Very creepy and mysterious how the only thing that remains unchanged are the Balancer's weapons...

The Balancers do an excellent job of visual storytelling that juxtaposes the internal narrative that people have.

"A child who bears a weapon to save their village" is not a new story, it's fairly common-- the original Mulan story is a variant of it, for example. The idea of a child, a person without agency, being gifted agency in order to save those they love is appealing to both adults and children. Children like it because it lets them be the heroes who save their family, and the adults like it because it creates a world where a child does not need to die, and they're able to protect themselves when they come to be in danger.

But The Balancers point out the horror of such a situation: That a child needing to bear a weapon is a tragedy itself.
Children should not wield weapons; they should not BECOME weapons. For a child to raise a sword or a spear is indication that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
And the Balancers reveal this in shocking visual clarity. They are malformed children, warped and stretched into the form of a warrior that, put simply, THEY SHOULD NOT BE. There's a reason they look so wrong, because it IS wrong. They are covered in a veil of angelic symbolism and divine equality, but at the end of the day these are children stolen away from their homes and forced, against their will, to be the Weapons of a God that cannot understand humanity.

In the Everdark fight, this becomes even more abundantly clear as the veil of dignity falls away. The Balancers are not elegant, divine warriors-- but incomplete flowers, covered in viscera, broken by what they've been made into.

This is not a place of honor.
These are not chosen heroes.
Just the putrefying corpses of children sent to war.

"Would you still love me if I was a worm?"

Harmonia: beautiful until you get close enough to see the deathlike pallor and imfant faces.

Everdark harmonia: WHAT IN THE DRAKENGARD IS THIS SHIT

“The flesh of the shamans was said to meld Harmoniously”.

She just needs some ibuprofen

Before FS released the ED version. I thought, maybe in their future Everdark version they would fuse into one giant angelic valkyrie. But they give us a nightmarish one-reborn-aldrich  looking thing. I love Fromsoft man.

I love that their Relics massively enable L2 Spam — because it is reducing the Nightfarer with them into just being a tool for the Weapon's abilities, and their body is just a husk to facilitate that. Harmonia shows the extremes of what that form of "salvation" leads to brilliantly.

I love how her design evokes the bloodrose from base game elden ring, plant life as a visual standin for viscera is always one of my favourite design elements.
Also the little boney nub.arms on the worm reminded me of the plague babies from the valley of defilement

Those are not "buds and seeds" but the male and female parts of the flowers. One carpel (female part) and six stamens (male part).

Honestly I think this may be one of the most drastic changes in all of FromSoft history that we get to see in front of our eyes. The games have had numerous times of fighting enemies beyond their prime but this is a rare case (similar to Isshin) where get both what they sort of are in their prime and them all the way on the other side, its such an unexpected form for the Everdark version to take and it honestly fits perfectly despite it's jarringness.

Very Formless Mother vibes with the bloody rose imagery. I like their long necks too, very creepy.

This is pure nightmare fuel.. an example of how they know best to do body horror..

This genuinely might be the most horrifying boss FromSoftware has made, the first phase almost reminds me of a Silent Hill monster.

6:39 It turns out that this is not a worm at all, but a seahorse🤔

i cant help but think of white mask varres flower bouquet

Now Mohg being the day 2 boss makes sense.

The fact their faces remain intact somehow makes their everdark forms even worse, such potent and obvious reminders of who they once were sticking out mounds of sinew.

Edit: Since the worm isn't just their bodies alone, who or what constitutes the rest of it?

Yeah this might be the most viscerally horrifying thing Fromsoft has ever made to date. Like, I can picture how the Harmonia open into their Everdark form, skin splitting like gills and stretching outward, the flowers pushing out through the gaps. And all the petals just look like so much gore

Reminds me of how in literature, it's been said that the best fertilizer for flowers are human corpses. Just flowers growing on bodies everywhere. Good stuff, I was waiting for this video to be released :D.