i know people have come up with a variety of ways to interpret the vessels' level of sentience so im not sure if this is a mad cold take but ive always been attracted to the idea that vessels when first created are very near to the blank empty thing the pale king wanted them to be. near but not completely. near enough to be plausibly mistaken for it. and that it is only and necessarily through continuous exposure to the world that they uncover more and more personhood. that is to say, i wish for there to be an incredible irony in the pale king identifying correctly a possible vessel and in the process itself dooming the vessel to become impure. you know. metaphor for having children and all.
been thinking about this again. a hollow knight that slowly learns what it wants and what it means to want something at the same time it is also slowly learning what it means that its not supposed to. only realizing its a cage once youve grown into the bars and wanting nothing more than to go back to being small and blank and ignorant again. and at the same time the growing is such joy, how could you wish it away so easily?
a hollow knight that is the ONLY one of its siblings that has the chance to grow beyond the void at all, because it was chosen to be the pure vessel. a hollow knight that is constrained to be only the void it used to be and no longer is, because it was chosen to be the pure vessel.
