#on one hand it sometimes feels bioessentialist in its presentation but i can’t help but wonder if its trying to comment on

[butchladymaria]

It's definitely a topic that gets even more tangled up with bloodbornes overall themes of femininity and motherhood, explored further if you've seen the Viscerally Feminine video on youtube. It's entirely possible that the Great Ones even *do* align with femininity, but in a way that's kind of twisted. (Great Ones, surrogates, blah blah blah, parentage isn't necessarily related to gender but bb seems to have Stuff Going On) (I am very tired fkshsjsh)

i have watched that video, i thought it was amazing!!! bloodborne has such insanely complex commentary on womanhood. i genuinely think the themes of womanhood, menstruation, childbirth, and the visceral transformation of the flesh are crucial to why it’s been such an enduringly frightening classic.

my take on the great ones and womanhood has always been that it’s something humans assigned to them. they saw a Thing which had a child (kos) and designated her a “mother” because to them, mothers are the ones who bear children. they saw a Thing guarding a baby that didn’t belong to it and named her “wetnurse” because in their minds, women are the nurses of babies. equally, in Oedon they saw a Thing which was capable of impregnating people against their will and decided it was a “he”, because in their minds, men are the ones who sire children in others.

i’ve always loved this reading, because it is very catholic of the church to look at things they don’t understand and try to forcibly assimilate them into existing hierarchies instead of understand them without. like, in my mind, oedon isn’t really a “he”, oedon acts a lot more like a parasite does in nature by forcing other animals to take care of its offspring. kos may not have been a mother at all — male seahorses are the ones who carry children after all. my point in saying all this is that nature is messy, and the great ones are flesh just as any other part of nature might be — but the church has tried to force the great ones into their tidy little boxes of gender binary in order to reinforce the hierarchy which lends them their power.

all that to say — i agree that the great ones do align with femininity in a “twisted” way, and the above is my thoughts on why that might be!

as for women being more “in tune” with the great ones — it’s fascinating for sure! i’ve always thought that the blood saints did require some sort of treatment by the church to gain that property — possibly by having the blood of the great ones imbued into them directly? — but it’s nebulous at best what the process of “grooming” a blood saint looks like. of course, we also have arianna and annalise — but as probable descendants of the pthumerians, it may be that connection which grants them “kinship” of sorts with the great ones, and since they’re the only survivors of cainhurst… well, it’s not as though we’ve got much of a sample size. regardless, however, the fact of the matter is that many women we meet over the course of bloodborne are closely tied to the great ones (adella, adeline, arianna, annalise, fauxsefka, rom, etc…) i truly do wonder if the game overall was drawing on the idea of the “monstrous feminine” by having human women and great ones connected the way they are?

i love this game because there’s so many fascinating readings you can come away with!!! all of this is totally just ad-libbed, i hope it makes sense! and thank you so much for your thoughts!!!

#percy theoryposting :) #i guess lol #bloodborne #ask #its hard as well with bloodborne #with the elephant in the room of ‘trans people exist!’ #and im of two minds about it #on one hand it sometimes feels bioessentialist in its presentation but i can’t help but wonder if its trying to comment on #rigid gender hierarchy and gender binary #like what was the point of all the reproduction based horror. what was the point it was trying to make #i dont really know #but in somewhat unrelated news i DO think Alien was So Right for the chestburster happening to men too #reproductive horror at its FINEST baybee