#interesting stuff!

bloodborne is a story built around the idea that violence is a transformative force. the beast scourge, the bloodthirst, the 'ascension' of humanity are all expressions of how getting desensitized, getting comfortable with physical or institutional violence strips you of humanity (and bb isn't very subtle about it). it shows how easy it is to get drunk on violence and distance yourself from the other and how no one is safe from the appeal of violence, especially not those who think they're above it

and a gameplay formula where, regardless of how you feel about it, mechanically your only tool of interacting with the world is combat is kind of a perfect way to illustrate a system that runs on violence? it's important that you have no other means of progressing through the world while bb also explicitly shows you time and time again why slotting everyone into a dichotomy of hunter and prey is terrifying and dangerous.

but that's moreso the setting, what does violence mean for the plot? i think a good way of putting it is that it's a great equalizer of sorts - bb's world has a rigid and inescapable hierarchy (great ones > basically everyone else) and the bulk of the landscape is the consequences of people's inability to accept that, desperately trying to rise above humanity, to grasp even a little bit of the cosmos. and we know it's in vain because we're shown again and again how these efforts turned horribly against themselves. but even if escaping human physicality and ascension in the literal sense was a failure, i think the act of inflicting the same helplessness onto others was in itself a kind of ascension for byrgenwerth and the healing church. i think holding power over someone the way great ones hold power over humanity already felt like becoming more than human and making the playing field a little more equal. so violence worked as the great equalizer to make great ones and humanity equal as hunters, the great ones' prey being humanity and humanity's prey being beasts (in consequence also humanity)

FAIR POINT FAIR POINT u should always take from the rich whenever the opportunity arises good on tsumugi

my main point of reference was just his usual demeanor mixed with him growing up poor so perhaps a more accurate assumption then would be that man will make sure Nothing goes to waste. he only has so many resources. so if an opportunity were to arise where he can safely indulge without needing to worry about the consequences (money) i can see him blissfully enjoying himself Whereas when its HIS money (aka natsume forcing him to pay for his and soras meals) its like a punch in the gut But he will do it ofc bc he loves them. but i feel he'd place a limit on himself in an attempt to lower the cost KASJHFJKH