The problem with biology is that any time you try to explain the actual mechanism behind anything, it sounds fake. It sounds stupider than literally anything you could make up. And it is inevitably messier and more violent. Most people probably imagine that during ovulation, the egg is gently released from its little ovarian crib and then softly caressed as it pleasantly floats into the fallopian tube. That's not it, babes. You're thinking too logically.
"How does the egg get into the fallopian tube, then?" Well, you see, the ovary has no exits. It is an impenetrable fortress designed to protect these precious cells. So the oocyte follicle produces tiny shivs (enzymes) to help the oocyte dig their way out of prison. The escape is called rupture, and it is sometimes painful. "...So they break their way into the fallopian tube after rupture, right? We're all good now?" No. No no. Once again, that's entirely too logical. They break their way into the peritoneal cavity, sometimes nowhere near the fallopian tube. The fallopian tube then plays catch with demon fingered gloves (fimbriae) to try to recover the egg before it escapes too far. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, it's hard to come up with a stupider and less efficient way to do it. There is something irrevocably violent about this process, while also being senseless and stupid in its design ("dEsIgN").
So anyway, this is all to say that Bloodborne was actually so, so right to treat embodiment and especially reproduction as horror. In both biology and Bloodborne, the mundanity is the horror. Bloodborne's horror was never fully about the werewolves or the vampires or the eldritch gods or the other things that stick out. Those are mostly a fun-but-mildly-weird curiosity to set tone. No, it was always about the crimes of the healing church's best friends club and how widespread and normalized their actions became, and how those actions affected the literal bodies of everyone around them. It was about the difficulty of chronic disability and wanting a cure that never comes (remember why you, Good Hunter, came to this land to begin with?), and how relatable and believable that story felt because it is so familiar. It was about the horror of grieving a lost child, something awful but also common. It's the unsolvable everyday stuff that is the most bothersome about its story. Likewise, biology's horror was never about the death or disease or things that can happen externally; the horror is home grown and casual and happening every single day to lots of people and made all the worse by it being normal. And also stupid.
I'm sorry or you're welcome.








