Demon of Song

The Demon of Song from Dark Souls 2 Reads the Label, Wondering Whether an Honest Kids Lemonade Packet Contains Too Much Sugar.

There are an endless number of creepy, gross bosses in the Dark Souls franchise.

This one is a giant nasty frog with a skull and spindly arms protruding from the mouth...or maybe it is some sort of skeleton wearing a frog? 

But even monsters need to consider excess carbohydrates and tooth decay. Right?

And this one has a lot of teeth to worry about.

(This Honest Kids Lemonade packet is in my kids' lunch boxes because, presumably, it has less sugar than some other things...)

Dark Souls Covetous Demon Covets Pizza

Because who doesn't?....

I've more or less given up on the concept of packing my kids super nutritious lunches. They are masters of intermittent fasting when sent to camp with a sack full of healthy vegetables and virtuous protein.

So far their pizza diet is not making them resemble this demon. 

So at least there's that. 

Garmr with Icee Pop

Dark Souls Undead Dog with Pink Ice:

A Dark Souls wiki explains: "Garmr is the truck-sized great guard dog of Niflheim, and together with Níðhöggr, one of Hel's loyal pets. Garmr also manages the souls of the dead like a sheepdog." 

So now you know.

At my kids' summer camp, each camper gets one icee pop at the end of every day.  These are the plastic tubes with frozen, fluorescent, artificially flavored, high fructose corn syrup laden liquids sometimes known as the brand "Fla-Vor-Ice.

I am told these ices are an absolutely essential component of the camp experience.

I thought that Garmr should not be denied this pleasure, despite being an undead hell hound. But it does seem like his teeth might get in the way.

Dark Souls-like Character

When bedtime is announced to our two sons, the real festivities commence. There are usually costumes and epic battles involved. This guy was based on one such bedtime get-up. 

The actual, real world outfit involved a knee baring fleece bathrobe, a teal silk scarf, and plastic Dark Vader gloves, 

But no matter. Our sons intention was to invoke the mysterious and powerful sort of personage that I tried to capture here. 

...the sort of personage who might appear in Dark Souls III.

Or who could easily vanquish a ten year old brother in glorious, heroic battle somewhere in the time between tooth brushing and changing into pajamas.

Dark Souls Birthday Cake

Frosting on Fire:

My younger son was disappointed that my frosting application was, shall we say, a bit more "expressionistic" on his older brother's birthday cake. "I can hardly tell that is a knight!" he complained.

Dark frosting is not generally not a good thing. And even the "No taste" red frosting tastes pretty bad. Therefore, I was not optimistic about the "knight sitting by the Dark Souls bonfire" request for this cake which would necessitate both blackish and reddish frosting. 

I compromised by "crumb coating" the cake in white and then skim coating a thin layer of lip-staining dark blue, brown and grey over the top. I used as little red as possible for the fire and sword. 

I did not hear anyone at the party complain about the taste, but perhaps they were sparing my delicate feelings.

Artorias and Sif from Dark Souls 3

Hungry Like the Wolf for Dark Souls:

Our older son continues to obsess about playing Dark Souls. And he continues to need to tell the rest of the family chapter and verse about the game. Trying to redirect the conversation to what might have happened IRL (In Real Life) is rarely fruitful. With characteristic massive understatement, he said at dinner last night, "I'm starting to get the impression that the rest of the family is not as fascinated with Dark Souls as I am."

(Our younger son likes the Duran Duran song, but is not all that interested in the game.)

This faceless guy on the napkin is a boss in the game, and apparently one of our son's favorites. And he hangs out with a wolf.  That is all I can report. I do try to listen to my son's monologues on the various bosses of the game, and I did take a brief look at the game's Wiki... but I can't really relate any meaningful information.  For instance, a selection from Artorias's page on the Wiki:

"Sir Artorias the Abysswalker was one of the Four Knights of Lord Gwyn. He only makes an appearance in the past, as he is deceased by the time the Chosen Undead escapes the Undead Asylum."

So there.

I was not able to get a good look at this guy's armor, or his wolf, so this is not particularly accurate. My apologies to all who are invested enough in the game to be able to glean some useful information from the above paragraph.

Dark Souls Avatar with Flaming Hand

"Mom! My hand's on fire! Mom! my hand's on fire! Mom!...."

Setting one's avatar's hand on fire and making him run in circles exclaiming about the flaming hand seems to be something one can do to pass the time until the next iteration of the Dark Souls game is released. 

While I don't particularly appreciate this activity, I do always enjoy drawing flames.

Dark Souls Avatar Again

My son has a new upgraded avatar in the Dark Souls game....
and no, it is no longer this guy.  In the time that it took me to draw this one, he had moved on to a man with a head that appears to be on fire.

He told me that he liked this one because it resembled the Solaire character. (That's the buckethead doing the sun salutation from a couple of days ago)

And he is holding the very important spear of someone very important. The details have escaped me it seems.

Even worse, I now have to go remove the kid from the Xbox....(or is it remove the Xbox "from his cold dead hands?" as he would say) and force him to do his homework.  If only I had an important spear to help with this task.

Solaire from Dark Souls

A "grossly incandescent" lunch napkin:

Solaire is "knight of the sun" who, according to the Dark Souls wiki, "does not let the crumbling world affect his mood." He is mostly helpful to the player, and offers some peculiar dialogue along the lines of, "The sun is a wondrous body./ Like a magnificent father!/ If only I could be so grossly incandescent!"

Our older son took a packed lunch to school for a field trip today, and specifically requested an image of this knight.

While he cannot play "Dark Souls" every available waking moment that he is not in school.... I suspect that he is always thinking about it. Of course, I feel that he spends way too much time playing this game...and of course, he feels the exact opposite.

The constant wrangling over screen time makes me feel incredibly tired. As I have mentioned before, I suspect that I was born without the video game gene. Despite the impressive and immersive visuals now available on the Xbox... well, I would rather just go do something else (like drawing ridiculous things, for instance). But I try to pay attention to what is going on in my son's games and try to learn why they are so remarkably compelling to him. When he tells me that homework is getting in the way of the really important stuff than he needs to do, the disapproving adult in me wants to summarily dismiss him as an immature person with an addictive habit. While I do compel him to finish his homework and do all that other stuff AFK or IRL ("away from keyboard" or "in real life") I also try to appreciate what he ( and millions of other people) find so compelling about games like Dark Souls.

I don't think this issue will go away until after he no longer lives with me, or until my dementia increases to the point where I no longer care....

Whichever comes first.

Dark Souls Avatar

 

Me before I put on my makeup.

The above caption comes from my older son, aspiring meme generator that he is.

His avatar in the Dark Souls 2 game is a sort of zombie who seems to have very brightly colored wisps of hair...or maybe that is the "healing factor"? I cannot say for sure.  I couldn't really get a grip on the detail on the armor either, but I thought the combination of the greenish zombie face and the flossy yellow pink of the hair was nice.