Bonfireside Chat 263: Subterranean Shunning-Grounds Part 2
Added 2023-05-28 14:00:59 +0000 UTCHey babies, it's your old pal, Dung Eater, here to your dung. Go ahead and pile it up, right there. Oh, I'm so loathsome. Won't somebody stop me?
Comments
Exactly my read listening way later thinking to write the same thing
Frank Stallone
2024-03-07 02:04:59 +0000 UTCall i could think of when people said they liked the dung eater ending was the larry kleist sketch from mr. show
Sid Menon
2023-06-01 05:34:19 +0000 UTCThat's fair. I think what pushed him beyond sympathy for /me/ personally was... the fact that that scene would almost certainly be reflected among people who had been cursed against their will. BUT -- if it weren't the Dung Eater making the argument, I'd agree honestly. He's right in that the society is horrible, but what he does to the souls he curses is also extremely awful. I'm not trying to argue with you here, I wanna say! I just like. I agree with you. And it's part of why the Dung Eater hit so limply for me, if that makes sense. Thank you for your comment. It made me realize some thoughts of my own. :)
JACKAL ALLTRADES
2023-05-31 18:19:00 +0000 UTCThis is probably too late, I didn’t see the previous post with the deadline :/ People seem pretty dead set in their interpretation of the Dung Eater, so making an argument doesn’t seem very worthwhile. I don’t believe I’m coming from an edgelord, contrarian point of view in disagreeing about him, I just felt differently. In the Shunning Grounds, shortly before the DE, you come across an omen with his back turned to you. Like anyone, I snuck up and attacked. When he dies and drops the Omen Bairn, I noticed that he had been standing, silently, in front of a small grave stone. The bairn’s item description explained the tableau. I don’t know why, but the item description and the scene in that small room hit me harder than anything else in the game. I just sat kind of dazed and sad, thinking through the implications of the whole society, the suffering, the grief. By the time I got to DE, I agreed with him. Everyone should be omen cursed, so that everyone would be equal and the treatment would stop. Again, no need for further argument or making of a case for him, just wanted to share why I felt differently.
Kyle Spears
2023-05-31 13:27:08 +0000 UTCsame lol. just reflexive "oh gross i hate you" behavior out of me.
JACKAL ALLTRADES
2023-05-30 11:09:37 +0000 UTCI kind of feel like From really missed a chance to do an interesting villain storyline. Dung Eater is just very bland to me personally: he's an evil dude doing evil horrible shit. Which is fine, but at the same time, in a game with Sellen (who is ALSO doing horrible shit but is a character I root for anyway because From made her likeable) Dung Eater pales in comparison. I'm totally fine with unsympathetic, unambiguous villains, but both Seluvis (and that one guy who is maybe controlling Seluvis) + the Dung Eater are boring varieties of that. The Frenzied Flame? Rykard's whole deal? That rules. I love it. It's unhinged, unambiguously Not Good, but it's /fun/ to engage with. With Seluvis and the Dung Eater, the game gives you a boring creepy guy and goes "it's totally an option to go along with him by the way" and I genuinely don't know why anyone would. The Dung Eater isn't even interesting with what you get from him, at least in my opinion. Frenzied Flame has METAL as hell presentation and is a subversion of the "keep the flame going for good reasons" stuff in ... basically every Dark Souls Game. (with, you know, the usual discussion of "is it REALLY good to keep this world alive?" stuff that happens). Dung Eater...? Wow everyone in the WORLD gets the SUPER EVIL curse and ... that's it. I suppose there's an angle where he could have wanted to help the underdog and got corrupted but the game does nothing to set that up. The Kappa interpretation is definitely one half of why he does what he does, but the imagery also directly invokes a particular type of violation (to put it as delicately as possible) in the same way that Seluvis/Selvius (i cant remember how to spell his name, sorry) does. I feel like if Selvius weren't in the game, I'd be more liable to buy into the pure "kappa do this" interpretation of his actions but we already have one on screen sex pest, and given the Dung Eater is described as doing unspeakable things to his victims (or something similar) I feel like it's trying to have its cake and eat it too with regards to the imagery. "What else does this remind you of" kind of behavior, at least in my opinion. Ultimately though it's the sort of detail that could be debated but I think works best in the horror sense of "what your mind conjures up makes it worse". I didn't expect this reply to get so long. I normally don't comment on stuff, just listen, but the Dung Eater + His ending was really unsatisfying for me. Felt below the bar From had set up. Even Aldritch (who I thought was a weak villain in DS3) had something interesting going on, and Nashandra, while a failed boss fight, was really interesting from a lore perspective (at least I thought-- though I was more fascinated with the shard of Manus that actually seemed to love her partner, and not so much Nashandra), and they were the weaker villains in other games. In Elden Ring, a game with complexity and falsehood and motivation... I just feel like more could have been done with the Dung Eater. TLDR, sorry for the rant: There's much more nuanced and complex incarnations of evil in Elden Ring and other Fromsoft works. I feel that the Dung Eater was hitting below their pay grade, myself.
JACKAL ALLTRADES
2023-05-30 11:08:34 +0000 UTCThe most charitable read I can see for ol Dungie boy is that at some point, whether justified or not, he was either imprisoned or found his way into the Subterranean Shunning grounds, where he got so black pilled by witnessing the way the Golden Order treated those it deemed to be “cursed” or graceless, and maybe how sanctimonious the average citizen of the Land’s Between was towards the graceless (Kenneth Height, Morgot, etc.), that he decided to take matters into his own hands. Perhaps due to him being shunned and/or cast aside, he may have felt a kinship towards the Omens (hence the outfit). It seems like he’s particularly upset with people who live in “ignorance” of the plight of those abandoned by the order, like watching residents of a city walking by an unhoused individual without even acknowledging them. It seems like he really believes the answer to this issue is spread the curse to everyone, even the grace-given, so perhaps those who were originally considered cursed will no longer be shunned. It’s a lesser version of the Fenzied Flame ending, as it gets rid of one of the aspects that the Golden Order uses to divide and distinguish, but it reads as if someone’s answer to homelessness was to just make everybody homeless, as opposed to addressing the real systemic issues that lead to it occurring in the first place.
ChipHand_Z
2023-05-30 01:41:54 +0000 UTCI think the Dungeater was definitely a missed opportunity on a few fronts. Dungeater’s ending could have had more sympathy if he had a bone to pick with the persecution of Omens and other cursed beings (and wasn’t a murderous asshole), and sought to spread the curse as a sort of payback for millennia of oppression. Unfortunately, dying when cursed makes you a wraith, per the Wraith Calling Bell. This, paired with the seedbed curse stating the souls will never return to the Erdtree, means that it’s an eternal fate to be an angry, vengeful spirit upon death. It’s unambiguously an evil ending, and leaves no room for wondering if being cursed might not be as horrific as it’s made out to be by the Golden Order. Had the persecution been based more on the grotesque appearance being the curse, that would be one thing, but eternal suffering afterwards closes that idea off
Lucas West
2023-05-29 22:29:39 +0000 UTCI think as long as you don't tell him to leave the gaol he won't kill boggart. If you just go kill him he won't kill boggart
IXXALETH
2023-05-29 15:57:49 +0000 UTCIs there a way to kill Big Dungus that doesn't put Big Boggart in danger?
Toshio42
2023-05-29 14:43:27 +0000 UTCfirst time i found this guy i killed him like a gross bug out of pure terror
IXXALETH
2023-05-29 12:16:51 +0000 UTCMud Much is a pretty great variation, Prawn Bois for life!
MeltyHam
2023-05-29 09:25:35 +0000 UTCWe can only have our own takes, Forced! It's what we thought, doesn't have to be what you thought, and we're not telling you it's the correct take. It's just our thoughts on ol PooPooPeePee Man. -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2023-05-29 03:33:59 +0000 UTCTo me, this discussion of the dung eater was a bit unsatisfactory. Like while there is not much sympathetic about the character, I feel like it misses the point to describe him as an “edgelord” which is more like as if he is a black pilled Reddit moderator or something. To me, it’s like when the community refers to darkwraiths as edgelords as well, they’re taking the actions of real people and stamping a fictional interesting thing with their own associations in my view. I don’t feel like I understand the elden ring lore enough to make an argument for the dung eater but it feels like just writing him off doesn’t do a lot for me
Forced into Femininity
2023-05-29 02:25:13 +0000 UTCI think the Omen connection to the Loathesome Dung eater is more about his edgelord neagitivity than anything else. He’s a normal tarnished in the costume of what he considers to be a ‘cursed’ race and enacting a plan to ‘curse’ everything. It’s like a serial killer wearing the face of sombody they were jealous of. He’s obsessed with being a negative nasty guy who eats turds and likes looking at gross stuff.
Mortiis
2023-05-28 20:36:50 +0000 UTCIn the intro I was so excited to meet who I assumed would just be a funny peepee-poopoo man, but he ended up being one of the most loathsome creatures in existence, especially when he killed my friend bogart. :(
JackelZXA
2023-05-28 15:29:36 +0000 UTCI never let Mud Munch leave the chamber alive. Prawn bois gotta look out for each other.
T
2023-05-28 15:05:31 +0000 UTCNobody? Baalbuddy has entered the chat
superkeaton
2023-05-28 15:01:08 +0000 UTCPersonally I thought Dungypoo(my nickname for him) and I's relationship was at a point he didn't have to beg for dung anymore. Sad.
E E
2023-05-28 14:20:50 +0000 UTC
