The Rock Now Has A Trail Cam

Vanilla and Caramel Frappuccino with extra caramel drizzle …

Let them revel as babes <3

I'll forever be in love with Mother Kos as a character but recently I've specifically been thinking about her design, she's my favourite great one design along with Ebrietas.

First of all I adore the choice to have a great one so heavily connected to the sea. The visual horror of other great one designs usually hinges on how alien, convoluted and incomprehensible their biology is, but Kos' streamlined fish-like body more so communicates nativity to this world and its seas. Kos feels more like a folklore sea deity than a cosmic god and I think that's what makes her particularly creepy for me. The cosmos is inaccessible and unexplored, it's not difficult to imagine it as the domain of a higher power. But the sea, though not fully tamed, is at least familiar - we can traverse it, we can utilise it, we can study it and its creatures. That's why the sea being home to both the mundane AND the divine subverts expectations, it makes you question how much you truly know about the world you consider familiar. To realise there's a world of eldritch monsters out there so large, so foreign, so indifferent and so much more important than you is unnerving - to realise that world has been sleeping right beyond your shores is terrifying.

I also think it's brilliant for kos to be both the folklore sea deity and the cosmic god considering Bloodborne's exploration of humanity's scientific hubris and going against nature. There's irony to be found in Byrgenwerth running from humanity's beastly idiocy and breaking their backs chasing ascension, only to find their glorified blueprint of godhood is basically a fish. A creature as animalistic and in-tune with nature as they come. I think Kos' design fuels the discussion regarding the role that nature, especially aquatic nature, plays in Bloodborne's eldritch divinity. There's a reason Rom resides at the bottom of a lake, there's a reason why 9 different lake/sea runes exist, there's a reason the patients of the research hall mumble about the sound of water and there's a reason our hunter turns into a squid. When looking for the eldritch truth, I think we should be looking to the sea just as much as we are looking to the sky.

Themes aside I also think Mother Kos is just beautiful! Or at least I imagine she was when she was alive. As i mentioned other great one designs tend to lean into an uncomfortable cosmic mess, like the Moon Presence's exposed ribcage and mess of tentacle-hair or Ebrietas' face-tubes and weird eye filled mouth. I hold those designs very dear, but I do think it's special having a great one who presumably looked quite graceful and regal. I personally think even her in-game corpse holds these qualities but they're much more apparent in the concept art:

I also adore the idea to give Kos humanoid features, no other great one besides her child has them. This hybrid quality coupled with Kos' malice toward Byrgenwerth really makes me think of her as a kind of guardian angel. One that meets out justice when called upon.

My all time favourite take on Kos is this gorgeous art by @buriedknight

This depiction of Kos aligns perfectly with everything I love about her, to the point where nowadays my mind defaults to this art when I think about Kos. From the eeriness of her marine physiology to the elegance of her flowing white membranes to her wrapping around Maria as if to suffocate her with guilt. So angelic, so ethereal, buriedknight GETS it!!!!

what's left to those with ash instead of soul if not to cling to those who burn a bonfire?

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the product of me contemplating about olrox's possible backstory and reading several mexica culture + spanish conquest books for the past 2.5 weeks (was absolutely worth it)

(+ a bit of yapping under the cut)

Love