This Dark Souls Character Isn't Real
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- Опубліковано 22 чер 2024
- Today's Dark Souls Dissected takes a look at who or what Snuggly the Crow / Sparkly the Crow (Demon's Souls) is, exactly, and how these names were made up by the community and wikis. Allow me to introduce you to "Hawk Girl".
/ illusorywall
0:00 Introduction
1:00 Her Name is Hawk Girl
2:12 Why Assume She's A Crow?
3:41 Future Press Guidebook
5:13 Wiki Growing Pains
8:21 Sparkly in Demon's Souls
9:55 Mistaken Crow's Nest
10:50 The Made Up Names Are Semi-Legit
13:13 Possible Hawk Girl Designs
14:57 Outro
Special thanks to Toaster Williams for translation help:
/ @uplatewithtoaster
/ @toastedringtail
The Gutter for insight on Japanese naming conventions:
/ the_gutter_
Voice acting by:
Toaster Williams / @uplatewithtoaster | / @toastedringtail
Karl Germ - / karlgerm
Keith Ballard - / @boringkeith | / @keithballarda
And MASSIVE thanks to Sen for materials assistance:
/ @sensad
jonathan frakes telling you you're wrong for 47 seconds:
• jonathan frakes tellin...
Non-Souls VGM in chronological order:
Crystal Teardrop - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
King's Field - Passage for a Monk
Space Quest IV - Shop Theme
Other stock music provided by bensound dot com:
www.bensound.com/royalty-free... - Ігри
3:54 they don’t credit the voice actors?
It's almost certainly Clare Corbett. She's a credited voice actor since the original Demon's Souls, but you'll find that she's only credited for other roles and they didn't bother clarifying who did Hawk Girl specifically. However she was credited for Nestling in Dark Souls 3, and with a similar voice, it's a really safe guess!
There's at least several roles from Demon's Souls where we never got specific voice acting credits. It's unknown if there are any entirely uncredited voice actors, but it seems more likely they just aren't being credited for 100% of the characters they voiced.
Here's more uncredited Demon's Souls roles. Might not be all of them, just what I found in making my Compare-Through vids so far:
-Dregling Merchant
-Executioner Miralda
-Hanging Woman (unused)
@@illusorywallTo my personal understanding this, or things like it, are somewhat common. Main stay actors, across animation and video games, also often play side characters or extras. I haven’t been very thorough in my examinations but I feel like I very rarely see these people credited as “Main Character and Citizen 3”. Moreover people who play multiple very backgrounds rolls are just given the credit of additional voices. So I do think an actor with multiple in game rolls already not being credited for such a minor roll isn’t odd in the slightest.
@mlp_firewind8129 I know this used to happen on Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z, the actors would only get credited for the most important character they voiced in any given episode despite a lot of them doing double duty, so minor characters almost never showed up on the credits if that actor was doing a more important regular
@@illusorywall The last name "Corbett" is really similar to "corvid" as well as the name for crows in a lot of other western european languages (like "corbeau" in French). If I saw that last name in the credits for the voice of a bird-like character, I would immediately assume it was a crow, even if it makes no sense.
Oooo a messy meta video? Yes please
Snuggly lives in your backpack and only talks when she has to, like Kazooie
"I beseech you... free Mother and my sisters from the Flame of Chaos. I cannot do it myself; I lack the strength, and the bravery. But you.... I realize what I am asking. But please... free their poor souls...."
"Great, I get to peck some more witch butt! Let's go, Banjo!"
Snuggly/Sparkly only exists in the player character's mind and they're actually unknowingly just trading with themselves.Hence why they dont even know what kind of bird she is. (They are also doing a funny British girly crow voice without realising it.)
Except Kazooie literally talks every chance she gets
3:31 The primary flight feathers on birds are called pinions. Crows have 9 pinions, while ravens have 10. So, the difference between a crow and a raven is simply a matter of a pinion.
That would explain why ravens stay un*pun*ished when they do bad things
🥁📀
Oh my God, that made me chuckle out loud.
dough
Maybe it's a joke, but that's not really true. Crows and ravens are the same thing from a biological standpoint (genus Corvus). We simply tend to call the larger species ravens and the smaller species crows. But there is no split in their family tree where everything decending from one branch is called a crow, and everything decending from the other branch is a raven. The names are completely arbitrary.
I've always thought she was inside the egg. This is why it asks (in a shivering voice) for something warm. She is cold and needs warmth to hatch.
combined with the stilted speech it and the voice actors performance it sounds kinda young so I always thought the same thing
I always personally thought she's a full adult of her species, but hiding somewhere nearby that you can't see or reach. That's why she only trades when you leave the area.
I always assumed it was a young offspring of the big transport crow.
I'm probably the only one who thought it's a species of crows who are invisible or 4-dimentional.
i always felt she was some ugly abomination like the painted world crow people but far worse, and i got the idea after seeing someone calling her a waifu which seemed funny to me
She's real to me 😭
😭
I cannot read that without hearing the vader/starkiller meme
Snuggly so called long ago by an unknown player legend from a faraway country.
Named by my girlfriend that I met at summer camp. But she goes to a different school.
...yes, that'll do.
yup, sounds 'bout rite.
@@illusorywall Weren't you gay, tho?
That's that very deep Dark Souls 2 style lore.
15:19 "It's been 15 years since Demon's Souls came out, and almost 13 since Dark Souls 1"
DAMN
I'm so old
god damn i was 13 when i first played ds1
@@uggachugga760 youngling :P
Dang demon souls is the same age as me
No it's not!
I'm also still 20 years old and not a complete dissapointment to my bloodline yet..... :(
This reminds me of the dog in 'Blasphemous' who is named "Nemo" in the game files but his name is never said in game so the community gave him the nickname "The Petable One" because the main character is named "The Penitent One"
**chef's kiss**
Petable Juan
Nemo in latin means "no one"
For twisted are the paths of the Miracle
My favorite bit of voice actor trivia is that in DS3, the same person voices the cute lil' invisible crow AND THE FRIGGIN' EVANGELISTS. Quite the register.
They are warm and snuggly though...
@@tomm9056 I would happily let them cleanse my bastard curse
Orson Wells voices Pickle Pee?!??
_"Ra! Ra!_ Oh, cleanse the bastard's curse! _Raa!"_
COOOOME TO MEEEEE
Bespoke: you're talking to the tree
So THIS is what became of the Entwives, damn.
@@illusorywall That's a deep freaking cut, right there.
Hawk Girl, the Tree
and she is called hawk girl because hawks shit on her all the time
Sparkly, the Crow, who is actually a Hawk who is also a Girl who is actually a talking tree.
9:40 "musume" is normally "daughter" but like a lot of Japanese familial terms (e.g. obasan -> lit "aunt" but figuratively "[not young] woman"), it carries a more general reading of "girl" (it's an alternate reading of the character for "girl"). So "hawk girl" is a reasonably exact translation.
Came to the comments to mention this, but you beat me to it.
The literal translation is like “Daughter of Hawk” but they often use “musume” to just refer to young girls.
The idea checks out. Generally, when I think of somebody saying, “this is my daughter,” I’m picturing them with a younger child like maybe 7 or 8. Don’t know why, but it’s where my brain goes.
So I imagine that’s how the naming convention stuck. Daughter evokes the mental image of a younger girl in a similar way that “obasan” (lit. aunt) evokes the mental image of an older woman. So they’ve basically used these words to also mean the mental image they evoke when you’d call somebody a daughter versus an aunt.
Anyway, all that being said: Daughter belonging to Hawk does just get boiled down to “Hawk Girl” xD
So your tellin me monster musume might actually be monster daughter?
Girl is the right localization. To have another simple analogy, if you said “hawk bro”, the bro would literally mean brother, but no one would think of it as “brother”, the same applies here with 娘.
I'd like to add that always translating "no" as possessive isn't accurate. It has a lot of uses in this position, including relative copula ("that is") or deriving a no-adjective from a noun, which are the kind of adjectival usually used for race and nationality, so "Hawk's daughter", "girl that is a hawk", and "Hawk(-race) girl" are all equally literal translations.
Also, 娘 did not originally mean daughter, but a young girl. Funnily enough, it can mean mother in some parts of China.
Deciding to call the DS3 bird "Snuggly the Crow" as well is probably the worst offender as the first thing the character says is "Me! Me! Pickle-Pee!," leading any sensible person to assume her name is Pickle-Pee, especially because there's no reference of "snuggly" or "crow" anywhere in her dialogue. Really shows the leaps and bounds these fan wiki editors go to try to enforce their head canon on pages that should remain factual and proven by source. Thank you for your work and your pursuit of truth.
Yeah, the funniest thing to me is that all of these are essentially fan nicknames - but the wiki editors always stick to the old one as if it were gospel! They insisted on referring to Snuggly as Sparkly bc welp that's how the DeS one is named (as if lol) and then when Pickle-Pee showed up they really really wanted to just call her Snuggly. Honestly I am BEGGING Miyazaki to add a crow merchant in the upcoming Elden Ring DLC just so the wikitards start calling her Pickle-Pee and the community just completely ignores them *yet again.*
The average fan wiki editor will call anything thats not stated in show with the clarity and unambiguity of a college professor "speculation".
If you leave them to infer ANYTHING, no matter how obviously true the inference is, it will be treated as speculation.
"Water makes things wet" will be given the exact same validity as "Sunflowers are blue" if it isn't explicitly said that water makes people wet by someone.
I dunno about you guys but when I finished ds3 the crows name was indeed pump a ree/ pump a rum.
Same with DS2 the birds names were Dyna And Tillo. As stated in the credits :)
@@onebakedwalrus I'm not stating that their name was Pickle Pee, but that there were more feasible names than Snuggly the Crow for the 3rd time.
@@InsulinRunner what? I didnt say you did or did not. I just said the credits have the name pumparee/pumparum for the birds in ds3 and dyna and tillo in ds2. Never said anything other than Simply stating the credits DO in fact have names for them.
8:08 "But it does show up as the character's full name on the FextraLife wiki."
See, that's how you know it's 100% untrue.
Fextralife is great as the hard numbers of the mechanics, but absolutely stinks at having accurate or complete lore on most things.
I once read the wiki page for the Reindeer and halfway down it devolved into the editors having an argument over what animal it was supposed to be in the trivia section
@@OtakuUnitedStudio Except that they also sometimes get mechanics and "hard numbers" completely wrong. The most infamous example I can think of is "Elden Beast heals from Holy damage".
@@Zanador and this is why I still use wikidot regardless of how broken its search function may be.
I stopped using that site after they tried to make me watch their garbage streams.
Honestly, the voice acting makes her sound like a parrot, IMO. That particular "squawk" sound she makes is very similar to the typical noise we associate with large parrots, like macaws.
honestly interesting bit about that, I know ravens can mimic voices and I was going to watch videos of that to discuss here but when they do they don't, for lack of a better phrase, sound like a bird when they do it? The mimicry is too good so it's just the same hello you said to them lol
Spangly the Parrot … 👍
"Snuggly want a cracker!"
-Gilbert Gottfried
@chocobofangirl Ravens and crows tend to have kind of "gravelly" voices when it comes to mimicry. At higher pitches, it can just sound basically like a person, but they tend towards a kind of "rolling" sound underneath.
Crows can mimic too, I'm 100% this bird was intended to be a Crow and Hawk was just a leftover name, I feel like this video is stretching it out too much at the point it makes waaaay less sense
Every time I see Johnathan Frakes telling me something isn't true, I immediately start smiling
Do you remember the tallest person you've ever seen?
Do you love to go a-wandering beneath the clear blue sky?
Have you ever visited a Chinatown section in a major city?
Have you called a plumber to your home lately?
Could a plant...really identify a killer?
At 1:50 you can see that in the Demon's Souls subtitles she says "Caw", and that's universally onomatopoeia for a crow sound. Add that to the pile of things why people think it's a crow.
Also: some crows lay their eggs on other bird's nests to trick them into raising them.
Also, crows have greenish blue eggs with spots (dots) . Eggs of a hawk are white.
*That'd be the English onomatopoeia for crow sounds
I always thought it was because crows have been known to trade items with people for food or material to build their nest
@@KaoruMzk Okay, now THAT is interesting. It's the Hawk's Daughter, but she's a Crow and she's adopted. (Well, forcibly adopted, against her adoptive parents' wishes).
D E E P E S T L O R E
my completely speculative take here;
she's the weird Double Winged Hawk thing in Demon's Souls. but she's one of Velka's Crows in Dark Souls series.
I can vibe with this.
it just works
Its funny how berserk had a similar situation with "Band of the Hawk" vs "Band of the Falcon" because of the translations of a certain kanji iirc.
Oh, that's an interesting tidbit
tbf, when I think of Hawk and Falcon I think of kind of the same bird
So, that means the Hawk Girl was Casca all along
There’s quite a few interesting examples of community schisms caused by slightly different translations. San-Ti vs Trisolari from Remembrance of Earths Past comes to mind.
@@Soapy-chanthey’re very similar animals filling very similar niches, it’s easy to have the same image in mind.
Crow can mimic human speech. Combined with liking shiny objects, I always assumed it was a crow or raven. This was long before Dark Souls 1 with the big cat or Dark Souls 2 with Shalquoir came out, so I didn't assume a talking animal past what is normal.
To add to that Hawks don't caw. That's a crow thing
@@raesluder4260 I assume that all the information the developers gave the actress was: "She's a talking bird who loves shiny things, and she's some kind of trader".
It's natural for voice actors to have little to no context when doing voice work, especially if it's a small role that not many people will notice anyway.
@@aldecotan caw is literally written into the subtitles. That's done by the developers.
More specifically it's done by localizers but that localization is subject to developer approval
@@raesluder4260 often enough they change the subtitles after the voicing is done, because there can be changes in the script during voice recording.
@@Soapy-chan I'm sorry but I'm not sure how that's relevant considering that the word is in the subtitles. Those subtitles would have been prepared by a localization company and then unless something has radically changed they would have been sent to from software for final approval and then to be put into the game.
The wiki edits are hilarious. I love the games and community but there is some weird things some people get hung up on. I always appreciate fan creativity but it can be really frustrating when people dig their heels in
You should've released this on April 1st to further the confusion, Then end the video with a segment on how using the pendant in the correct place reveals Snuggly's name
Someone may have already pointed this out, but the Japanese phrase you're translating as 'hawk's daughter' - 鷹の娘 - does just, uh. actually mean Hawk Girl in this context. Yes, the musume/娘 kanji does mean 'daughter', but it can also contextually just mean 'girl' - any girl is, after all, innately a daughter. The trick is in how the kanji is pronounced when spoken - the context it's being used here would be pronounced 'ko' - which is normally written 子, but that kanji only conveys the meaning 'child' - using 娘 instead clarifies the gender - 'girl.'
Yup.
So, to hijack this into Elden Ring, we know Melina's internal name is Musume no Marika and people have been taking this to mean "ah, she's Marika's daughter". But wouldn't that be Marika no Musume? Wouldn't Musume no Marika rather mean "daughterly Marika" or "Marika as a girl"?
@elias.t It's 娘マリカ (musume/ko + marika) btw; it wouldn't make sense with "no" unless it was trying to say "(your) daughter, marika". "Young marika" *potentially* a valid translation but "marika's daughter" is not.
@@JacobAlbano Would "daughter of Marika" still work as a potentially valid translation even if "Marika's daughter" does not? I'm asking because I'm curious if language differences reserve the latter writing for cases where the perspective character (normally the player character in From Software games) is the parent.
Japanese seems like such a Build a Bear language lmao
The egg design they used does look more like that of Crows/Ravens than Hawks, but given the misnaming took place pre Dark Souls that's probably not a massive contributing factor to the overall confusion
It's a tricky thing to interrogate too. Because it's the same nest model as the transport crow, just shrunken down, it's hard to determine intentionality with the design there since they took a bit of a shortcut. Cooper's Hawks can have an off-white blueish egg color too from what I've seen, but yeah those eggs do look more crow like for sure.
Ah yeah completely forgot that we do see the nest of the transport crow, makes sense that they'd reuse it scaled down and possibly overlooked the shell coloration. Would be pretty funny if that was how it went down and it inadvertently supported the community's head canon.
Loving it, just in general this whole thing is very Dark Souls 😊
This is a bit of a "death of the author" moment for me, because regardless of whether fromsoft INTENDED the player to interpret that as a crow's nest... they ARE just crow's eggs. So from a "reading the material as written" perspective, I see it as hard to argue that it's not a crow's nest leading to the obvious conclusion that the bird in it is a crow.
Like, let's say in an alternate universe we actually saw the bird, and it looked exactly like a crow, despite the devs saying directly it's meant to be a hawk. In that case I'd say it is a crow regardless of 'intention', what is present in the media matters more than intent.
The Garfield and friends reference was so perfect because that’s EXACTLY how I’ve seen Snuggly😭
I remember hearing that fan-theory that the other three lord souls had a special title like the Dark Soul did (so the light soul, life soul, death soul, I believe), and thinking it was neat and interesting, though still just a fan theory. I remember hearing another fan theory later (something about nito? I forget, it's been years) that stood out to me because it took that previous theory as fact, and used it as a bit of credible evidence pointing towards what they were saying. The lesson I took from that at the time was that I should take everything the dark souls community says with quite a few grains of salt, because the standard of proof seemed really low - didn't realize that things were quite this extreme.
She's still snuggly the crow in my heart, though.
Snuggly the Hawk Girl just doesn't have the same ring to it.
It really doesn't, lol. I wonder if just "Snuggly the Hawk", or "Sparkly the Hawk" could've worked, but it's way too late for that now!
Snuggly/Sparkly the Hawkling
@@PixelOverload Snarkly the Hawkling girl.
@@psychopath682 snarkly lol
@@psychopath682would love future FromSoft games to feature a Snarky character
So her name is Sparkly the Eagle and she's a raven. Got it!
Here's another blatant example of hawk erasure: in DeS, the birds encircling the Old One appear to be hawks with *two* wings (Remember that random lore bit about the extra ones disappearing as they grow older, perhaps as old as the OLD one?) but in the remake, though its hard to see what exactly they are, it seems like they've been made more white and seagull noises were also added to that area. The double-winged hawks were also changed to have a more crow-like appearence. Bluepoint crazy for that one..
This reminds me a lot of the Band of the Hawk/Falcon business with Berserk, where after ages of translating Griffith's chosen bird as hawk he does something that makes it absolutely clear it was falcons all along.
Of all the Berserk references in Souls games I don't think anyone expected or intended bird confusion to be one of them
8:14 That's an important distinction. Fuwafuwa means the fluffy one, while mokomoko means the fuzzy one.
bau bau
Hœh!?
@@cyberspacecathappy to see a fellow ruffian.
Baubau
Wuffian spotted
Don't even get me started on mofumofu.
Also... hold on, we got official names for the birds in DS2- Dyna and Tillo... but are they also, despite what the wikis say, not crows?
I just glossed right over them since the guidebooks gave us their names and those ACTUALLY stuck with the community, lol! Since no one ever really says "Dyna the crow" or "Tillo the crow", it's left appropriately vague. But I probably should have mentioned, despite the full title being "Sparkling Sisters Dyna and Tillo" in the guidebook, and there not being many references to them as crows, there IS one sentence that refers to them as crows. lol, what a mess. I'll have to see if I can learn more from the Japanese guide...
@@illusorywall In my 2014 German guidebook, they refer to them as crows in one sentence, but they mainly use the names Dyna and Tillo. When explaining the game mechanic they write "Wenn das Objekt den Krähen gefällt, tauschen sie es gegen ein anderes (...)" which translates to "If the crows like the object, they swap it for another one (...)".
@@illusorywall I was also curious about how exactly the japanese guidebook refers to Dyna and Tillo.
I um.. didn't know their names were Dyna and tillo... And I've put atleast 300hrs into ds2 in the last 2-3yrs 😂
13:21
I now have the image of Eileen the Crow(Bloodborne) huddled in the nest stuck in my head lol
This is the canon miyazaki wanted.
Reminds me of how the colossi in Shadow of the Colossus are often referred to by names made up whole cloth by the community.
My favorite thing about wiki's, is how, ring of calamity increasing damage of karmic justice was on the page for like 8 years on ru wiki
i remeber my friend dropped ds2 when he read on the ru wiki that he has to use the giant souls for the vendrick. so he used them and then did shit dmg so he said fuck this game
You can trust that guy speaking of that player of Great Renown. Their dad works at From Soft. He sleeps in bunk beds with Miyazaki and they talk about deep lore for hours before bed.
12:48 well another one i can KINDA think of is the name of the Oscar of Astora. In the credits he has no name and it's only in cut content where he says it. Funny how that works
One thing you never brought up and I imagine partially influences people’s perception is that:
Crows can actually talk irl!
Crows are capable of mimicry and are dark birds that fit with the dark setting more than say parrots who can mimic as well.
fun fact the eggs blue speckled coloration in DS1 matches pretty closely to a crows egg, were as a hawk egg is a light cream with brown speckles.
Dude you've been making incredibly high quality content on these games for over a decade. Thanks for putting in so much effort because it really pays off.
There's no way that the bird that takes you to firelink shrine isn't a raven after all their AC games lol.
It's very much not a raven as it looks nothing like a raven and everything like a giant crow.
The Pursuer getting airdropped into battle by a giant corvid immediately made me think of AC.
Just FYI, 鷹の娘 can mean "hawk's daughter" but it can also just mean "girl who is a hawk". The の particle acts as a genitive case marker, which means it can both show possession (as in your interpretation) or simply "labeling" the second noun with the first. In my opinion the second possibility is much more likely. It's a similar case to the "Astora's straight sword" mistranslation, which should have been "straight sword of Astora" or "Astoran straight sword", where the の is once again creating a label rather than personal posession.
Can 100% echo this. It's definitely not supposed to be read as "Hawk's Daughter"
I think the interpretation in English might be "girl/child of the hawks".
An anonymous wiki editor saying "uhhhh a big important guy said it" after the wiki head honcho made up the nickname feels like a kid saying "well my uncle works for nintendo" but while wearing a disguise
It wasn't ever the presence of the giant crow/raven or the like that made me feel Snuggly the Crow was the likely term, rather, two other things:
1) The prevalence of corvids in the game, from the giant one to the crow demons, along with the corvid colour palette being more in line with DS1's grim tone.
2) The naming convention. 'Snuggly the Crow' fits what we see from the FromSoft naming convention in things like Patches the Hyena. 'Hawk Girl' is out of left field for how they style things, though the Japanese 'Hawk's Daughter' from Demon's Souls does fit their conventions again.
I never realized the birds had 4 wings. That comment about the smaller wings being vestigial implies these birds could be evolutionary descendants of the 4 winged dragons, similar to how real birds are descendants of dinosaurs
This reminds me of how people call the nameless knight of Astora that frees you at the beginning Oscar. His name actually *is* Oscar, but you can only see this referred to in the game files. Nothing in any Souls game refers to "Oscar of Astora" and it's likely that he was never intended to have an official name.
But once the community had a name to latch onto, it stuck, and now tons of people know that NPC as Oscar despite the fact that none of them could've actually learned that from the game itself. (I actually might've learned this from an Illusory Wall vid and just forgotten, since I don't remember exactly where I heard it from.)
This is happening with ER too, just look at "Leonard".
I believe that knight character was actually supposed to have a significantly larger role according to some cut content, and he actually introduces himself in a cut voiceline. It's probably either an Illusory Wall or a Zullie video that goes in-depth on him, which is probably how this info first spread.
His name is technically cut content but it doesn't really contradict anything that actually made it in the game. Add to that the fact that "nameless undead knight" is terribly non-descriptive and vague for a relatively memorable minor character (considering he kickstarts the plot) and it's easy to see why people would just go with this name and treat it as "soft canon".
Hmm, from what i understand it seems like we have in game credits referring to the "nestling" in DS3, but no internal evidence for how the games actually refer to "Sparkly" or "Snuggly" in DeS or DS1, only the context of the characters and the official external game guides, with the DS1 guide specifically only assuming the same name as the similar character from DeS.
From that it seems reasonable to assume that "Sparkly" was definitely intended to be a "double winged" hawkling in DeS from the context and external verification, but the assumptions that "Snuggly" was also intended to be a hawkling seem to be based solely on DS1 guidebook's English tranlators own assumptions about the character from DeS lore apparently without considering the actual context of the character in DS1, which appears to be an egg (or invisible/hidden hatchling) in a nest nearby oversized _corvids_ rather than "double winged hawks" (which otherwise dont even appear in this game to my recollection, at least not around this nest anyway).
Lacking further information, it seems to me like "Sparkly" was definitely intended to be a hawkling, but "Snuggly" could very well be intended to be a corvid hatchling/egg(ling?) that simply mirrors the DeS character in the same way many other DS characters do while still being their own unique character. As for DS3's Nestling i don't recall enough about the context atm to have any real thoughts as to weather they're hawk, corvid, or some other more locally relevant avian(?) 🤷
I am curious if anything can be gleaned from datamining the name of the scripts that manage the hatchlings' trading or the name of the model for the nests or eggs or anything else connected to them that might provide further clarification on the nature of their avian parentage 🤔
Very good points. And yeah, even though it was said that nothing in the game files answers the question, I can't help but wonder "but are you SURE?". Has everyone REALLY combed over the code surrounding the dialogue text, programmed triggers for said text, names of the audio files, & the programming for the trades themselves? And in both the English AND Japanese versions of the game? ALL editions, in case anything changed around those?
I'd comb through the files myself if I could crack into them.
Compounding this harder is that people call the DS3 bird “Picklepee Pumparump” after the little chant she says when you give her what she wants haha. As for the voice thing, crows can imitate human voices to a point and I think that combined with all else you said about magpies and taking items and the transport bird is what really puts the cherry on top.
Picklepee is the far superior nickname though
Or Pickled-pee Pump-a-rump for the incurably childish
Crows can not imitate human voices and I have no idea where you pulled that.
@@GuitarGuy057I don't understand bothering to type an incorrect sentence instead of just googling something you're confused about... corvids absolutely speak, as shown in both the videos with millions of views and in all the folklore of them being shapeshifters/witches/prophets that go back thousands of years. spend enough time outside and you'll hear it yourself.
@@PrincessMeganLeigh
You realize corvid does not equal crow, right?
All crows are corvids. Not all corvids are crows.
Crows do not mimic. Stop being wrong.
I feel like with the juxtaposition of the surprisingly large birds nest, with eggs the size of mangoes, with a "caw"-ing character that is implied to hoard items (for trade) and the giant crow just around the corner that carries you off, it's hard to not assume that the nest belongs to that giant bird, and thus the bird that wants to trade would also be a crow.
Also the eggs look eggsactly like real world crow eggs
@@Nilaikx Eggselent point
I think the issue is that this assumption was made before that context existed in Demon's Souls.
thing is, the crow's nest is in firelink
it's not a subtle detail, either, you literally have to curl up in it to revisit the undead asylum in the same way you left it
@@crookycumbles I think IllusoryWall did a good job at breaking down why the assumption was made in Demon's Souls. I just commented to fill in something I thought was overlooked in the Dark Souls section.
3:15 I'm almost certain it's supposed to be a raven. The plumage on the end of the tail seems more diamond-shaped, whereas crow tail arrangements are flat. Its chest feathers are more fluffy, as opposed to a crow's smooth chest feathers. It also seems to fly more like a raven than a crow, since it's mostly soaring.
Raven?!
Armored Core?!
I've done some shallow research into crows and ravens and the conclusion I've come to is that the distinction is largely artificial. There are many different kinds of crows and also many different kinds of ravens, and the only consistent feature that distinguishes between them is size. So a raven is just a big crow. Now, it's certainly possible for the giant crow to resemble a specific kind of crow or raven, in which case you might be able to identify which one it's based off of. When most people talk about crows vs. ravens, they're usually distinguishing specifically between the American Crow (America) or Carrion Crow (Europe) and the Common Raven.
@@Greywander87 This is also compounded by the fact that the Japanese jungle crow is actually quite large, like a raven, and displays some of the features like more diamond shaped tails, despite being called a crow.
Corvids is the same.
What about the head, though? Its head is smooth, not fluffy. If you google raven head vs crow head, you will see this difference.
And Dark Souls isn't so old as to be unable to depict fluffy textures, see Priscilla.
I think @Kakuruma has the right answer. Regardless of the in-game design of the bird, I believe the simplest answer is that it is an Armored Core reference which would make it a Raven.
- crow sounds
- collects objects
- smart
- crow's like eggs (ds1)
"Of course she is an hawk girl". XD
Even if "hawk girl" is the canon name it's literally a crow, a crow with a funny name, but a crow
On one hand, it’s great how you’re calling out the lack of reference for “Snuggly”.
On the other hand, I’m fairly certain the other birds aren’t called Smooth, Silky, Picklepee, and Pumparum, and the “unofficialness” of these names should be more apparent than it is.
I think that the creators of dark souls would enjoy the discourse over the nickname. Somewhat like how the game refers to the eye of death of the basilisks as actually eyes despite them just looking like them, I think that referring to "hawk girl" as snuggly the crow would be welcome.
Could you explain the eye of death of the basilisks part? I'm intrigued
@@TheSHlFT The "eyes" of a basilisk aren't actually its eyes (at least in the Dark Souls series, unsure about Elden Ring).
Their real eyes are actually located directly on their head, not protruding out at all, and are very small. You could almost mistake them for nostrils honestly.
I would link to an image, but you're probably better googling the topic to find a visualisation of what's being mentioned.
@@moosecannibal8224 I see, very interesting. Similar to how Smoughs eyes on his helmet aren't actually where his eyes are, and are actually far lower.
@@moosecannibal8224It’s the same with Elden Ring, though a bit harder to see compared to its Dark Souls model. Actually there’s now some interesting lore attached to them as the large fake eyes are now the eyes of Godwyn, which you can also find on all sorts of things in the game that are related to Deathroot. The suggestion seams to be that those eyes sprouted from the creature when it became infected with Godwyn’s curse.
The crabs in Leyndell also have the eyes of Godwyn on their shells and they just happened to be right above his corpse, which is a bit creepy to think about.
It's a pun on not-eye, as in Not-I, as in Nito (anagram).
DS3 I just called it Pum-pa-rum
I called them pickle pee
@@KleptoKits you mean her
@@GG_1318 Them works reasonably well for an unknown gender or for the substitute of a gendered pronoun. There should be no reason to correct this person.
@@Zonic3451 it's clearly a girl
@@GG_1318them is gender nuetral and can be used as such. you learned this in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. you do not need to correct them on this.
Illusory Wall: “Lore people don’t care much about Snuggly the Crow/Hawk. She’s not pivotal to the lore or anything, or is secretly Velka.”
Hawkshaw: “Challenge accepted.”
It's so incredible how you manage to breathe new life into this 10+ year old game with every video. It really feels like I'm still learning so much about it thanks to you. Keep up the dope videos (:
I truly believe it boils down to FromSoft simply did not want to create and animate another 3D model for Sparkly in Demon's Souls, and they found an invisible character endearing and stuck with it in subsequent games.
holy shit, snuggly being in the egg makes total sense!!!!!!! I never even considered that option, but that is obviously why they want warm and soft!?!?!?
You should try sitting on it
Love the idea for these past 2 videos!
I'd imagine her to be a regular ol' crow. Corvids are capable of mimicking speech and displaying intelligence as well as an interest in shiny objects.
We need talking bird-egg merchant. Maybe made from reused living jar model.
Elden Ring DLC has the chance to do the funniest thing and just add a visible trading crow to spite me.
@@illusorywall We know from Mergo and Ocelotte that babies are invisible, and these little birds agree. But have we ever seen someone grow up and make that transition into opacity? There's always a first time
@@jamesarthurkimbellAriana's infant great one isn't though, which is an especially confusing inconsistency seeing as the implied farther, Oedon, definitely is.
@@jamesarthurkimbell Would be kind of funny to see a game just come out and say, in universe, that kids are invisible or invincible solely for age rating reasons. Several games had children straight up removed so they wouldn't get banned or slapped with an AO rating. Pretty sure this is why children in Skyrim are invincible as well. And if Snuggly existed as a tangible character in a Souls game, well, they'd have to do some gymnastics to justify not allowing you to kill her.
@@Greywander87 Geoff Keighley: And before we end tonight's awards, I'm proud to share the trailer for Infant Immortality
This right here is exactly why I love watching the videos by creators like you and The Tarnished Archeologist. Just when I think I've heard and seen everything possible, I learn that the character who caused so many accidental gravity deaths in my early playthroughs wasn't what I expected them to be in the slightest. I can remember always thinking she was hiding somewhere on the cliff face below, the possibility that she could be one of the eggs or a fresh hatchling, let alone an entirely separate species from Velka's crow, never entered my mind.
The “transport bird” is a RAVEN, read Cornyx’s Garb from DS3.
“Ravens are said to have once been Firelink messengers, guiding the undead to the land of ancient gods.”
@illusorywall based purely off a vague memory of an old video, apology for not confirming this, but, It’s possible the renowned player was Marcus/ENB? I Don’t think he play tested DS1, but, he was known as a “renowned demon souls player” who did end up working for Future Press and playing development builds of other souls games. He was making videos on the game early enough to influence community sentiment on the game and the jan 2012 wiki reference? I Also personally recall him talking about his calling her “snuggly” in reference to the name “sparkly” in demon souls. I would fact check myself by skimming through his old videos but frankly I know a large amount of his stuff has been privated now and am unsure if it’d be worth the effort. But if you still have contact with him you may wish to ask?
I like the name "Hawk's daughter", the idea of a small hawk chick who can't fly yet so she spends her time trading for things is weirdly wholesome and reminds me of my old Pokemon card trading days.
Also note that in Dark Souls 1 the eggs are bluish-green, like crow eggs, while hawk eggs are pale with spots. I can't image that that wasn't intentional by FromSoft to sow further confusion.
When I first found that nest in Dark Souls III long ago, I just thought it was a bird flying around the character, since there was no character/creature model (not even the player's character's head didn't look down) and when putting something down, I thought it "magically" turned into something since the bird would reject particular items and "magically" accept others.
For the big bird in Dark Souls I, it could be a rook, they are related to crows and they live around old castles in Britain like the hub area. However, that's just speculation because their beaks don't look at all like the big bird.
7:41 ". . .renowned Demon Souls player", to me anyway, has the same energy as "who has two thumbs and named that crow", but instead of answering himself he decided to wait until someone answered for him. In reality though, it's probably just someone trying to make their opinion sound more valid by making an empty appeal to authority ("experts agree" sort of tripe). Either way, I don't remember where or how I first heard the names of Sparkly or Snuggly, but it fit and I liked it and that was good enough for me. Cute names for cute birbs.
I always kind of assumed Snuggly's name was player driven like some of the other unnamed characters were, but hers is just so natural that it really fits.
I for one plan to stick with it for the long haul. The hawk thing is cursed though. I put that down to a generic bird filler name.
It makes sense that the bird nest on a cliff would belong to a hawk because that’s where hawks tend to live & crows don’t. However, in defense of the community driven character writing, aside from the main hints being the only bird players interact with is a crow, & the voice actor does “squawk” like crows (& ravens which get confused for crows all the time), I think it’s helped by the fact that you find the nest on a cliff next to grave stones outside a fortress filled with (un)dead things & birds like crows can be found around places like battlefields & cemeteries. Their nature as scavengers also helps build the character because you can easily picture a talking crow (or raven) asking for little baubles & shiny objects.
Ravens and crows are the same thing anyway
It is definitely not a hawk. Eggs of a hawk are white. Greenish blue with spots - crow's eggs.
@@aleksazunjic9672 wow, it's almost as if it's a reused asset from the crow's nest in Firelink scaled down 🤯
@@GeneralTaco155555a Well yeah but which was likely made and placed first? the tutorial area or the crows nest in Firelink?
@@GeneralTaco155555a Yes, but they did that on purpose. It would be trivial to change color and make it look like hawk eggs if they wanted.
I think this is all rather interesting. While yeah, we can't doubt source, and credits and official material; and in spite of whatever what wiki did; I think there's a lot of room to actually speculate more on it.
In Demon's Souls it makes sense for Hawks. While we don't ever see one talk, it is the prominent bird of the game. Can be seen properly modelled, can be killed, etc.
In Dark Souls 1, there are now Hawks in sight anywhere (with the sole exception I can think of maybe being the Hawk Ring, and Gough by extention); and an over abundance of crows. Velka's lore. The painting's crow people. Actual crows. The carrier crow. While I'm not saying it is right, if there's any one bird this game trains you to think about, it is crows. I think even if we got the character named or visible, people would still argue it is a crow.
Now, if you consider Dark Souls 2 into the mix, it gets even more interesting. Because now we have A crow in Orniflex, we have A hawk in the Hawk's ring. But we have an over abundance of Falcons. There's the Falconeer, their falcons, the entire set. It is extremely early in the game and related to Sunlight medals. Which honestly gets me wondering if Dyna and Tillo are meant to be Falcons.
I'm not saying this *is* the case, but it sure gets my mind working thinking that maybe the intention was for each game to feature different birds in this position, or at the very least have each game have a more iconic bird over another.
But of course that's easily then disproved because DS3 goes back into heavy crow imagery; and so does Bloodborne.
And then, funnily enough, Elden Ring also does go back to have a lot of prominent Hawks. Stormhawks are not only summons, but actual enemies, a key item in a quest, hawks are present in shields, in a notable group of soldiers and so on.
Either way. It is a cautionary tale that I think is fairly important in all fandoms. The amount of fanfiction taken as fact in so many of them is staggering.
What about the "crow's" nest in Dark Souls 2, the one in "Things Betwixt" just before you wander into Majula?
"Hawk Girl" the Crow
I actually did remember the name "Hawk Girl" from the official guide. But it also has "Sparkly" in parenthesis. It's weird because the guide has some inconsistencies and some things are incorrect too. But the game itself doesn't confirm this invisible character's name. It's hilariously frustrating how the name is inconsistent between multiple wikis which is their own issue but for a new player who hasn't played demon's souls, what can they decide on their name? Personally, I'd just say Hawk Girl but I agree the giant crow that travels you to Lodran does add to the confusion.
Great video, as always.
You doing voices for the wiki editors is pretty fascinating :)
a little surprised to not see it mentioned, but another reason for thinking the eggs belong to a crow rather than a hawk is the eggs themselves. the speckled blue-green eggs that we see in Snuggly’s nest in DS1 more closely resemble crow eggs rather than pretty much any hawk eggs
"Taka no musume" could also be going for something like "hawk maiden". Grammatically, the "no" can make the preceeding noun an adjective/descriptor, and "musume" is commonly used to describe a "young woman". So "hawk's daughter" and "hawk maiden/girl" are both valid translations.
Love your videos, absolutely love these in depth looks into such miniscule details of this franchise i love
Excellent vid, man. Had no idea about this.
This video answered something I have been questioning ever since I saw the credits in DS2 referring to the trading birds as Dyna & Tillo, it was at that point I realized I had never seen the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls birds officially named
That's the Deviljho tail thing from monster hunter all over again
Why, what happened with that?
Jho doesn't eat its own tail. That was totally made up. @@ecbrd8478
@@ecbrd8478 1:47 happened.
i hate that because i have the most vivid memory of it happening in 4U and none of the other explanations (overlapping monster corpse, meat trap, etc) could explain it AND the tail disappeared while he ate, so... what the fuck did i witness 10 years ago
@@LegendaryMythril You constructed a memory out of thin air. It's called the Mandela Effect and it is odd. Probably formed from ingrained biases justifying themselves or by memories being warped by new information.
Basically, you were told Deviljho eats its tail by so many seemingly knowledgable people, that your mind fabricated an instance of you seeing it in-game. It's one of many reasons why memories are inherently flawed and why witness accounts older than a certain timespan are frequently scrutinised and doubted.
Amazing research, loved it!
9:36 for the record ‘taka no musume’ could be translated either as ‘hawk(‘s) daughter’ or simply ‘hawk girl’, ‘musume’ does technically mean daughter but it is commonly used more generally to refer to any young unmarried woman
That's so confusing then, because hawks don't care about shiny objects whatsoever, but crows are crazy for them. Why would they even be interested??
Totally. Add on the whole thing about the hawks actually having 4 wings and Fromsoftware was cooking something strange.
@@illusorywall What are the birds' names in their respective games' files? That might help clarify things, though the traders after Demon's Souls might be reusing the DeS bird's name in the files.
Snuggly also trade away shiny things though. Sometimes even for likely non shiny things. Sparkly on the other hand do seem more interested in shiny, but still trade away some such for duller things. Maybe one is collecting shiny things to decorate the nest, the other just keeping it warm. Hence maybe the sack and.. dung. :s
Quad wings is an insect thing. Maybe some sort of all the hybrids in Souls thing? I was thinking dragon half first, but then realise even fantasy four winged such are rare. Unless talking about a dragonfly or blue dragon of course. Plenty of those. ;)
The way they talk also reminds me a bit of these: ua-cam.com/video/66l9LRUFXAg/v-deo.html But friendlier. :)
That's crazy 😄 I was really convinced that name must have came from some obscure item descriptions I never read and never questioned it. Loved the footnote too haha. You are awesome to this community 💪
Love how you snuck Crystal Teardrops into the video. 🧛♂️
I never thought about it particularly hard, but once DS2 came around, had it in my head that Ornifex had something to do with this - or there was just some silliness going on from the devs about where the voice was coming from. Very good video.
Everyone come quick! A new Illusory Wall video just dropped.
Hearing the guide book mention actually made me pull out the insane tome that I have known as the Dark Souls Trilogy Compendium, which also ends up calling her Hawk Girl! Fun little fact.
9:40 _musume_ can also just mean "girl". It doesn't necessarily have to mean "daughter." So yeah, "Hawk Girl" sounds about right as a translation.
I don't know if they changed from the original version to the remake but the Demon's Souls in-game subtitles from the remake (as you showed on screen) literally show Sparkly's sound as "CAW" which is pretty universally accepted to be the sound a crow makes in English - so it's not even just down to trying to interpret the sound aurally.
Also if you look up "crow eggs" online, the eggs in Snuggly's nest are deadringers for those. Hawk eggs not so much.
Just a couple of additional things that probably lead people to believe that the trading characters are crows.
9:40 娘 as a suffix can also be read as "ko" with the meaning of girl, so 鷹の娘 is to be read "hawk girl" as well
The big bird that transports you is probably a raven. It has a thinner beak, flatter tail fan, and it's able to soar (glide on the wind without flapping its wings). Crows have a thicker, less pointy looking beak, a diamond shaped tail fan, and are very flappy since they can't soar.
I assumed the giant bird that transported you to Firelink was a raven, because of Armored Core. In those games, you usually do some kind of initiation test before gaining the title of Raven and access to the Raven's Nest. The Undead Asylum is in a sense an initiation test before you get taken to the full game proper, so I thought they were making some sort of abstract callback to their previous flagship series. This speculation was made on my first playthrough long before I knew about Miyazaki and the development history of the games, but there are plenty of other design conventions that are curiously similar between both series.
Doesn't look like a raven. Looks like giant crow.
@@GuitarGuy057 Not everyone knows as much about birds as you
@@MAYOFORCE
Google knows more.
Another likely subconscious thing pushing the community to assume the birds are Crows instead of Hawks is probably the commonly understood idea of Crows feeding on Carrion leaving behind bones and them being over a dying tomb full of spooky skellingtons. These are all dying worlds, it makes sense that they've attracted a Murder of Crows instead of a Kettle of Hawks.
A somewhat analogous example in Elden Ring would be how all of the Red Wolves are called Red Wolves of Radagon on Fextralife, despite only one being called this in-game. Proper nouns are just stickier because they’re more specific and have a bit of flavor. In that case, however, there may actually be some lore significance to the difference between them. Interestingly, the developer comments refer to them as Rune Wolves.
the way the phrase "snuggly warm and fuzy" is quoted seems like that is how the Demon Souls player called the bird.
The biggest reason people thought it was a crow is probably the "caw, caw" in Demon's Souls. It was in the subtitles: "Caw, caw." Hawks don't go "caw", but crows do. However, since the files say "Hawk girl," this might have been an issue of localization.
whenever i think of a UA-camr who does explanation/behind the scenes type video either, i think or they imply their a 3rd party who studies the topic from the outside. its jarring every time Illusory explains something he did in Souls history
but then again im a Helldivers 2 player and i was an active part in the games micro-famous liberation of Malevelon Creek… but im no youtuber
Really fun video, well put together and presented. Pump.