Раньше я только репостила понравившиеся мне записи других пользователей, сейчас хочу перенести сюда статьи с размышлениями по поводу фандомов и отп.
Чтобы не пылилось в столе. Может быть будет кому-нибудь интересно и человеку, пришедшему в умерший фандом ( у меня такие есть), будет что почитать.
Иллюстрации и фотографии мне не принадлежат. Если получится найти авторов, буду тэгать. Если вы знаете, а у меня не указано имя, пожалуйста, напишите мне, чтобы я указала авторство.
Так же буду публиковать свои тексты, рисунки и фотографии.
#member #diary
Silksong Progress #3: Entirely too many Phantom headcanons
I love the drama of the Last Judge's path into Act 2 - the triumph of a hard-won victory and awe at the Citadel's grandeur suddenly crashing down into the filth and cruelty of the Underworks. I'd even argue that's one of the best and most memorable sequences in the entire game. But I'd watched that route several times, and I was impatient to meet Phantom, so after reaching the end of the Blasted Steps I turned right around and took the Mist route into Act 2.
And that route is certainly haunting in its own right! Everything about Sinner's Road and the Mist seems designed to warn the player to turn back, to flee from this hostile place with its maggot-infested waters, spike-filled mazes, and screaming wraiths.
And yet, the silkflies lead Hornet onward. To what end?
What secret sin did the Citadel wish to have hide so thoroughly?
What beauty could possibly remain here, in this cursed and abandoned place?
Well…
It took me ages to beat Phantom, but I have no one to blame but myself since half the time I was doing silly things like trying to capture all their needolin dialog in one recording. Their singing truly was as lovely as I'd seen rumored!
And their aesthetic. Their lore implications.
Oh look. Time for another theory ramble!
When was Phantom created?
I don't have that much to support this theory besides Vibes and "the timeline makes sense??", but I think Phantom and Lace may have experienced two very distinct eras of the Citadel.
Phantom grew up to see the last embers of life smothered out of a dying society.
Lace grew up in a gilded tomb.
Hear me out:
We know from Lace's Silk Heart that Lace was "One to wish [GMS's] waking" - meaning she, and likely her sibling, were created while GMS was at least partially asleep. And we know from the Unraveled's Silk Heart that when Grand Mother Silk first began to stir, she bound the Citadel's society to worship her.
Why, then, are the Choral Chambers lying dead and dormant when Hornet arrives? What happened between the congealing of the Unraveled and the creation of Lace?
Well, presumably, the creation of Phantom.
Perhaps when Phantom walked the Citadel's halls, they saw some of its society while it still lived. An era of waning glory, to be sure, but glory nonetheless. More and more bugs would have been taken by the Haunting. But even Haunted bugs still work, still pray, still even appear to talk among themselves.
Perhaps the Citadel's stage was still in frequent use. Perhaps the Architects and Sentinels still functioned to instruct a curious, newly spun creature in the ways of cogworks and the longpin.
Perhaps enough bugs still lived that Phantom had friends. Friends with masks, friends who weren't Grand Mother Silk's daughters.
(I think it's notable indeed that all of Grand Mother Silk's children are explicitly binary and female. All, that is, except Phantom. The exception that proves the rule. Were they intended to be female? Was rejecting their assigned gender part of their claiming an identity for themself?)
As I understand the world of Hollow Knight, a mask is intimately tied to a bug's identity. But when the player first sees Phantom, they do not have their mask on - implying it was not originally part of them in the same way First Sinner's mask was. (That their sister has no mask whatsoever also supports this.) Yet throughout their fight, they're constantly holding the mask to their face - maintaining the identity of the mask is incredibly important to them.
That mask also appears to be broken.
There's an obvious way these pieces fit together, isn't there?
I see Grand Mother Silk as a classically tragic figure, and I think it makes the most thematic sense for her treatment of the Weavers, Phantom, and Lace to be a spiral of her becoming increasingly more controlling, and thereby increasingly driving her children to reject her.
She might never have taken it well to see one of her children openly desiring a different identity than the one she intended. But a Grand Mother Silk still freshly stirring, still reeling from just becoming aware of the Weavers' great betrayal…
Phantom and their fledgling independence never stood a chance. Even the slightest rebellion would have been salt in their Mother's still bleeding wound.
And so their mask was broken and they were banished, discarded and forgotten. A second betrayal so painful Grand Mother Silk blotted it from record and from memory.
Though even after being discarded, Phantom performs a role that makes significantly more sense for a semi-functional Citadel. What pressing need would there be to operate a complex waste disposal system if the Choir was dead and their song silenced? That's another detail that makes me date their creation to a Citadel that yet clung to life.
Technically, we also don't know for certain that Phantom was confined to the Exhaust Organ against their will - but if they could leave, why wouldn't they? Greymoor has far more Silk, while the spools in the Organ are empty. Perhaps it was the desperate hope of regaining their Mother's affection that bound them rather than woven runes, but I suspect they were trapped in the place nonetheless.
Regardless of the exact specifics, Phantom was left to slowly but surely fade. And rather than keeping the Choral Chambers Haunted to worship her, Grand Mother Silk cut their strings.
The Citadel went from dying to fully dead.
And I think this silencing may have been an intentional component of Lace's creation. Grand Mother Silk took pains to ensure her next child would grow up with no mask, no living companions, and no role besides devotion towards her Mother. A daughter born maimed to be even more physically and psychologically dependent. A daughter born loyal as no other option would exist to tempt her.
The spiral tightened further, and the cycle repeated anew.
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How do Silk-strung beings even work?
Let's move to a slightly more cheerful topic!
There's plenty of fun story and art to be had with all options, but for my own headcanons I've been leaning towards the more organic side of the "biological/bug-like vs inorganic construct" sliding scale for the siblings. Less because of any strong lore reason, and more simply to differentiate them from Second Sentinel and the cogworks, which are similarly artificial, but clearly own the "robot" end.
For example: one thing we definitely know is that the siblings need Silk, and a lot of it to continue living. So do they eat it? Magically bind it like a Weaver? Or do they lack any innate biological processes and so need to stitch themselves up by hand?
I'm inclined to say the siblings can probably Bind (after all, if Phantom can Cross Stitch, presumably they can use a more basic Silk skill). But that's for battle and emergencies. As demigods like Hornet, they theoretically may not need much in the way of normal sustenance if they rely on this. But also as I've seen speculated for Hornet, it's probably healthier for them to actually eat and drink like a normal bug.
The piles of spools and absence of anything resembling normal food stored in the Organ suggests to me that their diet only or primarily consists of Silk, though.
…Also I just really like the mental image of the two of them chowing down on a bag of those Reaper orbs like they were popcorn.
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In the previous section I also used the phrase "growing up" a few times. But did Phantom and Lace even have a childhood in any meaningful sense of the word?
I like to think they did. One need not knit a shawl or weave a blanket in a single sitting, and surely a "marvel" like artificial life is far more complex than a mere garment.
So perhaps Phantom and Lace didn't have infant forms or gradually growing bodies in the same way Hornet or other bugs did, but it may still have been a staged process for their minds and bodies to take shape.
(Since GMS was asleep and confined to her cocoon for their whole lives, perhaps Widow was the one to physically tend to them? Honestly, even if they sprang fully formed from their Mother's Silk, someone would have had to help them first adjust to being alive...)
Similarly, while I've seen a few fics build excellent characterization out of the idea that Phantom and Lace had their skills pre-programmed into them, I'm more inclined to believe that they had to learn most things the same as any other bug. That Phantom's mastery of the longpin was hard-earned and truly theirs, not another brilliant artifice of GMS. They have so little else to their name; let them at least own that.
Phantom's Eva-like stasis pod also seems relevant here. Did GMS create the silkspun in such pods? Or was their creation a more directly magical act, like her uplifting of the Weavers, and that pod is something Phantom scavenged in an attempt to slow their decline?
I lean towards the latter. It builds nicely on Phantom operating the Organ and spinning up the Wraiths implying that they are quite adept with magitech experimentation.
As for the siblings' current forms…
I quite enjoy interpretations of the Silk siblings with skeletal internal support structures, but if I had to guess myself, I'd say they are meant to have hard exoskeletons. Phantom even mentions their shell in their needolin dialog. (Although I suppose "shell" is used interchangeably with "body" in this bug-filled world.) In general, they and Lace seem to at least pass as normal bugs; Hornet calls out Lace's scent being what gives her away, not her appearance or how unusual she feels to hit with a needle.
More guesses: the white/grey parts of their designs are the most cloth-like. That layer may even be similar to hair or actual clothing, easily modified and extended and not sensitive to touch. But underneath, they look the same as GMS, Hornet, or a Weaver: black and chitinous. Or as close to chitin as one can get with very tightly woven Silk.
As for what would happen if you cut open the false chitin? Who knows. Their internals are probably not as moist and fleshy as a real bug, since they give off silk flecks rather than blood drops when hit. And Phantom leaves nothing behind but a dry dreg cloud and their mask, after all.
(Rest in peace, Phantom. Your fight was too cool and your character too interesting to let you live on my file. 😔)
Anyway.
The memory showing Phantom floating in the pod also gives an amusingly skewed impression of the siblings' heights. From that, I'd gotten a vague idea that Phantom was at least a head taller and might have a more adult-looking form than Lace, but if you actually line them up side-by-side…
Nope! Phantom is also very short. I wonder if other bugs would confuse them for a child just like Hornet and Lace?
That being said, Phantom's fraying "hair" makes them look a lot like GMS when Hornet binds the monarch. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they and Lace are biologically akin to larval and/or altered clones of GMS. (Yes yes yes to all the art and fic of Lace with her Mother's hair under that wimple/headpiece/extremely tempting pogo target thing she has.)
But given GMS's arachnid features and fondness for spiders, plus most Weavers sharing Lace's "stick figure body, bulbous head" body plan… my guess is that "weird baby Weaver" or "living Weaver doll" is probably how the siblings clock to unknowing bugs.
I've been deep in the FFXIV fandom for a while, so the first example that came to mind is that the siblings are to Weavers as Alpha is to normal chocobos. Like yes, that is hypothetically the same species of fantasy creature, but it's been chibified, cutesy-fied, and subtly anthropomorphized to the point it looks far more like a walking cartoon or a stuffed animal than the the "real" thing. Though while everyone in FFXIV adores Alpha, I imagine most of Pharloom's inhabitants find Lace and Phantom rather unsettling.
They look very much like bugs, but they don't quite move or smell like bugs, and that's prime uncanny valley territory.
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Some other miscellaneous tidbits…
-When completely missing details on Phantom, I'm inclined to borrow broad strokes from Erik, i.e. the actual Phantom of the Opera character, since that seems to have been the major inspiration behind them.
So, if I had to guess at Phantom's personality: Philosophical and intelligent, but afraid to reveal their true self to others. In addition to their talent with the longpin, they're a gifted musician and engineer with a particular love for theater.
They would have Strong Opinions about Trobbio using the Citadel stage, is what I'm saying. Maybe they can have one(1) chandelier to drop, as a treat.
-I can't remember where I saw it, but I adore the idea that Lace's Silk Heart originally belonged to Phantom. What a delightfully twisted source of angst! Even if Lace wanted to give it back, she'd just end up dying herself. Which Phantom certainly wouldn't want…
-Finally, to show my hand a little: It's one thing to abstractly ponder lore, but it's another thing entirely to want to write compellingly from a character's POV. Especially one as lightly sketched as Phantom! A lot of my theorizing here is driven by trying to define them enough to attempt that someday.
What was Lace and Phantom's relationship like? How and when did Lace meet Phantom? How do the Exhaust Organ, the Mist, and the Wraiths all work? How does Phantom feel about their part in the destruction of Bilewater?
What are their interests and hobbies? What idiosyncrasies would they have as a narrator?
All questions I'll eventually need answers for, canon or not. But my interpretations are just mine - I'd love to hear what other people have already come up with about them!
Just remembered I have free will. Have some weird bugs
Basically silk siblings if they didn't get separated. Inspired mostly by randomly finding Lace's theme played on organ and Phantom's theme played on strings
some more dancing phantnets that were drawn before I accidentally began making the animatic. kind of a weird design for phantom's head I suppose, but I think I like it for now?
