Brick By Brick

Ardent analyses of Castlevania, Souls, Bloodborne, and architecture

[doshmanziari]

Hey, everyone.

With the release of The Backrooms movie, I thought I'd again share an essay I wrote a couple of years ago that looks at this series of fictional locations from the angle of architecture, old and new, built and unbuilt: "Heavenly Purgatories: The Postmodern Labyrinth."

The thing about zombies and budget motels is that both are as fungible as they are transitional — again, neither alive nor dead. The zombie’s identity is a lack of individuality, and this lack is only augmented by the zombie’s usual mass presence. Go to any Motel 6 in the United States and you’ll find pretty much the same thing. Of course, that’s the point. This reliability, this flattening of regional differentiation, and its enforcement by mass quantity, is the basis of the almighty Brand, and its pervasiveness is a quality we have internalized since its global establishment. No wonder, then, that the Backrooms and its relations have that potent vibe of familiarity. In a way, the Backrooms is a collective dark fantasy born out of the industrio-consumerist landscape — a landscape where all sorts of mutilative efficiencies and conveniences, funneling back to an altar for a Molochian machine god, have deprived so many of our built realms of aesthetic sensitivity.

[doshmanziari]

Reblob for the weekend/Sunday crowd.

[doshmanziari]

Hey, everyone.

With the release of The Backrooms movie, I thought I'd again share an essay I wrote a couple of years ago that looks at this series of fictional locations from the angle of architecture, old and new, built and unbuilt: "Heavenly Purgatories: The Postmodern Labyrinth."

The thing about zombies and budget motels is that both are as fungible as they are transitional — again, neither alive nor dead. The zombie’s identity is a lack of individuality, and this lack is only augmented by the zombie’s usual mass presence. Go to any Motel 6 in the United States and you’ll find pretty much the same thing. Of course, that’s the point. This reliability, this flattening of regional differentiation, and its enforcement by mass quantity, is the basis of the almighty Brand, and its pervasiveness is a quality we have internalized since its global establishment. No wonder, then, that the Backrooms and its relations have that potent vibe of familiarity. In a way, the Backrooms is a collective dark fantasy born out of the industrio-consumerist landscape — a landscape where all sorts of mutilative efficiencies and conveniences, funneling back to an altar for a Molochian machine god, have deprived so many of our built realms of aesthetic sensitivity.

[doshmanziari]

Three drawing-watercolors I did in late 2024 and early 2025 for a tiny series called World Machine. The idea was taken from a contemporary "fairy" report, wherein the person said that, as a child, near the edge of a wood, they were given a vision by strange pale beings of a machine that appeared to be helping regulate the Earth organism.

The last two here aren't my favorite pieces I've ever done, and the first seems, by comparison, overly inert, but I suppose they were all worthwhile experiments in different formal and tonal directions. I'd like to at least do a fourth one day.

Click here for my artist website.

[doshmanziari]

Dullards, Demons, and Impossible Possibilities

Hi, folks.

Hey, all. Got a new piece up on Substack. I hadn't written on UFOs since almost two years ago, and now seemed like a good time.

Consider this question: if contact were occurring, how would we know or suspect it were happening? Ruminate on this; see where your mind goes. Try to pay attention to your presumptions, and observe where they lead you, as if each were a matter of course. Most of us recognize that it would be ridiculous to hypothesize the active reality of something simply because of our ability to conceptualize it. We need some type of filtering process for information so as to approximate a viewpoint that is more objective than subjective, and more exclusionary than inclusionary. All too often, however, we conflate rationality in this matter with that which is normative.

Contact is dropped into the bin of things like asteroid impacts, or geomagnetic storms, or pole shifts, or the reappearance of some heretofore unknown celestial body with an erratic orbit. All of these things become Events of Tomorrow, where the “tomorrow” is a science-fictive day of the future experienced only by our, what may as well be, eternally distant relatives. Life never waits, though. Reality is neither tardy nor punctual. Every event occurs when it occurs, no matter our belief that it should have occurred earlier or later on. This is one of those truisms that, when written out, seems so banal as to be expressively vacant, but which when experienced becomes profound. One day, your parent is alive; the next, they’re dead from a car accident. The unthinkable manifests, rupturing our internalized assurances, and we call it trauma.

Thanks for reading, if you do! Bye-bye.

[doshmanziari]

Reblob for the evening/night crowd.

[doshmanziari]

Dullards, Demons, and Impossible Possibilities

Hi, folks.

Hey, all. Got a new piece up on Substack. I hadn't written on UFOs since almost two years ago, and now seemed like a good time.

Consider this question: if contact were occurring, how would we know or suspect it were happening? Ruminate on this; see where your mind goes. Try to pay attention to your presumptions, and observe where they lead you, as if each were a matter of course. Most of us recognize that it would be ridiculous to hypothesize the active reality of something simply because of our ability to conceptualize it. We need some type of filtering process for information so as to approximate a viewpoint that is more objective than subjective, and more exclusionary than inclusionary. All too often, however, we conflate rationality in this matter with that which is normative.

Contact is dropped into the bin of things like asteroid impacts, or geomagnetic storms, or pole shifts, or the reappearance of some heretofore unknown celestial body with an erratic orbit. All of these things become Events of Tomorrow, where the “tomorrow” is a science-fictive day of the future experienced only by our, what may as well be, eternally distant relatives. Life never waits, though. Reality is neither tardy nor punctual. Every event occurs when it occurs, no matter our belief that it should have occurred earlier or later on. This is one of those truisms that, when written out, seems so banal as to be expressively vacant, but which when experienced becomes profound. One day, your parent is alive; the next, they’re dead from a car accident. The unthinkable manifests, rupturing our internalized assurances, and we call it trauma.

Thanks for reading, if you do! Bye-bye.

[doshmanziari]

Cross of Moss. Pen and watercolor on paper.

This is a piece that I first envisioned and made a sketch of in early 2023, but I didn't start and complete the picture you see above until the middle of 2024. By "envisioned", I mean that the image came to me unbidden during a period of meditation. It was one of the drawings that sold at last year's Outsider Art Fair in NYC, and it reminds me of Albrecht Altdorfer's painting Saint George in the Forest.

[doshmanziari]

A completed piece from this year, entitled Holy Cave of Purgatorium. Colored pencil, pen, and watercolor on paper.

I took this as an opportunity to include a figurative element, although I fear it's a little too small for the figure's gesture to properly register. One more thing requiring further refinement.

[doshmanziari]

[doshmanziari]

An Index for [Putting Names to Built Things]

Since it may be a long while until I return to this series, entitled Putting Names to Built Things, which looks at the environments of the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, and Sekiro and identifies their structural and decorative elements, I wanted to create a post which indexes the entries so far for ease of sharing and reference.

-For Dark Souls and Bloodborne-

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11

-For Sekiro-

Part 1 / Part 2

[doshmanziari]

A couple of the older posts in this series have been getting a bit of attention recently, which has led to some new followers, so I'm reblobbing this index to make finding the other entries easier.

[doshmanziari]

Hi, folks. In maybe two or three weeks I'll have a new piece up on my Substack about Dark Souls 2. As to the exact topic, I'll let the screenshots above provide some clues. The discourse on this game appears -- appears -- to be permanently stunted, and this article has nothing to do with any of that. As with another piece I recently authored about the landscapes in Elden Ring, I think it'll bring some observational (although marginal) originality to the fray; and it also concerns certain particularities of the world design.

[doshmanziari]

Hi, folks. Got a new piece up on Substack that compares Elden Ring's landscapes with the tradition of Chinese landscape art.

Read it here: Elden Ring and the Expressions of Shan shui

[doshmanziari]

Reblogging this for the late-weekend crowd.

[doshmanziari]

Hi, folks. Got a new piece up on Substack that compares Elden Ring's landscapes with the tradition of Chinese landscape art.

Read it here: Elden Ring and the Expressions of Shan shui

[doshmanziari]

Formalities, Personalities, Cultural Entropy

Hey, everyone.

To those who are or may be interested, I just published a new essay on Substack that is an attempt to look at some of the videogame cultures, and cultural moments, I've been a part of since the mid-2000s.

I expect some disagreement or anger over my characterization of the mid-2010s culture shift, but, if that can forgiven or overlooked, this essay might be otherwise valuable as a tiny piece of Internet history.

Formalities, Personalities, and Cultural Entropy

[pedrogferreira]

"The Darkest Dungeon" for Sorcery Contested Real [Gothic].

Watercolor and gouache on paper.

Follow me on Instagram and X

[doshmanziari]

A bunch of nice work on this blog.

[doshmanziari]

On Dirt Alone Shall I Subsist

A review of the art world via The Campus' 2025 Annual Exhibition

Hey, folks. Last month, I published the first piece on my Substack page for 2025. As the subtitle states, it's a critique of the art world by way of an exhibition. At the risk of being totally wrong, I think that the diagnosis the essay offers is unique (in the actual meaning of the word). If this is incorrect, then the diagnosis is highly unusual.

It is written from the perspective of someone who has always loved to make art but has never quite felt at home within the art world -- whether that means the lingo used for artist statements, or the general character of art venues, or the contemporary work which is offered as aspirational/important, or the vibe at art openings, etc. All of these have always conveyed to me a sort of coldness, a strange remove from life and liveliness. While some might see certain aspects of this as a lack of sincerity, I mostly see it as a sincere lack.

I am aware that the "art world" cannot be so neatly enclosed within the parameters of a single show. Exceptions, even among the exhibition here, exist. The point is to lay bare the predominance of certain ways of looking, creating, and curating which I find to be so powerfully influential within really whatever one considers to be the "art world." At the same time, I do not think that what I am offering here is such an outsider position; rather, it is one that is institutionally inappropriate, and so is conveniently self-suppressed.

We might benefit from more artists offering criticism of art, instead of leaving that duty to the critics proper, as it were. If a living artist has any long-form content to their name, it is most often through an interview, which really just serves as an amplified artist statement. Good criticism, however, requires -- at the least -- the expunging of lies. This contradicts the art world, which functions by a vast web of mutual lying that's done for the sake of professional networking and opportunities. It also goes against the belief that any conviction regarding art ultimately withers according to its "subjectivity." One must either write under the cognitive dissonance that criticism is a divertissement, a word-fantasy titillating the ego's preferences, or know that it is an attempt at real, defensible truths.

[doshmanziari]

On Dirt Alone Shall I Subsist

A review of the art world via The Campus' 2025 Annual Exhibition

Hey, folks. Last month, I published the first piece on my Substack page for 2025. As the subtitle states, it's a critique of the art world by way of an exhibition. At the risk of being totally wrong, I think that the diagnosis the essay offers is unique (in the actual meaning of the word). If this is incorrect, then the diagnosis is highly unusual.

It is written from the perspective of someone who has always loved to make art but has never quite felt at home within the art world -- whether that means the lingo used for artist statements, or the general character of art venues, or the contemporary work which is offered as aspirational/important, or the vibe at art openings, etc. All of these have always conveyed to me a sort of coldness, a strange remove from life and liveliness. While some might see certain aspects of this as a lack of sincerity, I mostly see it as a sincere lack.

I am aware that the "art world" cannot be so neatly enclosed within the parameters of a single show. Exceptions, even among the exhibition here, exist. The point is to lay bare the predominance of certain ways of looking, creating, and curating which I find to be so powerfully influential within really whatever one considers to be the "art world." At the same time, I do not think that what I am offering here is such an outsider position; rather, it is one that is institutionally inappropriate, and so is conveniently self-suppressed.

We might benefit from more artists offering criticism of art, instead of leaving that duty to the critics proper, as it were. If a living artist has any long-form content to their name, it is most often through an interview, which really just serves as an amplified artist statement. Good criticism, however, requires -- at the least -- the expunging of lies. This contradicts the art world, which functions by a vast web of mutual lying that's done for the sake of professional networking and opportunities. It also goes against the belief that any conviction regarding art ultimately withers according to its "subjectivity." One must either write under the cognitive dissonance that criticism is a divertissement, a word-fantasy titillating the ego's preferences, or know that it is an attempt at real, defensible truths.

[doshmanziari]

Think I've shared most of these before, but what the heck. Quick drawings mostly from mid- to late-2021, and part of 2022. Almost all were done on newsprint using brush pens and colored pencils. The ninth image has watercolor, and the fourth was digitally colored. I love taking these out of the dresser drawer they're kept in and going through all the pages every now and again. They're so fun to look at. Earlier this year, I started devising area names and structural themes for a loose story that could be accompanied by illustrations along these lines. If I have the time, I'd like to return to that one day.

[doshmanziari]

Adding onto this post with a different loose series of drawings from late-2022, all of these depicting imaginary exteriors. The first and seventh drawings here I later developed into finished pieces. All of these, excepting the last (which has a bit of watercolor for the clouds), were also drawn on newsprint using a couple of different kinds of pens for linework and shading/coloring.