Laurentius and Mildred

So I've just noticed something that very well may be common knowledge, but that I've never realized before. When you initially rescue Lorentius from the barrel he says "I would have been her supper if not for you." I always just assumed he had been captured by/for the butchers, but because he says her I think he's most likely referring to Mildred. So that got me thinking, has anyone ever tried to not rescue Lorentius before and seen if Mildred still attacks you?

PlasticandRage wrote:So I've just noticed something that very well may be common knowledge, but that I've never realized before. When you initially rescue Lorentius from the barrel he says "I would have been her supper if not for you." I always just assumed he had been captured by/for the butchers, but because he says her I think he's most likely referring to Mildred. So that got me thinking, has anyone ever tried to not rescue Lorentius before and seen if Mildred still attacks you?

According to enb, the cooks themselves are all female.

T-King-667 wrote:

PlasticandRage wrote:So I've just noticed something that very well may be common knowledge, but that I've never realized before. When you initially rescue Lorentius from the barrel he says "I would have been her supper if not for you." I always just assumed he had been captured by/for the butchers, but because he says her I think he's most likely referring to Mildred. So that got me thinking, has anyone ever tried to not rescue Lorentius before and seen if Mildred still attacks you?

According to enb, the cooks themselves are all female.

damn, really? to the depths!!!

that's interesting. I've unfortunately just killed all of mine before having the chance to confirm this, but, and pardon me if this comes off as a bit lewd, but they don't appear to have any female parts. Before you say it I'm aware that their chests are covered by aprons, but I mean most females have at least some definition there.

Also don't they make noise when they attack or die? I feel like I remember them making pretty masculine grunting sounds

Here's what the wiki says:

Contrary to appearance, the man-eating cooks of the Depths are actually
female, as told by Laurentius.(Unconfirmed. Though this is supported by
the encounter with Maneater Mildred,
Laurentius simply says "she". Since there are two butchers, who both
appear to eat their meat cut and prepared, it is safer to assume he was
talking about the giant rat the butchers seem to feed.) They are busy
preparing lunch for the inhabitants, and you arrived just in time to get
on the menu.

This guy's just speculating, and I just googled it and can't seem to find anything else supporting that they're female. I don't think they are. They certainly don't look it to me.

Cooks being female was confirmed by the developers in the design works interview, unless it's a translation error.
Them being female could also have been an afterthought because of mildred being female, since there's nothing about the cooks that even slightly points towards female.

That's what I'm saying. It's obvious that there's a connection between Mildred and the Cooks because of the whole sack thing, but I've never seen a woman that looks quite like that before.

I didn't consider the whole giant rat thing either though, which in all honesty does make more sense than my Mildred theory, considering the shoot that's behind the butcher's table

I think that while the cooks are female, Laurentius is talking about the giant rat. After all, the cooks feed her, it's obvious if you think that there is a hole full of corpses behind of one of them that leads right to the giant rat room. And some corpses are on the ground close to the rat.

In the interview they even pointed out that Laurentius refers to the cook as 'her'.
The giant rat was my initial thought as well.

Is that interview online anywhere?

Nevermind. I found it

So I just read a translation of that complete interview, and you're absolutely right. The butchers are definitely female. No real explanation is given connecting that fact with their appearance. Miyazaki just says they were intended to be female from the beginning, and then a joke is made about sniffing the sack. That's about as far as they go explaining it. I have to say, my mind is thoroughly blown.

I thought her was the Gaping Dragon...

Well.. her name IS Maneater Mildred.. Either that or she's some sort of freaky deaky chick. XD

Shindori wrote:Well.. her name IS Maneater Mildred.. Either that or she's some sort of freaky deaky chick. XD

No, not Mildred, nobody was disputing her femininity, read the posts. We're talking about the big muscular butchers. Like the one you encounter that's chopping the meat on the table in the Depths

PlasticandRage wrote:

Shindori wrote:Well.. her name IS Maneater Mildred.. Either that or she's some sort of freaky deaky chick. XD

No, not Mildred, nobody was disputing her femininity, read the posts. We're talking about the big muscular butchers. Like the one you encounter that's chopping the meat on the table in the Depths

XD oh... i knew that >_>;

Their grunts are those of men, not women. Being that large in size and not having breasts just proves they are men.

inb4 Google search "Fat women with no breasts"
^ The dev team would Google this just to make one character for dialog purposes.

I couldn't agree more. It makes absolutely no sense at all. I wouldn't have, and kinda didn't, believe it until I read the interview myself. They intended them to be women. Why they chose to design them looking unmistakably masculine who knows?

Wow... I never woulda thunk the butchers were ladies. :affraid:

Speaking of Mildred, I always wondered if there was a connection between her nudity and the Seeker set. I don't think she would have been in the Shadow set and she doesn't use Pyromancies so I doubt she'd have left the Tattered set. The fact she's in her skivies and there's several sets of armor lying around always made me wonder.

Evidently she's designed around a build one of the debuggers was using when they were still doing testing. I guess they thought it was funny so they just polished her a little and included her in the game.

I doubt that the Butchers are there to feed the Giant Rat, and am more inclined to believe that the chute behind the first one is merely for the disposal of garbage (off-cuts), seeing as that anything thrown down to the chamber that way is likely to end up on the ledge that the player lands on (out of the rats reach), and I highly doubt that either of the Butchers are female, which just leaves the Gaping Dragon. Who I might add clearly has an extended stomuch area, a possible indication of pregnancy, which could be why the Butchers are feeding her to begin with, meaning she is part of a Dragon breeding program.

Here's a link to the intro, take a look, and tell me the Gaping Dragon is not pregnant: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIqgfTBXe_o

well whether Gaping is pregnant or not the theme of Gaping is gluttony. I read that during development they wanted to create all the still existing dragon characters as tainted by the mortal world, like Seath for example. Gaping was supposed to represent hunger, which is where that big toothy opening along its underside came from. It's supposed to be like it cared only for eating so much so that its entire body developed into a giant mouth. Aside from that I honestly think all these theories make loads more sense than the butchers themselves being women, but it's difficult to dispute what the designers themselves say about them.

I hear what you are saying, but if the extended stomach area is an indication that the Gaping Dragon is merely a glutton, and is not pregnant, then how is it that the rest of it's frame is skinny by comparison? Aaargh there's too many questions, and not enough answers, my head is going to explode!

I mean either way, pregnant or not, I still think it makes more sense that they're feeding Gaping. Either way the theory makes perfect sense, while the whole butcher thing doesn't really make any.

Like if Gaping is pregnant, like you say, it makes sense that they could be feeding it in order to try to breed it, and if it isn't pregnant they could be feeding it to protect themselves from it. Like if it's just an eating machine and sharing the same relative space with them it'd make sense for them to feed it to stay off its menu.

Agreed, although I'm not sure how much damage it could do if it wasn't fed, as there doesn't appear to be many places a creature of it's size could go, other than to perch itself on the upper balcony, back down the hole it climbs up from, or out through the hole in the wall at the back of the Boss area (the result of an earlier unsuccessful escape attempt perhaps), which gives more credence to the captive breeding theory. Mind you, there is no telling how big the hole at the back of the Boss area is, or if it leads to another area. One things for sure, I'd luv to have been given the opportunity to explore it after defeating the Dragon. [insert large *sigh* emote here]

Part of what the interview I read said was that the dragon no longer has a steady source of food where it lives, like it's eaten pretty much everything there is to eat down there and it's contributed to the dragon becoming insane/violent. Another nail in the butchers feeding it theory if you ask me. How else could be sustaining itself down there? I think you're right. Honestly I think someone translated incorrectly somewhere down the line, the butchers are male, and their feeding Gaping. If approached only from a perspective of logic, it makes the most sense that way. Nobody here speaks Japanese huh? Maybe someone should try to ask in the Japanese wiki forum with like Google translator or something.

Although I guess even if you got someone to understand and respond to what you were asking it'd be pretty difficult to translate any kind of answer without being able to type the proper characters into a translator.