Boss Characters

An Explanation of "Bosses" and Their Importance to the Story

One of the most memorable aspects of Dark Souls is the special encounters with non-player characters that are especially potent, which often present a challenge for the player to overcome in order to proceed through the game.  The characters are generally referred to as "Boss" characters by players and the Dark Souls fans, since their role in the game generally conforms to the traditional video game boss encountered at the end of a level and/or the game.  Examples from another video game would be Bowser from the Super Mario Games, and like Bowser, many of the Bosses in Dark Souls are directly related to the understated plot of the game.

Much of the story of Dark Souls is not presented directly to the player by a cinematic or via a long dialogue with a non-player character, but instead, the story (or "Lore" as it is known among Dark Souls fans) comes from text descriptions attached to items found throughout the game and occasionally via comments made by various characters the player interacts with.  So, the importance of the Bosses is clear since the majority of the context of the story is provided to the player via the text attached to items associated with them, as seen in the following image taken directly from the game.

A Katana forged from the Soul of a Boss, the Chaos Witch Queelag

The majority of the Bosses in this game are non-human in one form or another and many tower over the player character during their encounters.  The gender of the Bosses encountered in Dark Souls have been collated as shown in the following chart.

Boss Name	Gender
Asylum Demon	None
Bed of Chaos	Female
Bell Gargoyles	None
Black Dragon Kalameet	Male
Capra Demon	None
Ceaseless Discharge	Male
Centipede Demon	None
Chaos Witch Quelaag	Female
Crossbreed Priscilla	Female
Dark Sun Gwyndolin	Male /Female
Demon Firesage	None
Dragon Slayer Ornstein	Male
Executioner Smough	Male
Four Kings	Male
Gaping Dragon	Male
Gravelord Nito	Male
Gwyn, Lord of Cinder	Male
Iron Golem	None
Knight Artorias	Male
Manus, Father of the Abyss	Male
Moonlight Butterfly	None
Pinwheel	Multiple
Sanctuary Guardian	None
Seath the Scaleless	Male
Sif, the Great Wolf	Male
Stray Demon	None
Taurus Demon	None

So, out of the 27 Bosses in this game, only 3 are clearly and implicitly female with two exceptions in the case of Dark Sun Gwyndolin and Pinwheel.  The remaining Bosses are largely defined as males either in appearance or in the game's descriptions, or their gender is considered to be none, since many of those are non-human demons with no clearly defined gender.  We will start by looking at the female Bosses, then Dark Sun Gwyndolin who is identified as both male and female, and finally Pinwheel, which has multiple genders associated with it.

Bed of Chaos

The Bed of Chaos itself is a large, tree-like demonic monster that is shrouded in flames as tiwers iver the player.  The gender of the demon itself is considered to be female since it is the "mother of all demons", and the Bed of Chaos is explicitly both caused by a female character and possessing that same female character, The Witch of Izalith.  The Witch of Izalith is presented in the opening cinematic of the game as the only female character, and the Bed of Chaos is noted to be caused by a mistake of the Witch of Izalith and thus, she not only became the Bed of Chaos but also the source of many of the demonic enemies and bosses found within the game.

The Bed of Chaos
http://darksouls.wdfiles.com/local--files/bosses/bed-of-chaos-large.jpg

The Bed of Chaos is Dark Souls' lone "puzzle Boss" where the player does not actively engage the Bed of Chaos in combat like other Bosses but must instead navigate the treacherous terrain that the Boss is located in to find and attack the vulnerable points of the Bed of Chaos.  Throughout the encounter, the Bed of Chaos will attack the player with its tree-like limbs or with a fire-based attack while sections of the room's floor fall away as the Bed of Chaos is damaged.  The most interesting aspect of the design of this encounter is the actual ease with which the player can eliminate these vulnerable points, once the holes in the floor have been navigated successfully.  The three vulnerable points of the Bed of Chaos are each destroyed with a single attack, meaning that the player can defeat this Boss with only three attacks in total, far fewer than any other Boss found in Dark Souls.  The fact that the game's primary example of hubris and incompetence is directly linked to its most powerful female character (aside from a female player character) echoes many stereotypes in science and technology regarding women's competence in those fields, where males are culturally perceived to dominate.

The Witch of Izalith
Source http://darksouls.wikidot.com/witch-of-izalith

To be fair to FROM SOFTWARE, they may have chosen to make this character female to play on the cliche of a "mother of monsters" but they also explicitly included the incompetence and failure aspects of the characterization as well, which combined with the indirect nature of the encounter portrays a female character as being a) incompetent, b) a failure because of that incompetence, c) the source for many of the problems that the game world Lordran suffers from, and d) the subtle, indirect challenge of this Boss rather than challenging the player with a straight melee encounter.  Thus, the Bed of Chaos is little more than an overt example of the stereotypical perception that females are less competent than males.

Chaos Witch Queelag

It is safe to say that the Chaos Witch Queelag is Dark Souls' most blatantly sexist Boss character, since she is a naked human female torso perched on top of a hideous demonic spider.  Queelag is introduced to the player in one of the game's few cinematic cut-scenes, where the game pans up from the demonic spider body to the naked and perfect female torso with her nipples barely covered by her Godiva-like hair, and finally ends by showing the lower half of Queelag's perfect and beautiful human face.  The full introduction of Chaos Witch Queelag can be seen in the first 0:37 of this Youtube video.

Chaos Witch Queelag
Source: http://darksouls.wdfiles.com/local--files/bosses/chaos-witch-quelaag-large.jpg

In the story or lore of Dark Souls, the Chaos Witch Queelag is the daughter of The Witch of Izalith, the aforementioned Bed of Chaos.  Queelag's current appearance is due to the same act of incompetence that formed the Bed of Chaos, so she provides yet another example of the "female incompetence" stereotype.  While Queelag herself never speaks to the player, after her defeat, the player can meet her sister, a friendly character only referred to as Queelag's Sister or "The Fair Lady", who has a similar appearance to Queelag but never attacks the player at all.  A full analysis of Queelag's Sister will be addressed in a later post.  She is mentioned here to present a contrast for Queelag, as Queelag's Sister is never presented in an overtly sexualized way by the game, unlike Queelag.  Instead, Queelag's Sister is kind, self-sacrificing, and very polite to the player, even though she mistakes them for Queelag and constantly refers to her as such.  So, Queelag is presented as aggressive to the player yet kind to her sister, which could speak to the stereotypical presentation of feminists in modern culture, where feminists are characterized as being violently opposed to males yet very supportive of females.  Of course, this analysis of Chaos Witch Queelag is based on the idea that the player (or at least the player's character) is male, and given the perceived dominance of males in gaming culture, this is probably a safe assumption to make about FROM SOFTWARE's intentions regarding Queelag, the juxtaposition of a positive trait and negative trait, which would make male gamers both drawn to and repulsed by Queelag.

The actual encounter with Queelag is one that is typical of Dark Souls, as she moves around the room either directly attacking the player with a flaming sword or by belching lava out of her spider body.  Queelag is not an especially challenging Boss encounter for the the point in the game when the player encounters her, so we must focus on her physical appearance, as FROM SOFTWARE forces us to.  Queelag's primary female characteristics, her genitals have been replaced with a horrific and grotesque spider body, while her breasts and face are left unaltered in any way.  The juxtaposition of the beautiful with the grotesque must have been the key design impetus behind the creation of Queelag but it clearly shows the male fascination with female breasts and physical appearance while also reflecting the stereotypical male revulsion with anything associated with the vagina including menstruation, which could correlate with Queelag's attack where her spider body (again, located where her vagina should be) spews forth damaging red lava which damages the player.

For Next time:  Boss Continued (Crossbreed Priscilla, Dark Sun Gwyndolin, and Pinwheel)