Shout out to the person that liked the video after it was uploaded only 24 seconds ago ❤
And thank you for 3K subs! Next video is likely another Bloodborne one!

I think yhorm's profaned flame is born from greed.  Greed consuming man specifically is a recurring theme.  the fact that there's treasure all over the place and several mimics (the very symbols of avarice) also helps.

So here's how I have always seen the Fillianore scenario:

Time usually would move forward, like a river. But here comes Gwyn, placing the darksign at the end of time. Fire will exist until the very end of time, as will dark, and no matter what choice people make at the end of the age of fire, a new one will happen because fire is at the very end of time, sealing darkness. It's like a magical dam that you can't see but is keeping the river from reaching the ocean, like a curve getting closer and closer to 0 but being unable to reach it. And Fillianore's egg is what ensures the Ringed City, this invisible dam, is held in place. But with it gone? The Ringed City is back to the moment in time before it was sent to the End of Time, to where Oolacile still existed and interacted with them.

By the time you get there, the egg is already beginning to fall apart and it takes a mere touch to fall apart, so I'm sure Gwyn's ambitions would've fallen apart even without you intervening. But you do. And now the points between 1 and 0 aren't as far apart. A curve that went from 1 to 0.5 to 0.25 to 0.025 just became a straight line, the dam holding the river has vanished, and all the time between Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3 flows at once as it was meant to. All those linkings of the fire happening one after another instead of across a long time. That is the result of Gwyn's ambition and his sin: A world covered in layers upon layers of ash. And where we're at? I personally think that's the true start of an age of dark. Not an overwhelming dark trying to consume the fire binding it like the abyss, not a stagnant dark like the deep, but a natural, peaceful one after the flames have run their course and burned out.

3:50 I’m 100% certain Untended Graves is from the past because if you talk to the old lady in the chair in the untended graves before you talk to the old lady in the chair in the regular Firelink shrine, she recognizes you.

One of the very few to ever mention Gertrude, finally some good lore.

@6:08 - For those who aren't in the know, Filianore is undoubtedly a reference to the movie Angel Egg, a rather cryptic movie about a young girl who apparently bottles water and stashes them around the city, while protecting a peculiar large egg.  There's more, but I'll leave that for anyone interested in the film.  If you love analyzing films and trying to decipher meaning from art that doesn't spell its own meaning out, kind of like the lore in Dark Souls, it's definitely worth watching.  If you couldn't care less, it's probably just going to confuse and irritate you.

“Drown in the Deep…or rise from it.”
-Rhulk, the First Disciple

8:30 - I think that the fact that Filianore seemingly has no eyes, and black tendrils/roots sprouting underneath her eye sockets, her holding something that very much resembles the concept of the First Sin (A white egg-shell that encases something dark; like the White Souls that imprison the Dark Soul, much like the Seal of Fire on the Ringed Knight's Armour, or the Dark Sign, which is also a ring of fire surrounding darkness) and her job of keeping the Dark at bay (at least, according to the Pygmy at the start of the ringed city), together with the existence of the Firekeeper's Eyes, and the phrase "[the eyes show] ...scenes of betrayal, things never intended for her ken, visions of… the age's end…"; is all indicative of the theory that Filianore was the first fire keeper. She even looks very similar the the DS3 firekeeper, and seemingly has a very similar dress to both the DS3 Firekeeper and Anastacia from DS1, only pure white, instead of ash-stained black.

This might also relate to Gwyndolin's existence, who seemingly also bears many traits of Firekeepers, and who is directly associated with them via his servant, the Darkmoon Knightess. It seems like Gwyndolin was "raised as a woman" to fulfil a similar role to Filianore.

What's funny about intro with the pilgrims walking through the ash/desert, is that the CG opening was commissioned very early in development and is representative of an older version of the game's story. That's why it doesn't show up in the final game and had to be added in DLC because it was just cut content. The basic story would have you go to the great desert(Carthus, which explains why there's so many references to it in the final game), in which you would do "something" to reveal the ruins of Anor Londo. There's still a ton of evidence of this too, if you look at the 'snow' all over Irythyll, it doesn't clump together like normal snow does. That's because it's not snow, it's sand. From didn't have time to properly change it to snow so they just re-colored the sand to be white, but didn't change the dust you kick up when you walk on it.

A lot of the game's unanswered questions are just a product of changes made during development that they didn't have time to fix.

Importantly, The Ringed City is obviously not pristine. It's clearly being kept in a sort of stasis but that's part of the problem, stagnation.

Macaroni

dark souls 3 is goated❤️

I always assumed the profane flame was just the busted one that izilith made and turned herself into a bug and whatnot

The thing about the Profaned Flame is that the Flame of Chaos has gone out, with naught but a few Embers in some demons and on a sword remaining.

Regarding the opening and the end of ringed city, I always got the implication that the pilgrims were from that far future and just went on a pilgrimage march until the fenomena that transports people through time took them back to the  past aka present day Lothric kingdom to get a lord since all the pigmi lords were shriveled old husks.

I'm also guessing Londor is probably a hollow kingdom in that far future.

Who knows tho. Just thought it'd be cool

Also when Fillanor wakes if you go back to the swamp. There are more trees which further supports sent forward in time

32:33 finished the line as soon as you said it, glad you did also 🔥 everything did in fact change when the fire nation attacked 😂

My suspicion about the introduction cinematic is that it’s more indicative of what the game was originally going to be, rather than a vision of the Ringed City post-Filianore. That’s why you see a kindled hollow dragging a corpse: earlier on, the bonfire system was designed around your own creation of checkpoints by using a corpse in conjunction with a coiled sword. Similarly, I think DS3 was going to be a much more desert-like world, but this was abandoned, perhaps because it wasn’t to the level design’s benefit.

Also, I would posit that Iudex Gundyr’s second phase is an instance of a boss that is representative of the Deep. On a lesser level, there are the Pus of Man monsters. Both of these represent the Deep as something that is starting to violently manifest in the “mundane” reality.

My headcannon is a Pilgrim Butterfly is an Angel born during the age of fire, so it's a twisted gnarled mass of abyssal puss that's burning up due to seal of fire. As the fire wanes and Pilgrims continue to hatch you get an angel. The pupaes are projecting a fully developed illusion of themselves but the pupae itself won't actually take flight as a real angel until you link the fire for humanity and turn the darksign white, mirroring the angel's white luminescent color. An angel is only possible because of the undead curse, but claiming the fire for humanity turns the curse into a sort of a twisted blessing. I think we see a true angel hatch from the Old Stone Humped Hag but it is singed black because the darksign, while almost snuffed out, is still the red darksign of the old gods. Obviously both creatures share the "moth and flame theming" and I like to think that explains a lot about them. Another neat detail is that the Angel's faces resemble snapdragon seeds, which look like miniature human skulls.

Midirs boss room looks just like the cave where the furtive pygmy (so often forgotten) received the first flame, and it’s covered in dark purple “water”. Midir also uses deep magic… could it be where the souls coalesce?