Feeling nostalgic for Dark Souls despite not having played video games in 5 years or so. The closest thing I can think of is the Gormenghast trilogy, but I don't feel like re-reading it, and would like something with a little more action.
Books like Dark Souls?
Julian Cooper
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Cameron Young
don't know, but slightly related I thought a lot about Derrida's memoirs of the blind when I played Bloodborne, specifically how Derrida talks about 'in-sight' like in Bloodborne
Zachary Lewis
You might like Viriconium by M. John Harris.
Brandon Lopez
blood meridian
nag hammadi scriptures
the road
revelations
Logan Russell
What is the Dark Souls of literature?
Julian Perry
Dante Inferno
Beowulf
Book of Enoch
Dylan Watson
You should be saying Dark Souls is the ___ of literature because video games are an inferior medium
Nathaniel Torres
Well, Dark Souls is a pastiche of various Western literary and artistic tropes, deracinated from the Western historical contexts that made them sensible and meaningful to begin with, and deployed by Japanese people who don't really understand them in the first place even before their deracination, because they are themselves deracinated cultureless medieval peasants living in a top-down imposed post-colonial capitalist nightmare society.
Dark Souls throws together some gothic themes, some fantasy themes derived from romantic literature and its synthesis by figures like T.H. White and Tolkien, and Deviantart amateur artists' pictures of nonsensical megalithic architecture, and then weds these to a pointless non sequitur story that superficially appears, to retards anyway, to be deep and mysterious (a Japanese specialty!). Very similar to Japanese practice in other plotless, narratively disjointed heaps of miscellaneous tropes, like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira. Then it takes the gameplay of a mediocre ARPG like Diablo, baroquely complicates it without attempting to balance it, and glues the whole thing together into a mess merely large and intricate enough to confuse manchildren into thinking it is a coherent artistic expression.
These manchildren typically don't notice that they're fighting the same boss mechanics twenty times in a row, or that some of the biggest setpiece bosses are pushovers due to a failed implementation of some mechanic or an extremely simple moveset. But it doesn't matter. The manchild's brain can only process "LOTS OF THINGS ARE HAPPENING.. THIS GAME IS A BIG THING! I'M IMMERSED" and has no ability to abstract and judge the creation as a whole.
So basically you're looking for a stretched-out passionless paste made from rehashed, reheated tropes, and stuck together by the sheer will of a capitalist trying to trick you into thinking it's something new and dupe you into giving him your money. And you're looking to buy it and re-buy it multiple times, as they just release the same game year after year and your hollow eyes light up at the prospect of passively experiencing more kitschy filth.
If you play Dark Souls, there must be good in you somewhere. Deep down, you want to experience something good. You want to play the best. But Dark Souls has confused you. It has tricked you into thinking it's not a pile of shit. You should do some serious reflection, and try playing King of Dragon Pass, or Star Control 2, or Darklands. But no matter what you do, at least refuse to live as an animal. If you simply can't stop playing horrible garbage like Dark Souls, suicide is always an option.
Robert Richardson
Good pasta
Aaron Richardson
Open a word processor. Use the largest font size possible. Now copy and paste the lyrics to Dio's Holy Diver. Print it. We're done here.
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