This is my first ever and longest-running series of fanfiction, and the closest thing to a fully connected greater set of story arcs within the Nateverse.
The seeds for this series were planted in April 2014 when I was gifted a copy of the original Dark Souls II. It was my first foray into the FromSoft catalog, and the first time I'd ever really put any thought into creating and role-playing an original character. Around this time, I'd often have regular Skype chats with my friend and fellow writer ExpressNumber, who asked me about my character. Realizing I hadn't really thought much about it yet, I more or less freestyled a brief summary on the spot, describing him as a bumbling, dim-witted but well-meaning hero in way over his head, roughly in the vein of Dirk Daring from Dragon's Lair. The infamous DSPGaming had been making the rounds with the now-iconic "This is how you DON'T play Dark Souls II" edit, becoming one of my first sources of inspiration for better or worse. I found his recurring low-brow joke of naming each of his characters "Dumass" and playing into his ineptitude a little endearing, and wanted my own character to have a catchy, memorable name that was obviously out-of-place in the world of Dark Souls. With that, Knight LoveGame of Wes'Sv'Urginiah was born, his land of origin being an obscure reference to Retsupurae's Webcam Ward series.
Playing off of this, the yet-untitled Dark Souls II fic was set firmly in the territory of a self-aware comedy series almost unrecognizable from what it would eventually become. The Souls community was a much different place back then, still deeply rooted in memes, inside jokes, and that sort of general snarky self-aware internet gamer humor. To that end, my fic played out far more similarly to a Dark Souls parody animation like Dark Sauce or Happy Souls, mixed with Abridged Series humor and fourth wall breaking every other line. This ill-fated iteration was full of references to real-world media, digs at the fandom, and a fair amount of crude sexual humor, among other cheap jokes.
I originally began drafting the first chapter right after I'd beaten the game that following summer in an attempt to ride the hype and get more eyes on my story, but a combination of rough spots in my life and loss of inspiration made my progress stagnate considerably. By 2015 most of the community had moved on from its memer roots and toward more serious exploration of the series' lore through scholars like VaatiVidya. I became less and less enamored with the now-outdated idea until it fell into dormancy around summer 2015.
With my life back on the upturn during those months, I'd gotten heavily back into the anime community where I met another fellow writer who ultimately inspired to revive and revamp the DS2 fic as The Curse That Binds Us, a serious yet light-hearted shounen series that almost completely did away with the juvenile comedy elements. Over the course of the next two years (in my defense, I was also working on three other fics), I'd continue to write this fic, finishing in summer 2018. That's where it sat for many years; I'd promised a potential epilogue series based on the Lost Crowns DLC that never surfaced, but the main series was otherwise finished. As the years went on, I toyed with the idea of rewriting the entire thing as I felt that not only had my writing style improved, but there was still a fair amount of elements left over from its comedy roots that just didn't work with the rest of the series. After joining AO3, I started work on a full rewrite of the fic, dubbed "The Curse That Binds Us: Refined Plus 10 Edition".
...and that's where we are now. TCTBU is the obvious main focus here, but I'd also begun to expand the series with fics based on other FromSoft entries that tied them all into one anthology, with each one following a new protagonist. Each one retains the general shounen anime themes with their own twist of inspiration.
I originally had more ambitious plans to expand this series even further with Bloodborne and Elden Ring, but I decided to shelve both ideas; the BB fic would've taken inspiration mostly from Akame Ga Kill, while the ER fic was going to be a bit more Hunter X Hunter flavored. Long story short, BB got canned as I found myself struggling to flesh out six whole main characters. ER was simply too grand in scale and too open-ended for my more linear writing style. On top of all that, both stories were almost impossible to fit convincingly into my already confusing canon after the way I chose to end DS3.
All canon entries:
Not While The Nexus Binds Us (Demon's Souls, 3/?? chapters complete)
Black Wool (Dark Souls I, my girlfriend's fic)
The Curse That Binds Us (Dark Souls II, 9/20 chapters complete, the final two being the Epilogue.)
TCTBU: Legacy of the Lost Crowns (Dark Souls II DLC)
Bound by the Vestige of Embers (Dark Souls III, 2/?? chapters complete)
