TBSkyen's "Boss Designs of Dark Souls" - Moonlight Butterfly Analysis
Please read the first post for context on the nature of this posting.
To summarize: This post is about my endeavors in reblogging (or in this case, reposting links of) personally interesting analysis and speculation on the Soulsborne series for fanfic reasons. Here I am sharing a personal favorite of mine, TBSkyen's YouTube series "The Boss Designs of ...", which I recommend checking it out for yourself. I'll be posting the YouTube links of his videos, with timestamps and a transcript for his analysis section, while including additional things like an interesting comment from his viewers, reference of in-game models/concept art of the bosses, relative item descriptions for these bosses, amongst other things.
Here is the link to the fourth episode of The Boss Designs of Dark Souls, focusing on the Moonlight Butterfly:
Timestamp, transcript and interesting comment/s below the cut:
TIMESTAMP:
0:00-28:14 Playthrough | 28:15 Analysis
ANALYSIS TRANSCRIPT:
"...Let's have a slightly closer look at the Moonlight Butterfly because there's a couple of interesting things going on, now as I say many, many times in the video, the sensation you get when you approach the Moonlight Butterfly for the first time is that it's just a big-ass butterfly. It's just a big-ass butterfly that happens to be deadly and full of magic because that's kind of what Lordran is like, like everything wants you dead, even the butterflies but... unlike the Taurus Demon and the Asylum Demon and the Bell Gargoyles, it's not really an aggressive creature in the sense that like even when it approaches you to start the boss fight, all it really does is just kind of fly around. It hovers out of range on the bridge and it never actually approaches you ever.
The only times it approaches you is in order to fly down and sip nectar from flowers which is a thoroughly unaggressive action, so there's really nothing in the butterfly's behavior, in the way that it's programmed and animated that suggests any kind of malice or aggression... it's mission in life isn't to kill you it seems to want most of all is to sip nectar in peace and that's what I say in the video is that you get this sense of kind of tragic inevitability that you have to destroy this thing which is beautiful, unlike all the other creatures in Lordran so far the Moonlight Butterfly is not really monstrous it's clearly not entirely natural but it doesn't look awful or terrible or like something that is profoundly dangerous or which should be destroyed for the safety of everyone it just looks like a really big-ass mother-freaking butterfly and there's a couple interesting things going on there thematically because, in Dark Souls so far, the environments we've been inhabiting have been strictly human environments.
That is to say we've been walking through ruins, castles, battlements, all kinds of like old dungeons and a list of like all of it man-made things full of man-made monsters that is like the zombies and the hollowed-out and that giant boar in the armor and some gargoyles and then that random minotaur - Taurus Demon - that kind of showed up but like all of its has kind of been man-made or man-like creatures using man-made weapons or... human-like weapons (that's certainly what the Taurus Demon uses) and so we get to the Moonlight Butterfly which, not only is the first we fought so far that doesn't have a weapon, like it doesn't have a weapon, it never attempts to physically harm you it just casts magic all over the place, it's also the first one that's not - like in any way - human, like there's nothing human about it at all (oh well, there is a little bit, but we're gonna talk about that later), but on first inspection there's very little human about it at all like the metal ring that it's got going on behind its head and the giant horn, those seem to be somewhat artificial features, but that's really about it, as far as, you know, non-natural things go.
And that kind of ties back to the area that we've been exploring because much like the Moonlight Butterfly, the first completely not man-made boss that you fight, Darkroot Garden is the first completely not man-made environment that you explore, now Darkroot Garden is full of ruins, like there's lots of ruins, there's towers, we fight the butterfly atop an overgrown watchtower, there's lot of man-made stuff in there but the majority of Darkroot Garden is nature, it's just overgrown nature and cliff sides and you know living bushes that come to life and try to kill you... I ran into a two-headed tree basilisk snake thing that tried to poison me... and it's the first time that you've really kind of gotten in touch with nature, the environment, the world of Lordran and the Moonlight Butterfly seems to reflect that tension between the man-made world that's breaking down in the natural world that's taking over because again here to we have a character design that's largely dominated by nature imagery with a few hints of something man-made being thrown in there - specifically the horn and the ring.
And that tension is kind of interesting because... at least on the face of it, it kind of speaks to the kind of environment that Lordran is and to the sort of inevitability that nature will take over when the kingdoms of man have finally faded and fallen away and like, thematically that's interesting, I'm wondering if that's something that's explored any further later on in the game, like this tension that we're kind of returning to a state of nature after civilization has kind of had its shot at the world and now we're gonna be returning to just like, the world what belongs to it and restores a kind of natural order to things.
Of course there's a little wrinkle in that, in that the Moonlight Butterfly is not a natural creature, it's not a part of the natural fauna of Lordran, it's a created creature, it's a constructed creature as we learn when we examine the soul that it drops. We learn that the Moonlight Butterfly was created by Seath the Scaleless who, if I remember my intro cinematic correctly, is a dragon who betrayed the other dragons... and he has no scales and he's kind of gross. So we have a creature which foreshadows another boss later on down the line but if I remember correctly, the whole thing about the dragons is that they were the sort of "natural rulers" of Lordran, like they were the people that were the dudes who were like the big people in charge until the Age of Fire, until someone grabs some of the Fire from underground and there was a king and he threw lightning spears at them and the dragons all died, and Seath kind of betrayed them, but the dragons nonetheless seemed to represent kind of more of a state of nature for Lordran.
Like a natural place in which humanity and civilization arrives as invaders, as violent invaders actually, like they literally killed the dragons so that they can take over and construct their own civilization, and Seath the Scaleless is an accomplice to that but nonetheless he still seems to like still as a dragon be a link back to that state of nature idea that Lordran was something before, you know, all the kings and queens and the castles and the armor and all the stuff, that it was something before that, and that Seath might represent something of a return to that in the sense that at least the creatures he creates or the one that we know about, is a creature of nature, very much so, like the butterfly itself looks like it's mostly made of leaves. It's got a long skirt, a long tail that looks like grass fibers just kind of dangling beneath it and the long wings its got look like nothing so much as giant leaves, you know basking in the wind.
As well as of course looking like a butterfly, and that works pretty well with a butterfly because they all tend to masquerade themselves in nature as leaves... some of them do, some of them are very flashy and bright, yeah, whole different conversation, I'm not a biologist. And that was quite interesting to me to have a boss that so fundamentally broke the pattern of everything else I had come across, but which also seemed to have a very strong connection to the environment in which you find it, like even more so, the Bell Gargoyles were literally gargoyles on the tower, right, and the Asylum Demon was the king of the asylum as we pointed out, like it has the crown, it's kind of lord of the area and you kind of have to kill that in order to get out, so all the Dark Souls bosses have had some kind of connection with the environment in which you find them, but none more so than the Moonlight Butterfly who was the first one to actually have a connection with the environment, not just the constructions in the environment, but the environment itself, to a much greater degree, and that was quite curious I think.
Insofar as to the character design itself, there's really not a whole lot to say, I think the horn that it's got on its head is kind of interesting, it kind of evokes a unicorn horn of a sort, or the horn of... the narwhals and that is sort of, it's clearly made of metal or something much like it, so it is constructed it's not quite real, it's fake, like in nature, not many things evolve the spiral structure like that, that's kinda where there aren't supporting struts in between or where it isn't connected but on the other hand it also evokes this idea of the unicorn horn, of the narwhal horn, so there's again this mix-and-match of natural and man-made imagery, and then we have the big metal ring on the back because that is the most obviously man-made thing about the butterfly, of all the things that the butterfly has that is most obviously, 'okay, that didn't grow in like a cocoon from moonlight caterpillar', that thing was put there after it had been made in a forge.
And that is a halo, like it's literally a halo, it's literally the kind of thing that if you look at old, especially Catholic art, and you look at pictures of the saints, then you will see rings like that hovering behind their heads, symbolizing the light of holiness, the light of God, the light of heaven, that surrounds them as they are, you know, indeed the anointed saints of Jesus Christ and of our Lord the Father himself. And so we get this picture of spirituality, which has already been present in Dark Souls like we've been walking through an old church in order to get to the bell tower, like there's lots of old sort of Christian/Protestant/Catholic imagery going on in what Dark Souls is, but this is the first time we have had something that directly represents imagery of the divine, because the butterfly is angelic, it looks like, as I've mentioned in the video, it looks a lot like something that might be an angel in another game.
Like that might be an artist's interpretation of what an angel looks like, especially the multi-winged angels and I think Seraphs, or some of them, like, the truth about angels is that most of them are absolutely horrifying, like wheels beset with eyes and, you know, flaming lion heads... Angels are weird, but the popular imagery of angels are, you know, creatures with wings, and that's interesting that in addition to being a representation of nature, being representation of sort of the natural environment of Lordran, even though it's also kind of a fake representation of that environment, it's also invested with this sense of spirituality, this sense of divinity, which again, maybe that reflects something on how Seath the Scaleless sees himself, like we haven't met him yet in the story so I don't know anything about him, but maybe like, does that reflect something on him, on how he sees himself as a God, creating angels? That would be interesting to explore, I kind of hope something like that comes up that we get a sense of what his personality's like.
Like what kind of person is he, that he would create creatures specifically to look like angels, his angels, as though he is God on high, that's very interesting, but like I said, the Moonlight Butterfly, at first glance, seems to be entirely human, but on closer inspection, it's not, I managed to find this high-resolution scan of some concept art of the Moonlight Butterfly from a Dark Souls art book, and taking a closer look at her, and she is indeed a 'her', we get a different image. All of a sudden, this is clearly a woman! [CLARIFICATION: It has a typical female shape, it is possible to be male and feminine simultaneously, after all, and vice versa!] This is a female shape, like you have the hourglass shape with the hips going in and, you know, the head, the neck, the bosom, then the midriff and then the hips which kind of explode out into this long trailing skirt of those leaf, you know, grass fibers that trail after her.
With a halo directly behind her head, specifically like the Saints of old, like I said, Saints of old would have these halos behind their heads in order to signify their connection to, you know, the light of God, and indeed to the Sun, but that's a whole other discussion, and then her arms are the lower wings, and from her head extends these great massive wings, like angel wings very specifically, so that she gives this image more of a hallowed saint come to earth, a priestess anointed by God, who has come to, you know, do whatever the heck it is anointed priestesses do; absolve our sins, probably, but since this is Dark Souls, the world is nothing but sin. And that's kind of interesting, and I don't think it comes across in her character design in the game, like you can't, she looks a lot more like, you know, just a butterfly in game, she doesn't really look supper like, you know, a butterfly-shaped woman or something like that, there really isn't much of that anthropomorphism in there.
But it gives us some clues as to what might have been the original design intent behind the Moonlight Butterfly that she should be specifically a fusion of the divine, the human and the natural, and that too is quite interesting and I can't help but think that the butterfly, more than anything else, ultimately works as a comment on Seath the Scaleless, I mean, that seems to be, since they took the trouble of putting the text description of the butterfly's soul, that she was made by Seath the Scaleless. I kind of feel like, more than anything else, the butterfly is probably a reflection on him, somehow. Exactly how? Well, that remains to be seen, but nonetheless, it's all very interesting."
And here's a viewer's comment that I thought was particularly noteworthy:
"The butterfly's ring reminds me of two things besides a halo: one, it resembles a clock, implying (along with its horn which looks like a clock hand set to midnight) that it has resided in Darkroot Garden peacefully for a long time. The second thing it reminds me of, specifically the circle's spikes, are a hedgehog's quills. They're tacked on to a circle; circles generally signify something approachable and harmless. Its goal in life isn't to be aggressive, it isn't a hunter -- but it does have a self-defense mechanism. Also, the way the butterfly leaves the scene, both when you die and when it dies, reinforces the fact that it's naturally peaceful. Its death is a sad, gentle fall to the ground, nothing spectacular, it just died as any butterfly would have. And its leave after it kills you is just a "well, that's dealt with. Back to business... sitting on my tower," lol...."
For reference, here is the in-game model and concept art of the Moonlight Butterfly, but if you wish to see any reference pictures TBSkyen refers to in the transcript, I'd advise watching the episode itself:
The Moonlight Butterfly drops Soul of the Moonlight Butterfly, which can be transposed into two special items with the aid of a blacksmith, as well as the possibility of a Blue Titanite Chunk and/or Blue Titanite Slab, though like with the Humanities & Homeward Bone, I'll only detail their item descriptions here once:
SOUL OF THE MOONLIGHT BUTTERFLY: "Soul of the mystical Moonlight Butterfly, which flitters in the Darkroot Garden. Special beings have special souls. The butterfly's soul is a creation of Seath the Scaleless. Use to acquire a huge amount of souls, or to create a unique weapon."
BLUE TITANITE CHUNK: "Titanite chunk for weapon reinforcement. Blue titanite has powerful magic energy. Reinforces magic weapons to +9, and enchanted weapons to +4. With the discovery of chunks in Lordran, the race to locate the Legendary Slabs has begun. But could they be mere myth?"
BLUE TITANITE SLAB: "Blue titanite slab for weapon reinforcement. Legendary Slabs were the domain of the Gods. Reinforces magic weapons to +10, and enchanted weapons to +5. Legendary Slabs are the heirlooms of a nameless blacksmith deity, who forged the weapons of other Gods. Weapons forged with this slab become rare legendary weapons."
And here are the transposed weapons item descriptions:
MOONLIGHT BUTTERFLY HORN: "Weapon born from the mystical creature of the Darkroot Garden, the Moonlight Butterfly. The horns of the butterfly, a being created by Seath, are imbued with a pure magic power."
CRYSTAL RING SHIELD: "Weapon born from the mystical creature of the Darkroot Garden, the Moonlight Butterfly. Imbued with a powerful crystal power, like the butterfly created by Seath the Scaleless. Can emit crystal light rings."
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