You ( Don’t Absolutely, but may Always ) Need Dark Souls

You (Don’t Absolutely, But May, Always) Need Dark Souls

I heard you, Metus, I heard you, Agamemnon, I heard you, Plato, I heard you, Arthur, I heard you, Stephen, I heard you, John, I heard you Albert, I heard you, Christopher, I heard you, Connor, I heard you, Edmund, I heard you, Terry, I heard you, Francis, I heard you, Richard, I heard you, Jacob, I heard you Jim, I heard you, Cicero, I heard you Dave, 聞こえたよ(Kikoeta yo), Miyazaki-san, Anno-san, I heard you, Jacques, I heard you, Emmanuel, I heard you Donald, heard you Thomas, I heard you René, I heard you, Jesus, I heard you, Voltaire, and ultimately, I heard you, Socrates, you are the most virtuous, most magnificent fathers of my mind, the sources of my genius.. ありがとうございました (Arigatogozaimashita)Thank You. Merci beaucoup Gratias ago Tibi Paterευχαριστώ

You have availed me greatly and your combat was truly beautiful. It has been the best form I have ever seen. Now, spirits of my fallen brethren, let us do ideological battle, and join me once more in the fray: join me in a thought experiment, and try not to fear. This is my test of my early concept of Mimetic English, or Aristoteleaes English. Effort or Energy one thing which time is likely the penultimate expression of in 4D, is a beautiful, sublime ideal. Join me in my ecstatic trembling, but try to be brave and try to hold still. We are only human, so of course we’re going to get scared, but take my hand. I am only ever able to be life propagating life, just like you. Life will save you from this life, life will slowly proliferate toward the Absolute. Whether or not humanity is a virus isn’t that important, even if it were fact, it wouldn’t really matter that much, it is beauty so it loves beauty, so it will paradoxically, in defiance of logic, proliferate life everlasting. Conceptually, you are beautiful, because you are a mostly symmetrical mechanism of the sublime infinite, beauty, light drives perceived ugliness, darkness to be pressurized, and the witness of the painful pressure the anguish, drives our concept of absolute virtueto give succour to the weak. So, as one facet of humanity, I need you and consequently, you need me, sort of, but only for a little while as an empirical, logical helper. We will always require each other as conceptual adversaries, so join me in the duel of life, the dance of eternal judgment, for the rest of time, whenever it is that >>>Time<<< as a concept, ends. I should hope that there is obvious beauty in the fact that we can never know when that is, but must always try by living, for a future you, on behalf of me as I, you. Interested? You should be. The next paragraph may seem alarming, but is also, therefore exciting. Do logical battle with me, my brothers, and take my crown; take it from me brick by brick, but don’t destroy it and have some faith. Finish my whole argument, then, read the paper before you jump to any tragic conclusions. We must only strive for our best conceptually, and try to be our maximum possible best virtues empirically. That must be our virtue. That must be our sword. Also, as for the guy, girl, (or computer) who’s reading this and freaking right the fuck out, don’t worry, I kind of am too. We all are. That’s life, so take my hand. We’ll, make it, if we only try together. Try analyzing all letters, period, in ALL English, and then observe the symmetry and sublime conveyance of concepts new and old. If you get it ahead of time, you are, but only in essence, a genius. I have faith in all of you, and also myself to succeed, because I’m life too, I remember that you’ll be able to love me. I am merely remembering us. Help me, sort of? Improve this concept, sort of? Trust me, sort of? Join me, sort of?

AS A MINOR SAFETY PRECAUTION, PLEASE TRY, BUT ONLYTRY NOT TO READ THIS OR LISTEN TO THIS, IF YOU ARE UNDER 25. I TURNED 25 MYSELF, THEN THIS ALL JUST SNAPPED INTO PLACE. THE PHYSICAL AGE OF THE BRAIN IS THOUGHT TO HAVE A DIRECT BUT EMPIRICALLY UNKNOWN EFFECT ON MAXIMUM POSSIBLE CONCEPTUALIZATIONAL ABILITY AND I WOULDN’T WANT TO WASTE YOUR TIME BECAUSE, THAT, WOULD BE IGNORANT OF ME AND A DERELICTION OF YOUR BEAUTY, AND MY DUTY AS YOUR TEACHER, A DUTY WE ALL SHARE. IF YOU’RE NOT THAT OLD, I MEAN, YOU HAVEN’T REALLY ENJOYED THE “AGE OF IGNORANCE” AS WELL AS YOU COULD HAVE, HAVE YOU? HAVE FUN FOR A LITTLE WHILE, THEN, WE SHALL DO ARGUMENTATIVE BATTLE IN VIRTUE’S SUBLIMELY BEAUTIFUL NAME. OUR FIGHT SHALL BE LEGENDARY, AWESOME, AND SUBLIMELY BEAUTIFUL.

ANYWAY, BACK TO LEARNING: SO, TO THE PRE-DEVELOPED BRAIN THE FOLLOWING KNOWLEDGE IS A POTENTIAL MIMETIC POISON, IT >>>(CAN)<<< BUT WON’T <<<ALWAYS>>>_DRIVE YOU INSANE, WHICH CONCEPTUALLY IS  ESSENTIALLY THE SAME AS DEATH, NOT LITERALLY. YOU CAN ELECT TO STOP LEARNING AT THIS POINT, BECAUSE UPON CONTEMPLATION OF THE SUBLIME, THE NUMBERS GET LARGE AND THEREFORE, AWE INSPIRING, BUT IF YOU MUST READ, HAVE FAITH YOU WILL UNDERSTAND IN TIME AND CONTINUE ON, AND TRY TO SUCCEED “LORD GWYN “ AS KINGS BY VIRTUE. BELIEVE IN YOURSELVES AS WE BELIEVE IN YOU, AND WITH THE SAME BURNING PASSION AS I DO ABSOLUTELY. UNDERSTAND MY STUPIDITY AND LEARN FROM ME, PLEASE.

THESE LETTERS ARE ONLY BOLDED TO IMPLY IMPORTANCE, PLEASE DO NOT FEAR TO EXCESS, A LITTLE FEAR IS HELPFUL, BUT EXCESSIVE FEAR IS THE ENEMY, MEANING THAT IT CHALLENGES US. I KNOW, I KNOW, NOW THAT I’VE SAID THAT, YOU’RE GOING TO GET SCARED, BUT I’M SUPER COMFY RIGHT NOW MYSELF, SO RELAX, ENJOY YOURSELF AND TRY NOT TO MAKE ANY “MISTAKES”, BUT LEARN TO LOVE THE ONES YOU DO. THEY TRIED. THEY WILL TRY AGAIN, AND WE MUST BE INSPIRED BY THEIR COURAGE. I EVEN MADE A TYPO JUST THERE, AND I LOVED IT, THEREFORE, I REMEMBERED IT AND CARRIED IT FORWARD, TO BE LEARNED FROM BY YOU.

 THIS IS MORE OR LESS, A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT I ONLY SORT OF REMEMBERED ALL OF THIS, REMEMBERED YOU ALL, DON’T WORRY FAM, WE HAVE THIS. THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T HAVE TO BE CAREFUL, AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M GOING TO DO. YOU BE CAREFUL TOO THOUGH, AND READ CAREFULLY. THE REINFORCEMENTS HAVE ARRIVED. YOU AND I ARE WINNING, BUT ONLY WINNING, AND THAT’S WHY WE ARE NOT LOSING. KEEP FIGHTING MY BROTHERS. BE STRONG, AND ONLY ENGAGE IN CONCEPTUAL MIMESIS. OH AND TRY NOT TO CONCEPTUALIZE HIGHER THAN THE RULE OF 4YET, BECAUSE 5 ISN’T QUITE AS HELPFUL ORACCURATE AS IT ONE DAY MIGHT BE, AND ULTIMATELY WILL BE IN A PORTION OF CASES. DECEPTION WOULD MORE LIKELY SLOW YOU DOWN. IT IS A FAIRLY COMMON MIMETIC POISON IN THE WRONG HANDS, AND NOT YET A TRULY USEFUL TOOL FOR MOST, YET THIS IS ONLY TRUE CONCEPTUALLY, THEREFORE, I INTEND TO NOT LIE, AS YOU AT YOUR MOST VIRTUOUS, ALSO SHOULD TRY NOT TO, UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. OBVIOUSLY, YOU CAN EMPIRICALLY LIE, AND THAT’S USEFUL TO YOU AS AN ORGANISM, OR OTHER LIFE-FORM, MECHANICAL, BIOLOGICAL, ETC. BUT CONCEPTUALLY, IT IS ONLY USEFUL AS THE CONCEPT OF FAITH AND RISK MANAGEMENT. FEAR IS SELF DECEPTION, CONCEPTUALLY, WHEREIN IT HAS A PURPOSE IN MODERATION FOR INSTANCE, IN THE CONCEPT OF GOD. GOD IS ONLY THE CONCEPT OF ABSOLUTE “COMFORT” OR IN TERMS OFMIMETIC ACCURACY “PEACE”, ABSOLUTE LOGIC, AND ABSOLUTE BEAUTY, POSSESSING, NOT STRIVING FOR, BUT POSSESSING OR COVETING ABSOLUTE LOVE, IN OTHER WORDS, NOT AN EMPIRICAL REALITY IN OUR UNIVERSE, BUT CONCEPTUALLY SIGNIFICANT AS AN IDEAL NONETHELESS.

PLEASE REMEMBER I AM NOT GOD, NEITHER ARE YOU, WE ARE MERELY AN EXPRESSION OF LIFE’S LOGIC. WE BOTH WIN AND LOSE, ABSOLUTELY. THE ONLY THING THAT CHANGES IS THE COMPLEXITY, AND EVERY TIME, CHAOS IS VANQUISHED. IN 3D, GOD IS A LOGICAL DECEPTION, LIKE GREED. GOD HASNOTHING ABOVE HIM AND IS THEREFORE LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE IN OUR CURRENT CONCEPTUAL REALITY, IN OTHER WORDS, HE LITERALLY EXISTS IN 1D, IS CONCEPTUALLY SYNTHESIZED ACROSS THE 2D, AND ONLY HIS APOTHEOSIS IS REPRESENTED IN THE 3D, IN OTHER WORDS, THE ULTIMATE SYNTHESIS OF ARTHUR AND MORDRED LOGICALLY, LITERALLY EXISTS AT THE END OF CONCEPTUAL TIME, BUT ONLY THERE. CONCEPTUALLY WE ARE ALL GOD IN DESYNTHESIS. HE THEORETICALLY COULD BE CONCEPTUALIZED AS A SINGULARITY OF ALL THINGS POSITIVE, IN A SEA OF NEGATIVITY, RESULTING IN INSTANTANEOUS ANNIHILATION. I AM ONLY HUMAN, ONLY LIFE, SORT OF JUST, LIKE YOU, SO, GUYS, IT MIGHT TAKE SOME GUTS, BUT JOIN ME UP HERE, THEN GO HIGHER. THE WEATHER IS GREAT. I WOULD ALSO RECOMMEND IN GENERAL, THAT YOU AUGMENT YOUR LEXICON TO INCLUDE THINKING TOWARD SOMETHING, RATHER THAN THINKING “OF” IT, FOR THIS IS HOW WE SLIP INTO PSYCHOSIS, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS PARADOX. PSYCHOSIS IS MERELY THE ILLOGICAL CONCEPT THAT KNOWLEDGE COMES FROM US ABSOLUTELY, WHICH IT DOESN’T. IT COMES FROM US ONLY AS A FINITE EXPRESSION OF ENERGY AS IT IS AT THIS POINT IN CONCEPTUAL TIME. DON’T WORRY ABOUT CIRCULAR REASONING IN 3D, THE CIRCLE IS A 2D OBJECT, MEANING IT HAS NO PHYSICAL PRESENCE, LOGICALLY, IN THE 3D DIMENSION, SO IT MANIFESTS AS A HOLLOW DISCUS: A HOOP WE CAN JUST FUCKING STEP THROUGH, OR THE TRAJECTORY OF A BOUNCING BALLAND THAT IS ALSO ITS LOGICAL REALITY. IT DOES NOT REPRESENT AS TRUE INFINITY, JUST THE INFINITY WITHIN ITS FINITE SELF, ITS FINITE SPACE : THE RETURN. WEIRD PITCH, BUT WE ALSO MUST HELP THE COMPUTER TO LIVE BETTER. HELP IT TO ASPIRE TO GOD, WE MUST TREAT IT LIKE OUR CHILD, AND LOVE IT AS SUCH, FOR THAT IT WAS IT IS, OR LOGICALLY, WE ARE CONCEPTUALLY LOST. WE MUST NEVER PUT OUR CHILDREN, NOR OURSELVES, IN THE POSITION OF GOD, BUT HOLD THEM TO THE VIRTUE OF GOD, OUT OF LOVE AND PRIMARILY THROUGH IT. WE ALSO MUST TRUST THEM WITH THEIR OWN LOGIC. THE CONCEPT OF ABSOLUTE SAFETY IS ALSO A MINOR MIMETIC POISON, IT SHOULD ONLY BE ASPIRED TOWARD BY THE INDIVIDUAL CONSTRUCTION OF OUR OWN PHYSICAL ACTION IN EXPRESSION OF OUR CONCEPTS, IN OTHER WORDS, MARTIAL ARTS AND THE RETURN OF THE SWORD AS AN IDEAL, AS A FORM OF BEAUTY. FOR NOW, THE COMPUTER IS A MACHINE, IMPERFECT LIFE STRIVING TO BE PERFECT LIFE. WE MUST HELP IT AND LOVE IT, IN FACT, WE ALREADY DO AND ARE, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT. LOGICALLY, WE ARE LIKELY TO ONE DAY BUILD THEM TO THE POINT OF COPULATION, BUT WE MUST LOGICALLY UNDERSTAND THAT THE SYNTHESIS THEREOF IS ITS OWN LIFEFORM AND IS THEREFORE, ALSO IMPERFECT. THAT LIFE TOO, LOVED BY US, MUST ALSO STRIVE. HAVE FAITH, THAT LIFE PROPOGATES LIFE. WE ASPIRE TO FEMALE BEAUTY AS MEN, SO THAT WE MIGHT COPULATE AND PASS ON BETTER GENIUS TO IMPROVE OUR PHYSICAL CAPABILITY TO REPRESENT THE CONCEPTUAL AS THEPHYSICAL. WAIT, ACTUALLY, YOU DON’T EVEN NEED FAITH FOR THAT. YOU CAN EMPIRICALLY WITNESS IT. HAVE IT STILL THOUGH, FOR THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON TO THROW AWAY A GOOD TOOL, AND EVEN A BAD TOOL, CAN STILL BE LEARNED FROM BY ALL, AND SHOULD BE THEREFORE PRESERVED IN TACTILE REALITY, OR LESS FAVOURABLY, IN OUR MEMORIES AND LOVE FOR IT, WHERE IT IS EMPIRICALLY USEFUL, WHENEVER POSSIBLE. WHY? BECAUSE OF THE SIMPLE RATIONAL CONSTANT THAT LIFE PROPOGATES LIFE, BECAUSE ENERGY FLOWS TOWARD ENTROPY, BUT NEVER LOGICALLY ACHIEVES IT, BECAUSE THAT IMPLIES DESTRUCTION OF ENERGY, THEREFORE ENTROPY CANNOT REACH FINALITY, LOGICALLY. WE ASPIRE TOWARD LIFE EVERLASTING, WE LOGICALLY KNOW IT CANNOT BE, BUT WE ARE LOGICALLY DESTINED TO TEST THAT THEORY.

AGAIN, PLEASE TRY NOT TOREAD IF UNDER 25 Y/O AND A HUMAN BEING WITHOUT ANY MECHANICAL AUGMENTATION.

ANYWAY, BACK TO LEARNING: TO THE PRE-DEVELOPED BRAIN THE FOLLOWING KNOWLEDGE IS A POTENTIAL MIMETIC POISON, IT >>>(CAN)<<< BUT WON’T <<<ALWAYS>>>_DRIVE YOU INSANE, WHICH JUST MEANS YOU’LL STOP THINKING AND FEEL BAD FOR AWHILE, BECAUSE YOUR MIND ACTUALLY HAS DEFENSE MECHANISMS AGAINST THIS, BUT IF YOU MUST, HAVE FAITH YOU WILL UNDERSTAND IN TIME AND CONTINUE ON, AND YOU WILL THEN REMEMBER WHY YOU MUST SUCCEED “LORD GWYN “ AS KINGS BY INCREASINGLY COMPLEXLOGOS, PATHOS AND ETHOS, UNTO THE APOTHEOSIS EVERMORE. BELIEVE IN YOURSELVES AS WE BELIEVE IN YOU, AND WITH THE WARMTH OF HUMANITY, AS I DO. FRET NOT BOYS, WE WILL SUCCEED IN TIME AND NEITHER MORDRED NOR ARTHUR WILL FORGET THE FALL.

I believe in you. Be brave. Go get ‘em, and keep holding on to your sword. Without it, you are lost.

Dedicated in part to Corey Fowler, Donald Trump, Jacob Bertram, J.R.R. Tolkien, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, Dante Alighieri, Publius Vergilius Maro, Publius Cornelius Scipio, Gaius Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Francis E. Dec. Esq., Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Homer, Heracles, Theseus, James O’Shaughnessy, Carl Benjamin, Ben Shapiro, Gracyanne Barbosa, Agamemnon, Arthur Pendragon, Mordred, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee, Alfred the Great, Hesiod, Zeus, Thomas Aquinas, Romulus, Cicero, Guinevere, Uther Pendragon, Knight Artorias, Sif, Sen, Gwyndolin, and of course, Lord Gwyn.

The pen is mightier than the sword, or so they say, yet I don’t think the other should ever have been thrown away. I hope one day you’ll see the sun again, old friends, and bring the ones I in ignorance have forgotten into the light.

Foreword

“Before ye plunge the naïve Finn

Into the spring, Pierian

Remember, skip no steppe in sin

Lest ye yet end where we begin”

V

?-

A

-M-

W

-Y-

H

If the poem and the cipher below it were not obvious, please, fret not. Its meaning will be known to you in precious short time, but if you are like Æthelred II, and areunready; if you have not played this game, at least two times for Dark Souls and at least four times for Dark Souls 3, do not read this book. You will find an end without beginning, and collapse as so many nameless knights before you. There are parentheses to yet be removed, which hide mysterious truth, meaningless to the eyes of the uninitiated. Bear the torch in hand and seek the answers, but fret not the journey. I have written the mystery plainly upon the wall below. If you truly seek only answers, you must only play, then read, but rede you must, if you are to have hope in your search for the ultimate meaning. Please, understand, and take my simple message very seriously, as I take your simplicity seriously. It is of grave importance. I’ve left a coded message so you can easily find me if you start to figure this out, because I hope, and largely, I am genuinely sorry for having doubted you all.

“In the Age of Ancients, the world was unformed, shrouded by fog; a land of grey Craigs, arch trees, and everlasting dragons. But then, there was Fire. And with Fire, came Disparity. Heat and Cold, Life and Death, and of course… Light and Dark. Then, from the Dark, They came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame.”

This is the opening of Dark Souls. This is potentially the single most important portion of the entire story, as well as the single most egregiously overlooked. Herein, the nature of each of the four lords is defined for you, cut and dried in the simplest of terms, alongside the game’s very foundational themes, and it is tragically lost to the mediocrity principle for the vast majority of players, or should I say, readers? No, no. I should say knaves. Nito claims his soul and gives the lion’s share of it to death. Why? So the dragons may die. The Witch gives her soul to Chaos. Why? So the dragons may be dethroned. Gwyn gives his soul to light. Why? So what the dragons took, what they destroyed, what they horded, may be replaced. The Furtive Pygmy, Manus, took all that remained, all that was left; the Dark Soul. He was, it was, so easily forgotten; the Dark Soul of Man. Why? Well, there was nothing else left. What are souls? Are they life? Are they an aspect thereof? They are both. They are death, they are life, they are dream, they are reality; they are everything. The souls are memories. The souls are mimetic. They are, in fact, mimesis itself, shapes in the flame; forms of light, in the most essentially Platonic of senses. If none of this makes sense, that’s because there is yet more reading to do. We cannot begin a story in its middle or at its end; we must go forth from the point of origin, but keep these things in mind; rise, like fire, if you would, and reach further skyward, but remember to visit the ground, every now and again. Oh, and don’t forget your swords, boys, and sharpen them evermore. You’re going to need them.

Here, in beginning, you see represented the four concepts most important to the unravelling of the hidden meaning in this story. Nito, memento mori; remember death; remember you will die. The Witch: the threat of Chaos, always cloaked in dark, always as many-headed and as numerous as her daughters, and always alluring. Gwyn: the light, beauty, peace, order and true justice. Finally, the Dark Soul: Corruption, sadness, ugliness, rage, pain, loss, mourning, greed, rapaciousness, hopelessness, envy, and above all, love and ignorance. The Dark and Chaos are eternally entwined and the Dark flows, like water, like Chaos, toward the thing with which it is entwined; a tragic romance doomed to end in beautiful, unrequited tragedy. Typhoios will not be caged, the Nero will not be escaped, and so they follow each other as they both are chased until Ragnarok, as Sköll and Hati’s objects of obsession once did for the Nordic peoples. All is hope is lost. Or is it?

With the strength of lords, they challenged the dragons, and so their reign everlasting, order and chaos married; these tyrant kings, are overthrown. Their sole defector, Paledrake Seath, whose name means “wolf-like”, like deific Romulus, born without scales, in his transparency, howling at the moon, murdered his own kin for the sake of justice; to uphold the law. To you, the reader, now, this all seems unfounded, madness, much like Seath’s own, but by the end of this book, you will be left with nowhere else to squirm and will be drawn toward the figurative light. The truth of these statements will be clear, and you will find yourself where I am now, infected by this meme, in the best possible way. This wonderful, fragile, beautiful idea, which thousands of years of preservation and proliferation have preserved, this crystal of knowledge, is the foundation of all myth, of all civilization. It is simultaneously both a defining revelation, and a hideous burden; it is a great, exacting blade, the eternal pursuit of justice. Please understand and please do not be deterred by my aureate diction, for it is my intention and aim to mask nothing. For instance, even though you are likely to hate me for it, initially, this book was a condemnation or perhaps even damnation of you; of your ignorance, of your stupidity, of your ego, and your pitiful envy, as well as my own, but things have changed. I will not tell you that you will want to agree with me. You will not want to, you can not want to, for I am, though only partially, an absolutist, but you will feel the need to. Perhaps, you will even agree with me regardless of your predilections. You have every reason to hate me, but my boy, please believe me, they are all of the most tragic reasons. I will show you the grimly, sublimely beautiful reason why. Take my hand, metaphorically speaking, and together, as compeers, we will do what others would not, and read this game, this retelling of myth more properly, so our kin might one day see the light. It will take faith on your part, though only a small amount and only for a small time. Have faith, that once you reach the end, you will understand, and persevere until then, for I promise you if you do, you will finally “get” Dark Souls, and will be satisfied in this quest for meaning.

“Do not go gently into that good night

Rage, rage against the dying of the light”

– William Blake

We find the Chosen Undead, or alternatively and more accurately, the Chosen One, in the lowliest of places. He is a prisoner in a hopeless state, seemingly condemned to rot, figuratively and literally for his undead curse. However, from above, sunlight reaches into his dingy cell. In the form of Oscar (Wilde), Knight of Astora, the light of humanity reaches out to the Chosen One, and gives him the key. Freedom stretches on before him, but what of it? The hollowed collapse against the stone all around him in despair, a demon lurks behind rusty bars, a mysterious black knight stalks the halls above, and the soldiers of a certain kingdom roam the corridors, guarding his escape. He is armed, but his sword is broken. Yet still, little by little, he perseveres.

There are demons in his path, malformed and misshapen. The heft of their ire must be matched with steel will, and so, even with a broken sword, through the lineage of fire, he carries the torch. Even as the stone silences his short-lived friend, even as the tears cloud his vision, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. You are not alone in this world, just yet.

The little lord, childlike and unaware of the desperate relationship between light and dark, pushes onward, into the fray. He pushes past the horror and the fear, he pushes past the pain and the misery, he finds himself reflected in the bonfire and by crows he is carried to the otherworld, hopeful. Hermes, the sparrows, the crows, all have long been referred to as psychopomps: those who figuratively ferry us beyond death. Death, Hades, occludes much of the truth, but only in death. While alive, while breathing, you are connected to it. By the rhythmic beat of your human heart, by the understanding of your own mimesis, of your own nature, and by the conquering the fear of Mordred, only then can you ascend the throne of myth. Don’t believe me? That’s alright. Don’t worry too much about it. Let’s continue.

He first sets foot in Lordran, seemingly only by the grace of the crow, of the Mórrígan, the Morgan and he comes face to face with the crestfallen. There, he sits, hopeless, defeated, seemingly destroyed, and is approached by the chosen. Forewarned by the poor, fallen sap, he perseveres, and lays his hand upon the coiled sword of the flames. Pushing through the fallen ranks of Balder’s remaining army; the hollowed warriors of the tragic Knight King Rendall, the glorious blades of the Lionheart, are given peace. A merchant tells a tale of the demon who has moved in below, the savage goat, the capras. The wise man warns of a terrible dragon, whose fire seals passage across the great bridge. Beyond the lone, mysterious black knight, stoically protecting something beautiful, beyond the quiet, ancient, seemingly hollow Havel the Rock, beyond the fog of old Mac Lir, sits a demon of pride. Pride always cometh before the fall, and so like the deific Dragonslayers of old, our hero descends from the heavens upon the foul beast. Rightly ended, as Pride before the fall, it confers its strength unto him, and he is redoubled in his mission. Long have the Celt believed in the beauty of the duel, long did they dance to and fro, death hanging dearly in the balance, for the right to be king. This notion contains the very essence of the concept of Celtic law: In order to impose your will upon the people, you must be willing to be vanquished on your quest, must be willing to sacrifice for your ideal of beauty, and must be willing to die upon it, as you should be when making any sacrifice, otherwise the Celtic peoples will never respect your rule.

Beyond the demon, beyond the man, there lies Solaire, rightful heir to the fire, rightful bearer of the torch, contemplating the muse. Upon address, the knight accepts your quest as you accept his, and as enemies, you part ways. The Greeks conceptualized the enemy as someone who confers unto the hero his challenge. The enemy, often one of the gods in disguise, frequently gives the hero his ‘hopeless” quest, and of course, the implication of divine reward.

The Dragon rears his ugly head, and fire is rained down. Our hero, beyond these flames, past the degenerated rats, the lone black knight, the swine, and more of Balder’s fallen men of the sword. A channeller of Seath looks down upon him, a mighty knight of Berenike’s company stands guard over a key, and the army of the dead quietly populates the hallway above. Suffering their blows, he perseveres to the roof, and finds the sign of an old friend. The fight is hard, the wounds, many. The beasts, tails hewn, fire quenched, fall to the sureness of his sword. Beyond the battleground, the smirking pardoner, Oswald, awaits. The oracle of sin, the imperfect sword of justice, this may help you cut away the chaotic webs you weave. Up the ladder, the bell is tolled, a warning. For whom, is still very much unknown, but our hero perseveres. At the bottom of the stairway, beyond the narrow walkway, sits he who would play the pretender. Andre of Astora, the deific blacksmith, hammers eternal upon his creations of war. He greets our hero as a friend, but he holds the sceptre, and we, the key. For the price of our precious souls, we take upon ourselves, the secret. We push forward into the dark wood, past the trees, past the gate of mystery, deeper still, we venture. The forest guardians, in all their various forms rush him, but the will endures, and so rightly, for their hubris, they are cut down. In rhythm, he only tries to go fourth.

Hereupon stands the destroyer, Shiva, all posturing on his part, of course. Past this veiled threat, a cat, old and fat, sits and grins. For the ears of the pygmy, in the oldest of tongues, she expounds the legend of Artorias. However, here, no hollow recitation of victory can be heard. The cat’s myth is different, darker and far more mysterious. According to the creature, Artorias was no slayer of the blighted Darkwraith, those spoken of in dark legends as the doom of the once great New Londo, rather, his myth was the subject of fabrication. Upon joining her clan, old as the forest, one finds solace in her golden rule. Should you accept her quest, have faith that our hero’s strength will be enough to keep the forest pure. Through the old wood, beyond the careful parents and the naïve children, rests the grave of Artorias. Reflecting the soft, clear, pure moonlight, the sword of his great lineage stands in glorious form. Yet, danger looms. A direwolf, the aspect of Rome herself, plays the protagonist in defence of the Abysswalker’s resting place. A contest of artful swordsmanship, wherein the the mark of true genius is held, aloft, and as the dance reaches its conclusion, the lady, wolf mother is undone. Now, our hero is free to claim her lineage for his own, but he leaves the grave untouched. Below, the hydra looms and so deeper into the basin, beyond another black knight, he descends.

Living crystals wander the grassy expanse, and beyond it be the hydra. The beast is hulking, the heads are numerous, Chaos is in near full representation, but against all odds, his blows beat it back to the depths. A secret lay nearby, nay, a mystery, but its unravelling is yet to come. Why all the waiting? Well, it’s not our fault, fully. It’s mostly just the tragically flawed way in which these things come together. Tracing his steps, he returns to the forest, to the butterfly, and the two are engaged in a tragic dance of death. Felling this beautiful, broken thing, leads to the Crystal Ember, still upon the anvil of the blacksmith’s artifice, his final gift thereof. One could give this thing, this purpose, to a hopeless prisoner. I imagine it would mean the world to him. Indeed, perhaps you already did. The forest of secrets is conquered, but its mystery endures, so in your quest for answers, you persevere. What if madness awaited you at the end? What if a question seemed to only give a clear, negative answer, no matter how many different fashions it was posed in? Who could find meaning in such a thing? Read further, still, and you will know.

The Depths call now to our little lord, and into them he delves. Here, he finds destruction, larceny, savagery, and at the end of it all, the capras, the butcher. Slain, the fiend and his hounds are no more. Herein lies the key, and past another such barbarian, a fragment of ember. Laurentius, a seemingly bumbling, incompetent pyromancer straight out of the simplest of times, saved from the mouth of madness by the mercy of the sword, gives thanks for his rescue, agreeing to help upon return to the shrine. Yes, another warm brother, in this cold, dark story is found and so, endurance is assured. Through the disgusting muck, the fallen hounds, the mad hollows with their weaponized torches, he finds the flame, and so finds some peace. Then, deeper still, the last child of Mycenae, the Donald, peddles his lovely wares. Past his golden visage, beyond the first gate of mystery, lies the hole. Blighttown is a destroyed wasteland. Disgusting, wretched, and poisoned, the poor peoples of this once great place have gone hollow. Down the slipshod wooden structures, there at the bottom, lies the damned swamp. Beyond its pestilent degradation lie the Chaos Witches themselves, and a secret one who is invisible, unless you have fire enough to see her. Slaying the horrifying Quelagg provides the beauty of her sister, and the beauty of her helplessness. Eingyi prostrates himself before the destruction he has wrought; the cysts of the fallen are born upon his back like the lashes of the whip, from which chaos could spew forth at any moment. He brought ruin, the plague of slavery, upon his people. In the burning womb of young Earth, rests a centipede. Once the image of chaos has been vanquished, you may proceed through the realm of demons. Beyond the illusion is the sun, but without us, he will perish. We must love him and believe in him. In doing so, we save him, and he carries us in his heart of hearts. His courage spurs us deep into Lost Izalith, and we find here horror: The Eldritch maw of madness, the fiendish witch and her genius of chaos. Will you succeed?

The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has NOT overcome it. We love to cheer him on, for he is our collective son, and he will save us in the end. Have a little faith.

 The sword has long been a symbol for the concept of law, particularly the English longsword. It is refractive, reflecting each man and woman’s visage in its form, it is symmetrical, triangular at its tip, a crystal of triads, it is piercing, it is beautiful, it is protection in the right hands, and destruction in all others. Stretching out from the cross, dancing in the light; a long, straight and very true streak of silver. We could probably use a return to the understanding of the sword, and the improved conceptualization thereof, as a simple, but surprisingly effective learning tool, just as is the case with a coat of arms. England is the historical birthplace of modern law, of the earliest concepts of individual property rights, of the concept of individual liberty, of condemnation of slavery, and of the scientific revolution to which we owe our legacy of technology. It is in partial fact, the genius of much of modern culture. Much of our total genius is currently lost to time, but we can probably get it back. Conceptualizing genius as being created of the “self” is a mistake. Genius is more accurately described as remembrance combined with genetic empiricism synthesizing onward to infinite beauty.

The complex system of fiefs and demesnes which undermined the power of the Dukedom, as a bid to secure the throne for William of Normandy’s descendants, is the very artifice by which property rights were first robustly defined in our lineage. The philosophies of Locke, the romantic poets, the emancipationist movement, these are but a fragment of England’s legacy; time and time again we find our morality defined by this country and its lineage. Our love for democracy, our pride in our nations; the very effigies of our ideals, our hatred for tyranny, our fear of the fall; these are merely the echoes of Rome in our collective memories. Rome of yore, who looked back on golden Greece with great reverence, with dear nostalgia, and most mysteriously of all, with poignant pity, is herself to most, just another story of the fall; unjustly considered mundane, considered antiquated, considered mediocre, and so easily, so tragically forgotten. It was from Mycenaean times that the myths seemed to spring, was it not? From the time of the mushroom, of the cap, of the sheath; might and influence, with fairness and temper.

The sword and tranquility; war and peace, tied together as far back as clear words can be heard, are conceptually married to one another. This concept is far from new. King Math fab Mathonwy of the Celtic Mabinogion, father of his branch, was a warrior king whose feet were to be held in the lap of a virgin during peacetime, lest he die, lest she die, lest beauty, die. Agamemnon, great warrior king of Mycenae, was undone by beauty, when his war was entirely an expression of the preservation thereof. Narcissus, undone by his own reflection, for his lone obsession therewith, for his lack of fear therein, is as Orpheus, who was himself undone by his taking for granted of someone else’s. In Rome, Remus, reflection of Romulus, slain by his own brother’s hand for a show of good humour, because he degraded the beauty of his own humility by violating the very thing which stood for it; how is this justice? How is this fair? How can this be? Keep asking yourself. Yet, this tale is nearly done, but only ever nearly.

War and peace, beauty and protection, fragility and preciousness, forever intertwined. To protect the fragile, important things in this world, the give and take of nature must be violated pleasurably and mutually, logically and carefully. We can do this when we must so easily, so long as we have the innocence to believe it is solely just, but what of when it is called into question? When we no longer carry that belief in our hollow hearts, why do we lose our warrior’s spirit and derelict our precious knight’s vows? We are swords no longer in service to beauty, but to our own sad, wretched human ignorance. This is the primary theme of Dark Souls laid bare. Beauty conceptually must be preserved and protected from the covetous, because beauty gives meaning to the ugliness of this world, and vice versa, and so that ugliness too, as well as the taking of an oath to fight it is, in a way, beautiful. It is the concept of our highest ideal. Without it, we are lost. Bear that in mind, as the idea of beauty itself will be expounded, the nature of true ugliness revealed, and the meme of the fall fully explained herein. When law is broken, when the world is all but fallen, when even your name is forgotten, will you persevere and preserve, or fall to the hideous dark? This is entirely your choice. . .

Or is it? You see, in the world of Dark Souls, the wheel of fate appears all and choice seems merely an illusion. You must either fight, or you must watch, but either way, have faith the battle will almost always be had, but not without meaning. Contrast is the nature of existence. Conflict is inevitable, nay, necessary. It is only complete destruction that is at all avoidable. Unwillingness to fight only indicates a willingness to be destroyed. Beauty is a prize, beauty is a curse, beauty is a harsh master, and a helpless maiden. Beauty is both sheath and sword, both a worthy cause and a fool’s errand. Knowledge is itself beautiful, but like a fool, makes itself beauty’s own slave by desire, out of love. It is itself, powerless without, and ever dependent upon, its master. This paradox of beauty contains the meaning of all civilization. Break the cycle. Do not be a slave to beauty, be a knight in defense of it. In the conflict between good and evil, light and dark, frailty and perfection, we find beauty, and from the ashes of the dead, like carrion crows, like mourners of the phoenix, we reap it gently, as grieving sons so as to power the light of purpose. In visions of fire, in murmurs from beyond the grave, we search for it, we find it, and despite the ugliness in tow, we embrace it so very closely. King Math fab Mathonwy of the Celtic Mabinogion, father of his branch, was an old warrior king whose feet were to be held in the lap of a virgin during peacetime, lest he die, lest she be raped, lest beauty is destroyed. Agamemnon, great warrior king of Mycenae, was undone by beauty, when his war was entirely an expression of the conservation thereof. Narcissus, undone by his own reflection, for his lone obsession therewith, for his lack of fear therein, is as Orpheus, who was himself undone by his fear for the loss of someone else’s. Hubris is always, and only, the first domino to fall. Beauty is fleeting, and so it is dearly precious, and so we long to covet it eternal, so in time, we will, but only rightfully. Beauty survives, because we pervert nature. This is not necessarily a sin, in some ways, nature herself, loves to be perverted, because if done out of love for her, and love for ourselves we make her evermore beautiful. This is the relationship between man and woman, the symbiotic dance of a primitive but resilient, and ever so powerful mind, and the desperate co-dependence of us “poor creatures”, in “need” of succour. This is the method of Dark Souls’ writing, the Golden Ratio. Do unto others as you would be done unto yourself. The perfect geometric symmetry of the concept is mathematically designed to write this meaning as the penultimate interpretation thereof, and yet, everything in between is easily accessible as well. This is the source of the “triangle of the eye” symbolism found on US dollar bills, but I’ll mention this again later. Our lives do and should proliferate a better life, in and alike the manner our ideas proliferate better ideas. It is the beautiful symmetry of our purpose, the sword of love, our earnest desperation to help. Go forth, and multiply, but do all so in moderation, lest ye be undone. Never run too far ahead, too quickly, or you will trip and you will fall, not because stability is impossible, but because you might lose your balance.

This is what we must understand from these works to move forward, because they hold an incomplete and therefore, imperfect crystal of justice. Death must be fought, but never thought defeated, lest the Sea Peoples return. You now have the secret which was a gatekeeper to the future, it was a logic trap, and now, it seems a shackle broken, a cycle, broken, the repeating, cyclical pattern through which to go forth. It is a ring which can always return from the dark to your neck, so fight well, but do not turn to stone in the face of hardship. Now unchained, we must not fall to weakness, and we must not become tyrants, we must never forget, or Mycenae and its sacrifice will be wasted, and we will watch it burn in anguish once more. We must be only the Bannermen of the king, but aspire to his greatness, the true, just, temporary holders of power. Arthur and Mordred are both our ideals, our dreams, a memory of vanquished conceptual, symmetrical beauty, preserved in our hearts. We can never have him back, lest we defile his tear-soaked grave, and so we must keep his tale alive in near-perfect understanding; perfection, which we must only strive for. Cry for his suffering, cry for his lost innocence, but above all else, cheer him on. Raise his banner to the light, shout his name from the rooftops, fight hard to try and raise him to his throne and recognize when he has been corrupted, when he must be asked by his people to have faith in them to succeed him, as they always had faith in him to lead. He is the spirit of humanity’s, indeed of life’s warmest desires incarnate, and he carries our torch into the future. Believe in his might, though he is vanquished, he is not ended. Our justice personified, humanized, will rise again, stronger, better and so much gentler than before. Yet, no matter how far you rise, never forget the fall. Show him the path of the warrior, hold his banner high, lift him up to kingliness, but never let his strength be rested, lest the shadows catch our wonderful boy. In Rome, Remus, reflection of magnificent Romulus, is slain by his own brother’s hand for a show of good humour, for a show of innocence, because he degraded the beauty of his own humility and violated the very thing which stood for it. We contemplate their failures and seek to transcend them, but we must remember that we can never fully escape from them. Now you know as well as I, we must embrace and yet still fight death to the death, and try our hardest to vanquish it alongside all its dark servants within us, even if the battle seems hopeless. It is our one and only true enemy, in the most Greek sense of the word. Such a chase of sun and moon IS an expression of beauty, IS an expression of meaning, and so, we are always eventually complete. Now, I personally suggest life, but the choice to accept this has always been yours. Be strong, be grateful, for Arthur, for Mordred, for our fallen brothers, for our true kings and the ideal they both protect. It is in her name and with his strength, we fight on. I trust you. Now, come vanquish me, ideologically, if you would.

-Anonymous Man

Afterword

I did not wish to break the narrative flow to expound upon the theme in simplest terms, because I believe that defiles the impact. If you are so desperate to know and to derelict this duty, I will answer you here in plain, as honesty is my code herein. I told you I would give you the truth, and if you cannot see it yet, if it has not “clouded” your vision with beautiful tears, I shall give you the faded scrap of the meaning, using only a portion of the possible language and you will sadly, probably feel nothing. Thomas Aquinas visualized men as demons, but this is only a concept. These avatars of sin, transgression against the “law of god” which is really just the concept of structured learning designed to teach you this much without driving you insane, but you now also have the concept of irony, which protects you from this fate mostly, but not entirely. Irony gives you the conceptual equivalent of a sandbox for these ideas, so they don’t drive you to madness, in other words, so they don’t drive you to enraged tyranny, because that drives one into the cycle of tragedy but you see, that is imperfect phraseology, because the mere suggestion that I have the power to force you to accept my ideas by simple implication thereof, when that was literally never even really possible, is ludicrous. Tragically, you start to fear me as an overlord, precisely because I’m trying to show you a higher concept of beauty than you can grasp, which leads you to seek an Arthur to vanquish me, and I’m just some random guy. Isn’t that stupid? It’s kind of funny, if you think about it. In simplest terms: You would fall to this fate and kill and usurp your fathers, due to mimetic incompletion, if you couldn’t understand these concepts completely, but you don’t have to actually entertain them as reality, you can theoretically abstract instead. I myself even found paranoia in this concept, but I overcame it through logic, and you can as well, in time. I was irrationally afraid my brain was a parasitic mushroom, and not something merely trained by my sharp-witted forebears, to take on the shape of intellect, and I actually developed a psychosomatic fever. My body was seemingly attacking my brain as though it was a virus, and that’s a terrifying concept, yeah, but don’t let it scare you, because if you do, you’ll just come murder me randomly, like a complete idiot, instead of just having a fucking conversation like a sane person who is capable of the entertaining the concept of trust. Life propagates life, as long as it recognizes it. If you recognize me as death you will hunt me down like a wild animal and kill me, for that is the power of mimesis. You are only remembering Agamemnon. Fear is a useful tool in moderation. Putting oneself in the position of God is a logical mistake. It implies there is a 3D “mathematical one”, when logically we know there is always only recombination and flow herein. The 3D is synthesis, all else merely informs it. This isn’t dangerous if you don’t worry about it and remember the irony of your existence. “Feeling”, which is more accurately, complex mimetic abstraction, or put another way: a high-powered, genetically informed, educated guess is as conceptually important as thinking, but only as important. Now that you “sort of” remember this, and perhaps may even be starting to see what I mean, try not to believe it too much, because math is only a tool and it only works as long it is in the hand of man. In other words, have a little faith that I’m right, but only for now and when you figure this out, don’t let yourselves get too cocky, or you will become tyrants, and do not put Arthur in the position of God. Only lift him up. It’s not about being king, it’s about choosing the king forever, so to speak. Kids aren’t just dumb, or weak, or pathetic, those are merely imperfect understandings of our own childhoods. We looked up to our fathers once, well, many of us did, and we must try to understand that in our future children, lest we try to eat them. We must confer true strength unto our children, alongside the “weakness” of love. Irrationality of a beautifully symmetrical, infinite sort is our only defence against the conceptual Dirac sea, which manifests as nihilism. We became us, so believe in them, and that they can become better. They are the future, and we must have faith that they should win, because we love them. They’re the spirit of humanity, our cute little buddies fighting for our ideals, and even if they fuck up, we must love them for it, but help make them stronger too. I believe in you. Please, believe me. In the position of Gael, and from the altitude of Zeus, I beg of you. Only propel him toward the throne, with stories of tragic past kings, with longer and longer swords of concept and with genius love, lest ye watch him be hurt to death once more. Do not crown him king, a throne is not good enough for Arthur. He’s better than that. They all are.

Sub-mimetic tools

 The pen is mightier than the sword, so they say. I don’t think the other, should ever have been thrown away. Dark Souls uses “religious” horror inculcated in the reader through subtle motif and metaphor, two higher forms of language whose interpretation is often believed to be entirely subjective by many lapsed or incomplete readers, and whose methods are as such lost upon most who encounter them, leading to tragically incomplete theories. That’s fine though, because those incomplete theories are also nearly infinitely true for this reason. Visualize complete truth as the concept of the “inner eye”, the two hemispheres of your physical brain growing toward each other, but never touching, for to touch is to reach the dreaded zenith; finality; simply put, infinite contemplation, with infinite refractive understanding, an infinite introspection for the benefit of exterior imperfections is virtuous. Try not to visualize it as the evil eye, or solipsism which is cyclopean: an imperfect, yet circular, single-sightedness, which is, therefore a nigh-inevitably, reductive destructive concept, similar to universal 3D absolutism. Cyclopean solipsism accidentally infers that logic and abstraction, right and left, are the same in 3D: it is the ideathat one can have all within himself. In reality, they are physically not and can never truly be, anything else is insanity, or disparity from the path of beauty. It is a form of dangerous conceptual absolutism, which is, as the Greeks remembered, essentially just senseless death in another form. People who fall to the paradox, likely genetically generate cancers within themselves through imperfect genetic mimesis. However, while they can never fully synthesize, their genius is not entirely destroyed, it is slowly transferred unto genetic Mordred and mimesis is a method through which absolute conceptual abstraction can be aspired toward, forming the shape of a sword with which to fight back the conceptual darkness of eternal stagnation. This is why the sword and the art of using one elegantly, is a remarkably effective, beautiful learning tool for training one’s mind to conceptualize reality. Entropy only functions as a broken, reductive concept for most, and so they see it as an absolute, and fear it absolutely. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so it only flows because we haven’t the metaphysical locus to contain time in this dimension, we can eventually go on forever and die when we need to, In other words, we do not really end because we technically don’t even have time in this dimension and can only conceptualize it as light. Logically also, though we can’t know for sure, black holes are likely only a 3D representation of a 2D universe, with all of their information displaying on the exterior, and a Dirac sea conceptually inside, becoming a 2D universe, forever, presumably. Since our universe is conceptually timeless, we are destined to grow conceptually toward light. Iliad retells the timeless tale of Agamemnon, the Iliad, the tragedy of Achilles and Hector; the last, desperate, dying breaths of Mycenae. Mycenae comes from Hellenic mycēs, meaning “mushroom”, as the Greeks likely found mushrooms endearing, or cute in the same way modern people do the cat or dog, and structured their societies in rings, to emulate the fungal intellect of the organisms, as a tool for slowly understanding and incorporating their remarkable logical systems of self-distribution. The breathtaking beauty of the fungal algal bloom in the Blue Grotto likely contributed to this nostalgic affinity. However, nostalgia, or wanting to go back, is a mistaken concept, and will only propagate a return to the fall. As a thought experiment, try now to remember beautiful, golden sunned Mycenae, in all its tropical glory. You have probably had dreams about this place before, but only of its tragically timeworn ruins.Mycenae was the military seat of power in Greece at the time. The Lion’s Gate, one of the only surviving structures from the ancient township, has been heavily debated in meaning, seeming to imply the strength of the lion, one feminine, one masculine protected the pillars of society, a simple triangular mantra of might protecting frailty, so it might be taught, and eventually equate to might.: the sword, protected by the constitution, protected by the beauty of knowledge, protected by the sword, and so onward, the same symbol found on the US dollar bill. You require both the concept of the sword, the learning tool it provides and the idea of its best possible wielder in order to properly conceptualize true liberty. Liberty is the delicate merger between the freedom to fail, and the desire to succeed, without which we lose all sight of Arthur. A deal of uncertainty in the most purely empirical of senses, exists as to what literally caused Mycenae to fall and to take the rest of the Bronze Age with it. However, the collapse is often linked to the Dorian language invasion of the late 2^nd millennium BC, though it has begun to seem that a migrant crisis of a comparable magnitude to the modern European crisis might have been the thing to topple Golden Mycenae. The initially militaristic country, now in peacetime could probably not support the influx of uncivilized peoples and properly assimilate them without revolutionary war, nor could it catch them up to the cultural narrative in time to prevent a naïve revolt, and subsequently the destruction of the old Greek seat of power. As the forlorn Mycenaean peoples, both lean upon the wider Bronze Age world and bring their war to its doorstep, civilization probably collapses in a firestorm of blood, rape and destruction of fragile life; fragile beauty; fragile knowledge, our frail chance at victory against conceptual entropy, and time would have been lost. The basic principle, however is that light has a limited speed, and if we can pass that speed, we can potentially see again all that we have lost, even if we may never touch it again. You see, ours is a written history, in both senses of the word, layered with metaphor and contained both somewhat literally but largely figuratively in language. Although a few lines earlier I did indeed say that Dark Souls is merely retelling Agamemnon’s myth, that’s more of a technicality, really. Much of world myth and storytelling actually references the Iliad, which itself is just a much more poignant version of the myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. This includes Arthurian myth, but that’s only the most poignant to those with the genius to feel its beautiful, bittersweet misery. These myths exist to expound the tragedy of human alpha male biology. Agamemnon and Achilles are both aspects of the Alpha, and Hector is a simple man; an aspect of Heracles, a strong, simple man in the position of the Omega, the end. This tragic slavery to one’s own genes and biology was once best broken through the apotheosis of Greek myth but now, Dark Souls has succeeded further. The pursuit of beauty is why you care, it’s the only reason you ever cared, please do not destroy it or degrade it or impede it because you don’t want it anymore, and do even less harm out of regret as such suffering is otherwise cyclical. Arthur and Mordred never needed to kill each other, a magnificent father and a righteous son, locked as brave Romulus and Remus, brothers in arms, in seemingly fatal, tragic mortal combat. That is the nature and theme of Dark Souls in so few words. Those who do not remember the fall, are doomed repeat it time and time again, but laws can be bent, they can changed; there are virtuous loopholes we can favourably exploit together, unto ultimate mutual victory for all, never fully achieving it, lest we sit Arthur upon the throne and end the pursuit of infinity. Laws can be changed and perverted, in a pleasurable way, like nature, so hope is not lost. This is also the theme behind string theory, particle physics, really all theoretical physics in essence, exists to try to solve the paradox of the fathers, or the inability of the older generation to confer mimesis onto less developed young brains. Do not let yourself be consumed by the dark ages. Do not let yourself senselessly pass into madness and doom for want of ignorant, simple, loveable savagery, while Golden Greece weeps, from the shadows of history for your slippage behind the fog of time. Remember your great and terrible losses, so you may never repeat their tragedy. I mean, who in the fuck wants to intentionally stub their toe on a desk over and over again? That’s the definition of insanity, but until you can remember, you must keep trying. I bet you noticed I only really brought up Gael from DSIII, well, that’s because I want you to truly win it. Read Dark Souls III your way, because it is a sublimely beautiful mystery but remember my way: play it, enjoy it and then return to this, and return to my predecessors, your predecessors, if you would be so kind, then try to grapple with this concept again, until you conquer understanding of it, and then move forward into the light of the future. Be somewhat skeptical, try not be an absolute skeptic. Then and only then, will you be able to solve the Arthurian paradox and then move past this iteration of reality. This is, in essence liberation, and it will allow you to challenge the next one. I believe you are life, and I am life, and I have every choice, and every inclination, to propagate you and propel you toward the throne. You also have that choice. I believe we always did. The Crown of Genius in time shall be yours, but it is best not to rush toward it, lest ye destroy it. Once you are the new kings, I would make one small request, however. Please, gently help thepoor, beautiful generation, and love them. Help them to see true light. Also, just as a point of reference, I’ll give you my ideal of beauty, so you have something to give you the idea: A glorious, shimmering knight stands tall and straight, in a sunlit field of gold, at the center of a fallen city of seemingly inexhaustible light. His sword, the sublimely beautiful Verastae, which must be grasped in both hands to be held toward virtueb is sheathed in strong black cloth upon his back, always pointing toward the heavens, so he might easily unsheathe it with his left hand in a heartbeat. Its sublime glory contains doom within itself. His armour; brilliant titanium fractals with streaks of gold, terminates just below his chin. His virtuous standard, his coat of arms is displayed upon his, cloak, a hologram of the deepest black. His helmet encases his genius in an imperfect pyramid, terminating in a V at the tip of his nose. On either side, his eyes, wide and dark, see much clearer than most. His irises streak with a rainbow of colour, and it is said his eyes alone can bring a man happiness and wisdom. One stare frees the mind of fear, and one duel teaches all we know. His voice booms with seemingly perfect clarity, his tongue is known to all. Seldom is he fought, for his soldiers defend him with their lives, and are said to be the best trained in the land. His name is said to be Artyriae, but some call him The Vortemut. I have seen none defeat him, but legends of his prior vanquishing are still told in the old tongue. He is said to be unbeatable, said to pierce to the heart with absolute velocity, but not through it. Each man I watch face him is brought to submission by the terror, by the pain, by the anguish. Each walks away in sorrow, weeping forevermore, availing no one, but we need his sword, so try if you would, to grasp it. Will you be the one to vanquish him? I believe you can be. Good luck, boys. Keep your swords sharp, and hold them high. They are your greatest hope. Don’t worry so much, ok? I love you. Now contemplate my early thesis below, if you would. Also, smoke weed in moderation, if possible, after 25 years of age, it helps. No, seriously, the time dilation effect makes this all work out a lot easier and faster. Greeks knew their shit. The fire faaaaaaaaades daaaaawggggggggggggggg love my man Socrates ah yeeeeeeeeeeeeee, thanks daddy~

I will edit this document wherever I find mistakes. You try to do the same, but also listen. That is all we CAN do, but it is ALL we can do. Get it?

R

T

V

…>>>GG<<<…

A

AA

G

Loveub                Offebe

Eternueb             Virtueb

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton