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Dark souls fans are infiltrating other spaces
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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I'm going to play devil's advocate here, because it just seems badly worded.
Regarding anxiety, medication will relieve the symptoms, but the anxiety itself, the cause of it, is still unaddressed. That happens in therapy.
I think that's where the Dark Souls joke comes in, because they aren't talking about being "cured" of anxiety with meds, but overcoming it while being helped by meds, which is being compared to fighting a boss while making use of summons (or magic or resins or whatever other mechanics the speaker dislikes). The idea is that "beating the boss" is an objective challenge that requires you being limited to certain tools, and using tools outside of that to win is "cheating" and therefore you didn't "really" beat the boss. The joke is that anxiety is like a boss, a challenge that you need to defeat without aid from items to make it easier (to "cheat").
Obviously I'm only explaining the joke in tedious detail because I am assuming it's of interest to someone who is inclined to do a devil's advocate thing.
Yeah, if you're given meds in isolation without probing into what's wrong then you have my condolences. But the comparison to a boss battle, like it's supposed to be an arduous task, is an artifact of how tasks are structured in games and education. Your anxiety might come from crowds, but if you tank some fatigue and headache from consuming less caffeine combined with anxiety meds and you can tolerate it for a while then gg.
If it has to do with trauma, you might have a harder time in stabilizing yourself, but it might involve the affirming process of finding community with whom you overcome. And finding people who you fw isn't really a dodge or die boss battle.
I like watching snowflake ironman accounts on YouTube. I even played Old School RuneScape with a few ironman types for a while. Basically, you choose to limit yourself in funny ways. "I can only use what I acquire from sailing" or "I technically have a way to get 8k smithing experience an hour, so I must get 13m experience before I do anything else." Watching them limit themselves helped me overcome that kind of complex and really enjoy the freedom to choose whichever grind I find compelling that day anywhere on the map.
The point being that if I don't think I'm going to discuss the game or if I'm doing my first casual playthrough then I want to see whether I like the game enough to play it again to even entertain putting extra constraints on myself. So if I don't really enjoy the process of having anxiety, why the fuck would I choose to limit myself in the process of overcoming it? The only good reasons are things like adverse health effects, dialing in dosages and options, and complications to that effect.
That's the joke, that the attitude that I outlined is ridiculous.