: But in a way, it's also kind of a classic trope because it's a hydra for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: It's a hydra.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a multi-headed snake thing.
Speaker: I get the impression here.
Speaker: Now, this is another thing that I might be wrong here, but the impression I got over the course of the fight scene of the snake is that our hero is dying over and over again.
Speaker: Once again, we're back into the pattern of the snake killing it until finally the hunter figures out the right pattern and basically Molotov cocktails the hell out of this thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's kind of what I picked up on, too, is that for every time the hunter made progress, the snake kills the hunter until the end.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just inching towards victory in a roguelike sense of it.
Speaker: You know, one little victory, but you still die, and you take that victory into the next fight and then die again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Over and over and over.
Speaker: Yeah, progress is not...
Speaker: It's not an improvement upon like any statistical measures of your character.
Speaker: Progress is you, the player.
Speaker: And this is it's I'm using this as a metaphor for the game.
Speaker: Progress is you, the player getting better at what to expect.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And for any of our listeners who are kind of thrown by this, I happen to know that we have a few listeners who are not like hardcore gamers, so to speak.
Speaker: But anyone who's ever played a game of Super Mario Brothers and you get to, you know, King Koopa at the end and...
Speaker: you get killed the first time because you don't know what he's going to do.
Speaker: And he hits you with a fire or jumps on your head or whatever.
Speaker: And then the next two or three lives you go in and you get to know, okay, he's going to jump.
Speaker: I got to run under him or jump over him here and grab the ax or whatever.
Speaker: It's all the same.
Speaker: That's, that's really what this is about, what they're talking about.
Speaker: It's a more complex version of that, but it's the same thing.
Speaker: This Hunter is just Mario getting killed by Bowser over and over again.
Speaker: So you can figure out how to slide under there and grab that golden axe, baby.
Speaker: A more terrifying Bowser, but Bowser nonetheless.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Bowser in a horrible world gone wrong.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: When he got rejected by the princess one too many times.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This is actually a good time to point out that aren't all the blocks in Super Mario World made of toads, basically?
Speaker: That is a fact.
Speaker: Yes, all of the blocks...
Speaker: are, uh, uh, fungus people, the people of the mushroom kingdom who have been cursed.
Speaker: And, uh, now I don't know if that's the bricks per se, uh, blocks that you, I don't know.
Speaker: I, I feel like people would argue that, that you're, you know, Mario isn't in fact killing, uh, uh, you know, shape changed, uh, toads and toadettes when he busts some of those bricks up because they're, they're more of the, the, the, the stones that you walk on and that kind of thing, which, uh,
Speaker: Still rude.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's that's true.
Speaker: That was in the that was in the original instruction guide, if I remember correctly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: Super Mario World or Super Mario Brothers more terrifying than Bloodborne.
Speaker: Only for you to decide.
Speaker: And it's knowing shit like that.
Speaker: That is the reason why Kevin and I made a podcast like this.
Speaker: Because we absolutely, of course we read those instruction guides.
Speaker: Of course we did.
Speaker: Of course we did.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So the Hunter is still busted up after the fight with the Snake King.
Speaker: And we get introduced to Josefka.
Speaker: So Josefka is a very interesting character.
Speaker: This is actually more characterization and dialogue that Josefka has in this than she does in the game itself.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you really only talk to the real Yosefka at the beginning of the game.
Speaker: The hunter decides, hey, let's let's get patched up and goes to Yosefka's clinic.
Speaker: And it gives the impression that the hunter has been there several times before.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And it's also another detail.
Speaker: This is the first and only time in this volume that we see the hunter's face.
Speaker: And it is very androgynous.
Speaker: Now, up until this point, the hunter's face up to the eyes have been hidden behind a mask.
Speaker: Usually it's a lot of the hunters.
Speaker: When you see them, it's basically their collars pulled comically high up over their noses.
Speaker: They have big collars.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And and how do you say your name again?
Speaker: It's Yosefka.
Speaker: Yosefka.
Speaker: So Yosefka says, what are you, a man, a woman with you?
Speaker: I could never tell.
Speaker: And the hunter replies, I am a hunter.
Speaker: It's it's it's a pretty neat detail because you get little details from the eyes that are sometimes more masculine, sometimes more feminine.
Speaker: And ultimately, in the end, it truly doesn't matter.
Speaker: It really doesn't matter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think anyone, man or woman alike, who played the game Bloodborne could agree with that.
Speaker: It doesn't matter whether the protagonist is a man or a woman.
Speaker: It makes no difference because either way you have to get your ass beat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or non-binary.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: None of it matters because we're all getting our asses handed to us by the blood starved beast.
Speaker: Valar Morghulis and all that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So the hunter gets patched up and, um,
Speaker: Basically, what did she say to them?
Speaker: She says something that the healer says something like, yeah, you shouldn't have come here, dear hunter.
Speaker: How foolish of you.
Speaker: Don't you know I cannot expose my patients to any risk of infection?
Speaker: Which I guess is talking about the village people that the hunter was killing the shit out of.
Speaker: Yeah, the blood, the bloodborne infection of beasthood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the hunter takes a minute to use the lamp, which I was for one surprised to find out is not a euphemism for hitting the jump.
Speaker: Used the lamp.
Speaker: Now, could you explain to me what the lamp is, Kevin?
Speaker: Does that take, it takes them back?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The lamps are your method of, of transversing the planes between the hunt and the hunter's dream.
Speaker: Okay, so the hunter goes back into the hunter's dream to basically get some insight from our strange... What was this character's name again?
Speaker: The one in the wheelchair?
Speaker: Gariman.
Speaker: Gariman.
Speaker: Get some insight from Gariman about what is the next step here, basically.
Speaker: Yeah, and Gariman doesn't really give much in the way of answers.
Speaker: No, I get the impression that that's not Gariman's forte.
Speaker: No, Garmin, for the most part, speaks in riddles wrapped up in enigmas and kind of kind of like ushers the hunter away before the moon, the not the moon presence.
Speaker: Spoilers.
Speaker: But before before the presence hears us, which is a reference to something called the moon presence.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: And basically the conversation ends with the hunter saying, okay, goodbye, Gehrman, and heading back to Yosef's clinic.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: We get an abrupt cutoff there with Gehrman, and what's waiting for the hunter back at Yosef's clinic there, but the blood-starved beast.
Speaker: This blood-starved beast, this is actually kind of an interesting concept, because
Speaker: And I feel like if Bloodborne was made today, or maybe not, because I don't know how Miyazaki would do it, or if he would want to, but...
Speaker: If Bloodborne was made by somebody else, the concept of the Bloodstarved Beast stalking you everywhere is actually kind of interesting.
Speaker: Because in the game, obviously, the Bloodstarved Beast is just a boss in a room.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You go into the room and you fight it.
Speaker: And it's actually kind of...
Speaker: in vogue to have a stalker enemy mechanic.
Speaker: I mean, Resident Evil's basically perfected it.
Speaker: Resident Evil has done it in three games, but...
Speaker: You know, there's Metroid Dread was announced at E3 by Nintendo, and Metroid Dread is going to be a throwback to the old 2D style of Metroid game.
Speaker: And it has a bit of a stalker, stalking mechanic, I believe, with these robots that are going after Samus.
Speaker: So it's something that would be interesting.
Speaker: I think it's neat that it's folded into this book that you have this blood star beast that is basically just on the trail to get the hunter and the child.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're not entirely sure if it's after the hunter or the child or both or what.
Speaker: But yeah, they're basically hiding out at this point.
Speaker: I get the impression the hunter isn't exactly eager to go out and fight the blood star beast all over again, because they probably remember how that's gone in the past.
Speaker: It has gone poorly in the past.
Speaker: Probably one of the creepiest single frames in the entire trade paperback is the beast leaves and the child says the beast is gone.
Speaker: The hunter says how?
Speaker: And then it cuts into this
Speaker: This extreme close-up of the child with a bloody nose staring into the middle distance saying, I made it leave.
Speaker: I made it leave.
Speaker: Just... I made it leave.
Speaker: More methamphetamines, please.
Speaker: I'm looking at the picture, and I feel like the eyes are following me.
Speaker: Yeah, it's... Yeah, fuck.
Speaker: I wish you hadn't brought that up, Kevin.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Let me hold it up and out.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Definitely getting good old European Renaissance painting creepiness.
Speaker: This is good.
Speaker: This is good.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: Is there a Layers of Fear book?
Speaker: Let's find out.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'm going to find out.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Layers of Fear novel.
Speaker: Uh, there is a, there is a, um, a one shot, uh, a comic.
Speaker: Oh, oh, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.
Speaker: This is, no, I think it's a real, uh, I think, no, this is, I was about to say it's Juji Ito.
Speaker: Uh, but it's, uh, it's not, it's unrelated to the game.
Speaker: It's unrelated to the game.
Speaker: It just happens to be named layers of fear.
Speaker: Maybe we could have a bonus episode around Halloween where we just read, we just talk about Junji Ito comics.
Speaker: I would be fine with that.
Speaker: I only just got into Junji Ito and, and yeah, some of them I think are intensely stupid, but the ones that
Speaker: The ones that because everyone's been talking Junji up to me for years.
Speaker: And finally, I bought one of the collections and a lot of them.
Speaker: I was like, this is the stupidest.
Speaker: What in God's name are you people talking about?
Speaker: And then there are a couple of stories in there like, OK, never mind.
Speaker: Never mind.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Understood.
Speaker: You know, you know, heard you and it's like, oh, yeah, you think that's stupid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're not afraid of my drawings, are you?
Speaker: And yeah, and then I shit myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Did you read the Amagara Fault?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I want to read that one.
Speaker: I read a collection called Smashed.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, which was interesting, which had some good ones.
Speaker: I have not read that collection.
Speaker: Specifically, I've read the Enigma of Amagar Fault.
Speaker: I've read half of Uzumaki.
Speaker: which is a real slow burn one.
Speaker: And then there is Hellstar Romina.
Speaker: Which is, are any of those the ones where people start seeing these gigantic versions of their own heads, like on balloons floating around town?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Someone, I need to find which one that one's in.
Speaker: Someone described that one to me and I was like, God damn it, I need to read that.
Speaker: Awful.
Speaker: But yeah, so far, I'm not all that impressed.
Speaker: The designs are pretty cool.
Speaker: Some of the monster designs are good.
Speaker: And by the way, for our listeners, you know, any of you who are giant manga weeb nerds, that sort of thing, and that's your jam, and I've read the wrong one, or I'm just not getting it, you know, I invite you to write me at noonegivesafuckyoustupidweebnerds at hotmail.angelfire.com.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Please make sure the subject line is your name, social security number, and your banking account number.
Speaker: Yeah, that's both your account number and routing number.
Speaker: Please make sure that it's clear which one is which.
Speaker: I don't want to have to ask you twice.
Speaker: I will get back to you shortly.
Speaker: So, Josefka, she kicks him out.
Speaker: Josefka's like, yeah, I've done enough for you guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's like, I helped you guys out.
Speaker: Get out of my blood library.
Speaker: It's basically what she says.
Speaker: And we get a single shot of Garamond talking to something off camera that is revealed to be a giant eldritch tentacle monster beast thing.
Speaker: Lit up in the moonlight.
Speaker: Lit up in the moonlight.
Speaker: That is the presence or the moon presence.
Speaker: Loving that for us.
Speaker: It's a thing.
Speaker: I love that for us and for Garamond and for everybody involved.
Speaker: It's a great final panel.
Speaker: I really.
Speaker: It is a great final panel.
Speaker: So far, the splash panels in this have been top notch.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The illustrator is solid.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: It captures a lot of scope and it captures a lot of just general creepiness.
Speaker: And that's just and that's without a single monster in the shot.
Speaker: Like there are plenty of moments where the monster comes in.
Speaker: Of course, the monster's scary, but...
Speaker: For example, in the opening of issue number three, which we're at, we get this big, just horrible, desolate landscape where clearly nothing grows and our hunter and the pale blood are wandering through it and having some of the longest conversations we've seen in this comic series up to this point.
Speaker: Yeah, most of it is... Yeah, there's a lot of... There's some conversation between the Hunter and the Paleblood, and then there's a lot of internal monologue.
Speaker: The Hunter's basically trying to confirm that this is right, right?
Speaker: We're doing the right thing, right?
Speaker: This is the...
Speaker: this is the monster there.
Speaker: This is the child.
Speaker: This is the thing I need, right?
Speaker: I'm not crazy.
Speaker: This is the right move.
Speaker: The child, which is the child bleeds pale blood.
Speaker: It must be the pale blood, right?
Speaker: And it's, it's only fair to wonder, to wonder at that moment, if you're making the right call, uh, I, it does have my favorite piece of dialogue, uh, in this, um, in this, uh, run, uh,
Speaker: They're talking about the reasons that people wrap coffins in chains.
Speaker: Oh, I love that.
Speaker: It's such a nice little detail.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And you would think...
Speaker: There's only like one good reason to wrap a coffin.
Speaker: No, several.
Speaker: In fact, several.
Speaker: In fact, the hunter details them and then asks the child says, what is your opinion, child?
Speaker: The child says, what is an opinion?
Speaker: And the hunter says an idea that deforms itself into thinking it's a fact, which just Twitter.
Speaker: You are Twitter.
Speaker: You are burnt.
Speaker: Oh, oh.
Speaker: You cannot handle the truth, my friends.
Speaker: Are you listening, Tucker Carlson?
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Ben Shapiro.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Have you heard the hunter, my friend?
Speaker: Hunter's having a bit of a, yeah, an existential spell.
Speaker: It's basically like a mini existential meltdown that the hunter is having.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: The kid is just, the kid is just collapsed.
Speaker: So the hunter's carrying the kid while thinking like, just thinking existential thoughts.
Speaker: And you didn't, you didn't mention that the kid, the kid stops and collapses because it's, it starts, it starts bleeding out of its eyes.
Speaker: It starts bleeding from its eyes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Says the under, can I have a cloth, please?
Speaker: Can I have a rag?
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, sure.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: The kid goes, I'm bleeding.
Speaker: And the kid's just blood pouring out of its eyes.
Speaker: So you know what?
Speaker: The least you could do is give the kid a rag and maybe a quick piggyback ride.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: they do find themselves eventually at what appears to be an abandoned tower.
Speaker: And again, you want to talk about kick-ass landscape detail and spooky, you know, it's so great.
Speaker: They're building a fire in the ruins of this giant tower.
Speaker: And they're having a discussion about a lot of things.
Speaker: They're just talking about, um,
Speaker: you know, the fear and the, the beast and worry.
Speaker: The kid asks him, are you, are you worried about the beast?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And, and the hunter says the one that's chasing us.
Speaker: No, you know, I mean, it's, it's still ahead of it.
Speaker: We got some, yeah, we're still ahead of it.
Speaker: We're good.
Speaker: And the kid says, no, no, I know that.
Speaker: I mean, the one above us,
Speaker: And the hunter goes under, looks up at the tower.
Speaker: There's nothing in the tower.
Speaker: Hunter says, there's, there's, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker: And the kid being the spooky kid in the story, as is this child's right goes, yeah, you know what?
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: There isn't anything there.
Speaker: And you turn the page and it's just this shot at the tower and this eldritch nightmare.
Speaker: staring down at them while the kid tells the hunter good night.
Speaker: Like, like it, I, I, I, I was dating a girl once and I get, I get not so much anymore, but I used to get night terrors pretty regularly.
Speaker: And, and I always warned anyone who shared a bed with me.
Speaker: I'm like, it's usually not that bad, but you might hear me talking to my sleep.
Speaker: You might, you know,
Speaker: I might hop up or shout or something like that.
Speaker: And I am for that.
Speaker: I am forever.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I didn't.
Speaker: And I don't always remember when these things happen.
Speaker: So my girlfriend at the time, the next morning we wake up and she says, do you remember what you did last night?
Speaker: And I said, no, what did I do?
Speaker: And she said that she woke up about two or three in the morning and I was running my hands along the wall behind the headboard of our bed.
Speaker: And she said, what are you doing?
Speaker: And I explained to her that something was behind the wall, pressing out, trying to get through the wall.
Speaker: And she went, Philip, there's nothing behind the wall.
Speaker: And she said that I looked at the wall, looked at her, smiled and went, yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker: And rolled over and went straight to sleep.
Speaker: I feel like that's pretty much this scene.
Speaker: That's pretty much this scene.
Speaker: And I'm sorry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't mean to do it, but that's exactly what happens.
Speaker: You were seeing these amygdala monsters.
Speaker: And rather than panic the person I'm sharing a bed with, I just concede the point and go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: There's nothing there.
Speaker: We're fine.
Speaker: We're definitely not going to die in our sleep tonight, though.
Speaker: I'll tell you one thing that is not going to happen.
Speaker: Gosh.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it's a really well paced reveal.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: It's one of those things that you can only do with graphic novels.
Speaker: It was so effective.
Speaker: And I just love the next couple of pages in terms of the sweeping landscape.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Shots.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you start to realize you get a hint of what, where they are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause they, it's like I said, it's this wasteland and, uh,
Speaker: In one of the panels they're walking and there is what is clearly the wreck of a ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's some ocean in the far distance, too.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So this used to be, you know, theoretically, you know, part of part of more of an.
Speaker: you know, maritime kind of area.
Speaker: And now it's just, you know, like a waterfront or something like, yeah, right, right.
Speaker: They do find they find another set of ruins and the body of what appears to be another hunter with a kick ass toothy wheel club is, I believe, the proper term for it.
Speaker: Yeah, the Bloodborne fans affectionately call that the pizza cutter.
Speaker: The pizza cutter.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I like mine better.
Speaker: But yeah, I guess we can go with pizza cutter.
Speaker: It is what it looks like.
Speaker: It looks like a pizza cutter that uses shark's teeth to cut through all that dough and cheese.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So they found this spot and the kid says to the hunter, it's going to catch up with us.
Speaker: Yeah, and they're like in the ruins of a church almost, it seems like.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: At first, you don't realize how big the ruins are.
Speaker: But yeah, it appears to be some temple, some sort of high-gated stone temple.
Speaker: And the hunter says, we're not running anymore.
Speaker: And the hunter waits and kind of has a little mention of...
Speaker: of not really being sure if the hunter, if they remember ever sleeping.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if he could sleep in a world like that.
Speaker: It feels pretty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like when would you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You know, I think I'd prefer to be awake, but eventually the, the blood starved beast does show up.
Speaker: And they're fighting and it's going back and forth.
Speaker: One's winning.
Speaker: The other one's suddenly winning.
Speaker: And the hunter has this moment where they realize I'm going to die, but I'll wake up again and I'll give another try.
Speaker: So instead of...
Speaker: fighting for all they're worth, the hunter kind of just gives in to what they assume is going to be death.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we get one of the most horrifying...
Speaker: panels in this or pages in this.
Speaker: And they all have to do with the kid.
Speaker: It's always the kid, by the way.
Speaker: There are minimum three, maybe four moments in this book that is always just the grossest, weirdest shit in this volume.
Speaker: And it's always the kid.
Speaker: So the beast, it looks like it's about to lay down the final blow on our hunter and and then notices the kid just kind of standing there.
Speaker: like Bobby Hill, just kind of standing there, kind of minding his own business.
Speaker: And then the kid says to the hunter that the hunter should cover your ears and appears to dislocate its jaw in the name of screaming.
Speaker: And just just you got horrible moon blood, pale blood, whatever it is, just dripping off of them.
Speaker: Distended, horrible, unlocked jaw like a boa constrictor eating a toddler.
Speaker: But just, just, it is gross.
Speaker: And it literally splits the beast in twain.
Speaker: The beast has a moment of not realizing that it has been split in twain.
Speaker: And then it, then it's just, it's a, it's a samurai movie moment.
Speaker: It's samurai movie moment.
Speaker: It's just an explosion of blood covering the hunter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the hunter just scowls at the kid instead of being like, Oh, cool.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: The hunter just scowls at the kid, like the kid just fucked him over somehow.
Speaker: And just basically just help me up.
Speaker: And I, and I was wondering why the hunter was so frustrated.
Speaker: And then I realized this kid could have done this at any moment.
Speaker: You little shit.
Speaker: You could.
Speaker: I died dozens upon dozens of times that I know of.
Speaker: You could have done this any time, you ingrateful little shit.
Speaker: I'm taking you back to your mother and I am never paying child support again.
Speaker: Oh, Jesus.
Speaker: I get it I get it at this point yeah the hunter is the hunter is there it just ends with with the hunters a wide shot of of the the wasteland that they still have yet to cross right right you're just saying help me up
Speaker: And we come to the fourth and final issue in this volume, The Death of Sleep.
Speaker: And I really liked some of the details in this particular issue.
Speaker: They come to a town that is on the coast.
Speaker: They're looking for, it's a fishing hamlet.
Speaker: A fishing hamlet.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: Which is, the fishing hamlet, by the way, is one of the more
Speaker: Like, Bloodborne obviously has its Lovecraftian elements.
Speaker: The fishing hamlet is basically the shadow over Innsmouth just plucked out and put into the game.
Speaker: And that's all it is.
Speaker: You know, that's fine.
Speaker: But that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: And the town is...
Speaker: Covered in goo, like just piles of green algae and muddy and gooey and gore, like, because there are dead folks everywhere.
Speaker: And they are making their way through and the villagers are gone.
Speaker: But they're, you know, the I don't know if the hunter is trying to be, you know, a
Speaker: I don't know, optimistic for the kids sake or something.
Speaker: But the hunter says, I do not believe the villagers are gone forever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I'm glad that someone in this world could still hope for the bright side on this thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The hunter is, the hunter is really turned around and just decided to be like, you know what?
Speaker: Things aren't that bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I've got a kid that can scream monsters into.
Speaker: I suppose it could be worse.
Speaker: And sweats milk blood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a unique foster child, but it's mine.
Speaker: Uh, so the kid points out a note, uh, that's been left for the hunter there and just seen, yeah, from Garmin and just knows that it's, that it's from Garmin and that it's for the hunter without even looking at it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In that spooky way that the kid does.
Speaker: That the kid does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I kind of have to reread this note.
Speaker: It's, it's kind of a long bit of text.
Speaker: Yeah, with all of the quick dialogue only broken by the occasional existential moments, an entire page is a lot to read at this point.
Speaker: In fact, we may have fucked ourselves over for the next actual novel we have to read for this podcast.
Speaker: But such is life.
Speaker: We just got too used to picture books.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: Don't read picture books, kids.
Speaker: They'll rot your brain.
Speaker: So yeah, basically the gist that I'm getting from this letter is that Garmin is like, you, you, you know, I think we all might be fucked over here, Hunter.
Speaker: It's like, and then Garmin's like, kid could be pale blood, could, might not be.
Speaker: I honestly don't know anything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And even if the kid is pale blood, I don't know if that's what we need.
Speaker: I used to know, but I don't know anymore.
Speaker: And the guy who does, who, the guy who would know is dead.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So good luck.
Speaker: Please try to make it to my church's potluck next week and bring that brown rice that you do.
Speaker: We will be doing bingo for charity.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Charity being the benefit of people who have turned into werewolves this week.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Very important charity.
Speaker: The staff is getting smaller and smaller.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: I don't know how that works.
Speaker: But yeah, so it's basically a real downer, you know, for all of the hunters wondering, am I doing the right thing to find out that the one person that the hunter could maybe trust to know what the next step was basically says, uh,
Speaker: I don't know what the next step is.
Speaker: That that's yeah, that's a bummer.
Speaker: That's a bummer.
Speaker: I don't know what to do.
Speaker: And this is the oldest dude that he knows.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the the hunter finally is just just looks at the kid and says, what are you?
Speaker: fuck are you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is the first time you asked that question, by the way.
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Like you could have asked that question a while ago, buddy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I know you're used to seeing horrible flayed monsters with spina diffida chasing you around, but you can ask questions of the occasional milk blood kid.
Speaker: Like that's okay.
Speaker: No one's judging you.
Speaker: The child of the milk blood.
Speaker: The child of the milk blood.
Speaker: It's a race.
Speaker: I'm working for a D and D. I'm working out the rules.
Speaker: I feel like that would, that would be a better, a better vampire masquerade.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The milk blood blood line.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: The milk bloods.
Speaker: Their nicknames are the sucklers.
Speaker: Oh Lord.
Speaker: So the kid, the kid has another little tipsy moment.
Speaker: Their thralls are cookies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: You dip the cookies in milk.
Speaker: Kevin, shut up.
Speaker: I can't do this.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Cause I'm going to write that.
Speaker: Kevin, I'm going to write that.
Speaker: I'm going to write that.
Speaker: It's going to be on storytellers vault.
Speaker: This winter, I guarantee you, just in time for Santa to show up for cookies and milk.
Speaker: We're getting the milk bloods.
Speaker: Get your cookies and milk bloods.
Speaker: A very rare bloodline from Vampire the Masquerade.
Speaker: Van.
Speaker: Anniversary.
Speaker: Family, are you looking for something?
Speaker: Family.
Speaker: Family!
Speaker: For Christmas, get your cookies and milk bloods ready for Santa.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: You're keeping this?
Speaker: I hope you're listening, Jason Carl.
Speaker: Coming your way, my friend.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So the kid passes out again.
Speaker: Turns out having blood, the approximate shade of bland yogurt does nothing for your constitution.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: And Jamie Lee Curtis is not even there to tell you about the probiotic properties of it.
Speaker: Oh, would that she were.
Speaker: Oh, Jamie, call me.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: So you remember the creepy antediluvian eldritch horror that was hanging out on top of the tower?
Speaker: Oh, yes, I do.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, it turns out the town is full of them.
Speaker: Full of them.
Speaker: Full of them.
Speaker: But the hunter cannot see them.
Speaker: The kid can see them.
Speaker: The hunter does not have the eyes.
Speaker: It does not have the insight for them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No milky eyes for the hunter.
Speaker: So, and they're just kind of... I've got special eyes.
Speaker: My brand!
Speaker: Call it 1-800-CONTACTS.
Speaker: Please contact.
Speaker: We really, we would love for you to, we would love for you to sponsor our show.
Speaker: 1-800-CONTACTS for when you have milk blood eyes.
Speaker: For when you have milk blood eyes.
Speaker: They'll send you, they'll send you your contacts for your milk blood eyes directly to your house.
Speaker: Even if you have a weird blood bound style.
Speaker: I fuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, so the kid passes out and then they wakes up just in time to point out the, the, the Eldritch terrors.
Speaker: Before that.
Speaker: And they're kind of standing sentry.
Speaker: It doesn't appear that they are moving a lot, but I wouldn't want to touch them.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So, yeah, the kid basically does the trust walk with the hunter who can't see.
Speaker: Now take four steps forward.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Up here to the left.
Speaker: Don't move now.
Speaker: Now turn.
Speaker: Now turn around.
Speaker: Now touch your butt.
Speaker: Touch it again, please.
Speaker: Get really in there.
Speaker: Now sniff it.
Speaker: I gotcha.
Speaker: So they're going through all of this and you get the shift in the kid's voice.
Speaker: It's clearly something happening to the kid.
Speaker: It's green now and the font's all freaky.
Speaker: You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not good.
Speaker: It's gone from regular font to scary font.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And but they make it under and over and around the the Eldritch horrors and they're making their way to the docks.
Speaker: They can see the boats and they're the hunters having momentary existential thoughts.
Speaker: If you have existential thoughts on milk blood for more than four hours, please consult a doctor.
Speaker: And the looks, the hunter looks down at the child and, and the child, it's another one of those panels that it's all about why not,
Speaker: Why is this not?
Speaker: Why is this okay?
Speaker: I, this is horrifying.
Speaker: You want to talk about Lovecraftian?
Speaker: The kid has gone full fish person with several rows of pointy teeth.
Speaker: Several.
Speaker: And asks the hunter, why are you afraid of me?
Speaker: Which I think we can all answer because you're a freaky fish faced freak.
Speaker: Yeah, you are a monster.
Speaker: The hunter, the hunter drops the child.
Speaker: Pulls down their mask and promptly vomits.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just kind of leaves the child there.
Speaker: Like, just like, like finding, like finding out you had a one night stand with a Trump voter, just peek in the sand just to purge yourself of all the horror.
Speaker: And the hunter grabs their weapon and is basically ready to, uh,
Speaker: put down the killing blow on the kid who is still, who is basically saying, you know, I get it.
Speaker: The kid says, I get it.
Speaker: If you're going to do this, you know, I get it.
Speaker: I might not be what you're looking for, which is understatement of the year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And basically clear that the kid doesn't even know what's happening to it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Has no idea.
Speaker: It thinks it was human once.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And so in the moment, the hunter, right as they're about to bring the sword down on the kid, remembers back in the town all the talk from... Now, what was this hunter's name again?
Speaker: Is this the same hunter?
Speaker: Dejura.
Speaker: So that's the kid's reference is Uncle Dejura.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And Dejura, the hunter remembers Dejura saying basically, the beasts, they were human once.
Speaker: They still are.
Speaker: And so the hunter just doesn't have it in them and drops the weapon in the sand.
Speaker: And, uh, and they crawl in inside of a rowboat and, and just, and they disappear into the fog.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's just the, the, the most ambiguous ending you could get.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just picks up the kid, leaves and they're, they just row out into the ocean.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the hunter, you know, in their eternal monologue basically says, I don't know what's going to happen next.
Speaker: I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I got to do something.
Speaker: So let's let's give this a shot.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And and that's how the first volume of Bloodborne ends.
Speaker: The death of sleep.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kevin, what did, what did you think?
Speaker: I feel like talking about it really opened it up a little bit more in my mind.
Speaker: There's, there's a lot of existential issues.
Speaker: dread in this.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because especially through the hunter who is just trying to figure out what does any of this mean?
Speaker: The hunter, I think there's a line in there where the hunter is not even sure if sure, sure if they were a child once they don't even remember any, they remember nothing before the hunt, you know, they just remember the hunt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it just it's just it's about it.
Speaker: Basically, it's the existential.
Speaker: Who am I of any 20 something English major, but told through the lens of somebody who is actually doing something with their life?
Speaker: Sorry, I used to be a 20 something.
Speaker: English major.
Speaker: We're allowed to say that.
Speaker: We're allowed to say that.
Speaker: We have a liberal arts.
Speaker: Liberal arts degrees are allowed to say that.
Speaker: We're allowed to say that about other liberal arts degrees.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: It's just talking through this has been really interesting because it is, it is really easy just to flip through it and go nice.
Speaker: That was metal as fuck.
Speaker: And it is.
Speaker: And when I tell you what, we've got four volumes of these things and, and each of the titles of the volumes sound like cradle of filth albums.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, this one was the death of sleep, which come on metal.
Speaker: And next week, Kevin, you want to tell them what the name of the next volume is that we're going to be reading?
Speaker: The next volume is, is that the healing thirst?
Speaker: The healing thirst.
Speaker: That's some vampire shit.
Speaker: I am pumped.
Speaker: I am really excited about this one.
Speaker: So for the next, uh,
Speaker: For three weeks after this week, we're going to be blood-borning it up, my friend.
Speaker: I'm really excited.
Speaker: I am excited, too.
Speaker: This was a lot of fun.
Speaker: A lot of weird.
Speaker: This is the most true horror I feel like we've talked about.
Speaker: Or horror in the sense of...
Speaker: things that I kind of find genuinely scary because Resident Evil is because I kind of categorize horror as two things.
Speaker: There's like horror as the aesthetic, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's horrific, gruesome, gory, whatever.
Speaker: It doesn't necessarily, to me, I feel like things can easily just be horror as an aesthetic.
Speaker: They don't necessarily have to be scary.
Speaker: They can just be horrific.
Speaker: They don't have to scare you or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, the, the, the Adams family is horror as an aesthetic.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: But it does, but it's not really scary.
Speaker: It's funny, you know, it's lighthearted.
Speaker: It's, it's, it, you know, it's, uh, Gomez is the, he is the wife guy that every, every married man, uh, tries to live up to.
Speaker: We have it's all we can do, man.
Speaker: Like I remember my dad telling my my dad told me once he said Atticus Finch is the father we all wish we could be.
Speaker: And he's right.
Speaker: And Gomez Adams is the husband we all wish we could be.
Speaker: We just got out.
Speaker: We're just.
Speaker: We're all just trying.
Speaker: God, just trying to be our best Gomez every day.
Speaker: It's it's, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: And if your man ain't trying to be your Gomez, you need a better man.
Speaker: I'm not, I'm not taking that one back.
Speaker: That one is, that one is sincere.
Speaker: I'm expecting that to be in somewhere in the vows of your wedding.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I am giving, I am, I am, I'm giving my fiance Gomez with both barrels.
Speaker: Like that is all I can do.
Speaker: that's all I can do.
Speaker: And it's cause it's what she deserves.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: It's life is good.
Speaker: Life is good.
Speaker: So bloodborne though.
Speaker: Bloodborne is, I found this genuinely chilling at times.
Speaker: It was dreadful in the actual sense of dread.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not, not as another way of saying it's, it's shitty.
Speaker: It was full of dread.
Speaker: It was, it was full of,
Speaker: Not just the horrible things that roam in the shadows, but the questions of why do why am I even going to bother fighting back against them?
Speaker: You know what it gave me vibes of?
Speaker: So other than the Lovecraftian stuff, it really gave me, for some reason, Edward Gorey vibes.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I can see that.
Speaker: I can see that.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a there's actually the smash cut close ups of the kid just like staring into the camera with those with those dead eyes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Nothing says gory like spooky kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like it's you know, I could totally see that.
Speaker: I could totally see that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I think that's, that's it, everybody.
Speaker: Um, just remember if you enjoyed this episode, go on down below, uh, or wherever it is on the podcast platform that you listen on and give us a five-star rating and write us a little, a nice little happy review or give us a thumbs up or, or whatever.
Speaker: Retweets, share, share,
Speaker: Whatever you can do, it really helps us.
Speaker: And we just want to keep making more content for you.
Speaker: So with that being said, that's all for today.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: That's been Phil.
Speaker: And take care, everybody.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Bye.
