ghost in a half shell

You can call me Light! They/she. This is mostly a fandom blog where art and writing sometimes happens, with a smidgen of voice acting on the side. Games, animation, and comics are my main jam. Current status: "What no Sea of Sorrow does to a guy" i.e. having a very normal time in Silksong's Steel Soul mode. ○○○ Commission Status: OPEN! ○○○ Art Tag Sketch Tag Writing Tag Voice Acting Tag ○○○ Tripping Toward the Light - a Homestuck fanadventure about ghosts, mediums, family, and that sticky feeling known as love. Completed and up for everyone's reading/viewing pleasure!

[victusinveritas]

[naughtypiggy]

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in

TLDR- Modern agriculture pollen is low in nutrients, and there aren’t enough wildflowers. Science has to develop vitamins to supplement the diets of agricultural bees. So plant some wildflowers for the wild bees near you.

[heydocverdant]

you’ve heard of vitamin B, now get ready for bee vitamins

[taytei]

happy pride to them

hope they know what a rainbow is

[justsomeectoplasm]

[noknowshame]

[userfish]

this pride month we’re all going to be radically pro transgender. or else.

[userfish]

hey so this means radically pro ALL transgender. don’t put limitations on this. all trans people are radically accepted here.

[heyyoufriendthere]

This new fish species is called Snuffleupagus. You can probably guess why | CBC Radio

S. snuffleupagus, a newly described species of fish, is named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus, to which it bear

SNUFFLEUPAGUS REAL

[brightnessrandom]

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!

Hooray for science and hooray for S. snuffleupagus !

[big-green-wall]

My love for Thomas the green moray eel who lives at the New England Aquarium continues and grows and knows no bounds. He is my muse. This is a plow book I made featuring my guy for my art books class, I love how I can fold him up in many funky ways

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[babyjanedough]

Already know I wanna send this to people on June 1

[yurimonthly]

Yuri of the Month: Lady of the Shard by GGDG

A temple acolyte has an especially personal relationship with god.

A precise mixture of the silly and the sincere, slow-drip worldbuilding, and GGDG's signature use of color-as-storytelling. Short, sweet, and maybe even divine, Lady of the Shard earns its spot on the altar as my yuri pick for June 2026.

Availability: Free on itch.io

Ratings/Warnings: depictions of brainwashing, body horror

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[rootbeergoddess]

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

[thesaltofcarthage]

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.

[lightrises]

marking off another trip around the sun means another playthrough of silksong already in progress (as one does) but something is... different this time. something which demands a standard of "good enough" if not perfection that intimidates me more than a little(!!)

whether i'm a bad enough dude to complete steel soul sooner rather than later remains to be seen—at least to date lol—but i intend to see this through to the end. and i do mean all the way to 100%. feel free to follow this journey in commiseration / watch me do it so you don't have to / just for the hell of it 👏🏼🪡🕸️

[transguyarchive]

Excerpt from Lou Sullivan's FTM newsletter, December 1990.

[rederiswrites]

Step one: use hall bathroom instead of master bathroom, notice that Builder Beige switchplate is horrid with lovely new purple walls. Take it down and wash it thoroughly.

Step two: dig out stash of old seed catalogues saved for this purpose. Get super crabby because you can't find the Mod Podge anywhere. Give up, then have daughter find it immediately, in the "glue box" you forgot you created.

Step three: decide on a color scheme, and start cutting. I asked @phantomtheraccoon if we should coordinate or contrast and she cleverly said both.

Step four: collect your flowers and fiddle with layout.

Step five: paint item with Mod Podge, place your images, and paint them again. Leave to dry, which honestly doesn't take long.

Step six: trim edges add cut out holes. I didn't actually cut out the screw holes; I just cut little X's there for the screws to go through. Worked fine to put it up, we'll see someday how it survives taking it apart again.

Step seven: coat everything with Mod Podge at least one more time, paying special attention to edges. Dry elevated on something (say, the top of the Mod Podge bottle) so it doesn't stick down.

Step eight: okay, wow, that's awesomer than expected!

*jazz hands*

[dangerously-human]

Ooh, yes, I should decorate my light switch plates here, even if I can't bring myself to do all the painting. I used to have a Lumos/Nox one I made very hastily when I was first renting and it made me happy every time I used it. Light switch plates are such an easy, cheap way to decorate when your space is temporary (they're like a dollar at home improvement stores and very simple to replace with the original when you move out), highly recommend this kind of craft.

[rederiswrites]

Yes to this addition. They're so cheap! Just do something, and then you will enjoy it every time you use it! Do something crappy! You can redo it later. This is such a low-risk/high reward project.

[rederiswrites]

Reblogging because I still enjoy this switchplate every time.

[dangerphd]

plates: painted green, decoupaged with paper jungle/diluted white glue, waiting for blossoms and sealing.

[dangerphd]

🎶whiiiiiiiite gluuuuuuuuue aaaaaand waaaaaaateeerrrrr and aaaaaaaaaastrobrights!🎵

inspired to just do the thing by @rederiswrites , in context with wall art by @yuumei-art

[rederiswrites]

Oh it's wonderful!

[feralphoenix]

hey @staff and also @support ???

so i have a sideblog that was terminated last year, for no reason, immediately after i made a completely worksafe new post to it. (so, my best guess is it got erroneously caught by some algorithm.) i sent a support request IMMEDIATELY, and i still have the automated email response confirming the support request was received and requesting further information, which i replied to immediately. this happened on april 16th 2025.

i have waited ONE YEAR PLUS ONE WEEK to get some sort of followup. this is the approximate length of time it took for tumblr to restore my account the last time it got terminated by accident. because i am still being left on read, i attempted to send a followup support request Right Now, Today... only to have the request auto-rejected because it is "too late" to appeal.

tumblr staff and support, i have been on this website for 15 years. the sideblog in question was almost as old as my main blog. i am extremely unhappy about this, and even more displeased that my only recourse is to @ you about it in public.

this is, again, THE SECOND TIME something like this has happened to my account. under the circumstances, a "sorry! it's too late to fix it!" blocking me from even submitting a private support request is simply not acceptable. particularly given the sideblog was one i'd had for 13 yrs at time of deletion. it is still registered as mine on the support form drop down menu. to the best of my knowledge there was nothing on there violating the site TOS, and everything i posted there was safe for work.

i need to know what happened here, and would like you to restore the blog in question if that is at all possible. thanks.

[theprofessional-amateur]

[taurzza]

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

really enjoying all the videos Muslims have been posting of their cats looking like this

when the humans are up at 4 am for suhoor

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

[feralphoenix]

wherefore art thou beast?

this was initially intended to be a brief, maybe 3 sentences long post, but i had entirely too much to say about the subject and it turned into an entire essay. Welp

CONTENT WARNING for all of the canon-typical everything in the Hollow Knight series (colonialism, genocide, racism, child abuse & toxic parenting, parent loss, rape & unwanted pregnancy).

This essay also involves SILKSONG SPOILERS THROUGH ACT 3 AND THE TRUE ENDING.

ALSO AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight 1 as an anticolonialist text. If you did not see these undertones in the series, or only saw Silksong as being particularly critical of empire, some of the contents of this essay may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.

LETS GET TO IT:

wherefore art thou beast?

the term "beast" in the hollow knight games is used to describe the bugs/creatures who aren't sapient, the ones who are considered animals.

when the insect characters refer to arachnids as "beasts" what do you think they mean by it, with that context?

herrah's a weaver - we don't know if she's among the first generation of weaver refugees in deepnest or if her parents were one of the lucky weaver couples who were able to have children and she was born in deepnest. but her people come from the single most technologically advanced civilization we've yet seen in the hollow knight setting.

herrah is literally spider cinderella - she went from ordinary commoner to queen when she and the deepling king fell in love. then she outlived him because weavers have disproportionately long lifespans compared to other bugs, and spent a significant part of her adult life thwarting hallownest's various attempts to invade and conquer deepnest, which obviously would have required incredibly high levels of political and wartime savvy.

herrah is so intensely beloved by her citizens, deeplings and weavers both, that there are deepling heavies who call themselves her devouts: this level of approval requires skill with statecraft and public relations. she is depicted by those who knew her and in her few personal appearances in both games as brave, wise, and loving.

with the new information we have from silksong about the weavers' fertility issues (with confirmation from hornet that herrah had these fertility problems and that hornet has them too), we are presented with the strong possibility that herrah telling the pale king that she would only become one of his dreamers if he could give her an heir was her giving him what she thought was an impossible condition. if that's the case, that makes her letting him try to prove her wrong even worse: rather than simply letting deepnest's longtime nemesis have her vagina to end the infection/fulfill a personal desire for parenthood, that would imply she did so to prove her point and make the pale king give up and leave her/deepnest alone. if the latter is the scenario we are looking at, then the pale king successfully impregnating her and herrah safely carrying hornet to term was unexpected, as was the pale king therefore laying claim on herrah's life for his hollow knight plan. but herrah doesn't renege on the deal - she calls it fair bargain and holds to her word.

and whatever the scenario we're looking at with hornet's conception and birth, herrah adored her daughter. in hornet's flashback, herrah is the first one to tell child hornet that everyone projecting their own hopes, dreams, and political goals onto her can go get bent; herrah is one of the few people in hornet's life who supports her personhood and agency. throughout the dreamers' appearances in hollow knight, as monomon and lurien argue about what's to be done about the seals, herrah is off to the side thinking "i literally do not care about any of this as long as hornet is safe" and her final thoughts, should the player use the dream nail to read them, are about her willingness to sacrifice everything for her daughter.

hallownest does not call herrah "the beast" because she's a dumb brute. they call her "the beast" because she is a spider - and because hallownest looks down upon all the other bug nations in the area as uncivilized savages.

similarly, the poem "pharloom's folly" that's presented as an epigraph to silksong calls grand mother silk a beast. there are many reasons that a casual observer who's made it through the game might agree: pharloom is as much of a nightmare state as hallownest - and much more obviously so, as none of their neighbors were able to successfully fight back. third era pharloom as we see it is deep into late stage capitalism, class stratification, and industry and has completely stripped all its neighbors for natural resources. and while the great machine of silk harvesting and implementation continues in third era pharloom to keep the cradle's lullaby going, third era pharloom inherited these systems from the second era's weaver rulers, who in turn had repurposed the form of the state that grand mother silk had originally created to privilege the weavers over all other bugs in pharloom's first era.

beyond this, grand mother silk is, notably, The Failmom Ever. the structure of pharloom already paints her as a great player of favorites, one of those migraine-inducing karen mothers they call "monster parents" in japan. at the same time, her failure to mention to the weavers that she created them from pharlids - essentially that they are adopted, and not literally sprung forth from her very own loins - and her creating lace to look and sound eternally neotenous suggest that she's the sort of parent who specifically wanted babies and children to coddle, and was not really prepared for or even interested in having teenage or adult offspring.

grand mother silk lost the weavers' trust starting with her not telling them the truth about their origins, leading to their estrangement and the weavers' eventual betrayal. from her reaction said betrayal seemingly caught her entirely off guard - either the weavers never felt comfortable confronting her about whether she actually wanted them as children or as servants/a personal ego boost, or they tried to and like many a real life failparent grand mother silk did not understand how serious this was for them. the second era of pharloom was defined by the weavers' attempts to unmesh themselves from grand mother silk and their mass emigration came from them realizing these attempts had backfired and era 2 pharloom still revolved around their mother regardless.

grand mother silk very much loves lace - "i want a daughter to love and who loves me; it doesn't matter if she's disabled or insane or short-lived," says grand mother silk of lace's birth in the relevant silk heart sequence (paraphrased into plain speech). she goes on to spend all of act 3 fighting with all her power to save lace from the void even though lace just betrayed her and cut her arm off, and actively sacrifices herself to get hornet and lace out of the abyss in the sister to the void ending.

hornet remarks in act 3 that the wound she inflicted on grand mother silk was already mortal, that grand mother silk is doomed regardless, and that the only reason she fights back is to protect lace. in response to the snail shamans' shock that grand mother silk has managed to resist the void for so long, hornet explains how grand mother silk is using her defensive cocoon as a stopgap, and that "even as the dark eats its outer [layer], she will spin its silk anew. the effort would be immense and it will strain her soul thin, but what other choice remains? this is the desperate act of a dying god."

but despite how grand mother silk herself feels, lace is anxious of and jealous for her mother's attention, fears abandonment, and is bitter to have been created with such a fragile and delicate body. some of lace's frustration comes from her suspicion that hornet has been brought as her replacement, and some may also stem from her mother's inability to actively parent her from within the prison of the cradle, but lace's neuroses are certainly also rooted in seeing what's happened to her sister/sibling phantom - who was also created by grand mother silk but is never mentioned by her in-game, and who has seemingly been swept into the margins to do the literal dirty work of expunging the citadel's exhaust where the underworks meet the bilewater, and left there to rot out of sight and out of mind as their body literally falls apart.

in addition to all this, silksong goes out of its way to put into words what makes "pale beings" - the white higher beings the pale king, white lady, and grand mother silk - different from other higher beings such as radiance and unn. pale beings, says hornet, are possessive and controlling and entitled; as half pale being hornet mentions recognizing these tendencies in herself and actively avoiding acting on them, and she says out loud with her mouth while trying to comfort green prince, "devotion or destruction… these are the only fates my kind allow." we learned in hollow knight that this sort of behavior out mr "no blazing kin" the pale king informed his monstrous treatment of his neighbors and ultimately doomed hallownest in his inability to leave radiance and the moth tribe alone; here in silksong we see not only pharloom's monstrous treatment of Its neighbors, but grand mother silk losing her whole ass mind at the weavers' betrayal and going full scorched earth on them.

but "pharloom's folly" does not address grand mother silk's tyranny or her bad parenting. it doesn't talk about her pale being-typical walking red flag tendencies. "pharloom's folly" is conductor romino remarking that everyone has forgotten grand mother silk is dangerous because she is asleep, but if she ever wakes up everyone is doomed, because she is a spider.

and hornet herself? we know her intimately after two full games. we know her fierce intelligence and her strength of character, we know the kindness she continually downplays - constantly offering advice and assistance to various characters in pharloom, saying "ok if it's on my way" while accepting severely out of her way errands, yet protesting to pilby and flick that all the wish-granting is also for her own benefit. we know her sense of duty and refusal to run away from her responsibilities, we've used the dream nail to see her grieving for herrah and worrying that sending ghost to murder radiance and end the infection might be the wrong choice morally. i will not sacrifice my life, says hornet over and over, because my life was too expensive. she refuses to let the snail shamans weasel out of their responsibility in the void trying to eat pharloom in act 3. if she must take the lives of the old hearts to save the pharloom region then she will do it personally, honorably; afterwards she speaks of karak, karmelita and her ants, nyleth and seth, and verdania with a deep respect. she gives ghost their name.

if we get the witch crest, on the way we watch hornet power through the aftermath of greyroot raping her and forcibly impregnating her with the parasitic twisted bud - an event whose implications only get more horrific in light of hornet's mention of having outlived several romantic partners and her knowledge of her weaver fertility problems; she has tried to have children many times in her past and was unable to. it's a particularly cruel echo of herrah's circumstances; while herrah consented under duress, that's still a far cry from what we see happen to hornet. and that's not even getting into mad doctor yarnaby's no-sedative-nor-anesthesia back alley abortion, performed with a drill fit with metal spikes that have "hardly begun to rust" according to crull and benjin.

and on the other hand, through the hunter's journal we discover that hornet can also be very silly. if a creature is furry and soft-looking, hornet wants to pet it; the bigger the better. she wholeheartedly condemns the citadel's zoo the memorium and its attempts to alter the native wildlife… except for the massive moss grub, whose pointy spines she wishes the citadel had bred out to maximize its huggability. as a child she hoped she would one day sprout wings like her father's, and envied the bees and mantises for their flight and their natural weapons. as an adult, she says, she has learned to accept the limitations of her body… by which she means supplement generously with tools. she refuses invitations to play games because she's busy… until she's offered rewards, and proceeds to have a great time. she has a dry sense of humor which she deploys to devastating effect ("your cellar seems to have an ant problem").

she backhands grindle, nuu, and yarnaby for overstepping her boundaries; she can do a little dance on sex pest flea kratt's head… and can also do one on nasty victim blamer bell hermit's shell, once you get to act 3. if you take her back to shakra's mother's final resting place and use the needolin, she'll play the requiem shakra taught her. she loves her mothers and hates her father and insists to lace that lace is a person like any other because lace's inferiority complex reminds hornet of what hallownest did to the hollow knight. her love of hunting she got from herrah; her love of tinkering, despite everything, is from the pale king.

various people throughout the pharloom region refer to hornet as a beast.

this is not a commentary on her personality or her behavior.

it is

because

she

is

a

spider.

when hollow knight characters refer to a sapient person as a "beast," it's a pejorative.