This page collects common arguments against the readings on this site and dismantles them. Fair warning: some of these readings are frustrating enough that the tone gets blunt.
I decided to make this its own page now because the amount and length of these justifies this.
All of these are arguments I either actually heard or read, or which impose themselves logically based on existing fandom lore takes.
"But wouldn't Gehrman be Laurence's child"
No, the cut dialogue is between Laurence and Gehrman, Gehrman waits for Laurence to return, and in this context Gehrman being Laurence's child makes no sense.
"The cavities are just burn damage"
The visual storytelling would make such specific burn damage really random and would turn the Nightmare into a disconnected accumulation of horror.
"It's all about sin, punishment and guilt"
I almost want to refuse to even engage with this. However, a few words. This reading makes a lot of things in the game really random and overall turns it into a B-movie full of shallow american tropes. This is not what a japanese game studio in 2015 created and considers a masterpiece.
"It's all about Queen Yharnam"
Laurence is the one Gehrman speaks to in the cut dialogue, Laurence and nobody else. Laurence is the one with the womb cavities. They are his own, on his own body. This is game design, intended reading.
"Gehrman could be Laurence's father"
ANY claim except "Gehrman and Laurence loved each other and made a child", it seems. Either way, Laurence never adresses Gehrman as "father" or any form of that, and why would a father crawl out of the womb of his son? The whole thing quickly stops making sense if you look at the surrounding evidence.
"Maria and Gehrman are Laurence's parents"
Admittedly, if Laurence is a christ figure, someone named Maria as one parent seems kind of smart. However, this also does not make sense. I will not explain here what I think Maria is, as that is complex and inflates the section too much. Either way: Maria appears to have a male body (which I will also explain elsewhere on the site eventually). Laurence STILL never adresses Gehrman as "father" and other elements of the story stop making sense this way.
"Maria and Laurence are Gehrman's parents"
There is lots of cut dialogue between Laurence and Gehrman. If Gehrman is a child lost by Maria and Laurence, all of this becomes nonsensical. The cut dialogue is not early experiments like some other things found in the game files. It's fully fleshed out and has full spoken voice lines. Laurence says to Gehrman "it's almost time" (not "will be back soon" as the English localisation implies), implying the upcoming birth of Flora and his own sacrifice through the c-section.
"Maybe the Orphan of Kos is Mergo"
This is just another version of "It's all about Queen Yharnam". Mergo is the child who was carried by Queen Yharnam, but Mergo is associated with blood. The Yharnam Stone is a fetus that appears to consist ONLY of Blood. His color is red. The Orphan on the other hand is water-coded, blue and silver. If they wanted to establish a connection between these, the Orphan wouldn't have such abundant water imagery as opposed to Mergo's actual fetus. Also, the womb cavity is STILL on Laurence. It won't go away from either argument.
"It's all about Queen Yharnam" V2
Queen Yharnam is never shown on an altar, or with missing legs or an opened skull as Laurence is. Her only wound, if you can call it that, is her abdomen with the visible signs of Mergo taken from her. She also exclusively appears in the Chalice Dungeons (deep and hard to reach), in the nightmare associated with Mensis and the reveal leading to it (after Rom). Her form is more ghostly than physical. I have a few theories about who she actually is (aside from Mergo's mother and as such the foundation of Laurence's existence), which I might go into on a different subpage.
"The game is fundamentally about the oppression of women"
The game is fundamentally about the horrors of childbirth and -loss. Which was a much more serious problem in the 19th century than it is now. The Healing Church is a medical institution, not a religion wich crude male-led hierarchies. Interpreting Laurence as a cis male who exploits women requires ignoring his body entirely. The women in power the game explicitly shows go unacknowledged. Bloodborne was not written by JKR and american twitter activists in the 2020s. It was made by a Japanese game studio in 2012-2015, with a completely different cultural relationship to these themes.