It's all chill here (sorry if Iforgored to tag. it's a problem and prolly will continue) any of the big 3 (he/she/they) with a preference for the last two(ladies and gentlemen, we gottem)
theres a painting I like by a soviet painter of an enemy pilot falling out of the sky - his fate is sealed hes head down midair with a bunch of rebar below if hes not dead already - but in the moment of falling he has his arms up around his head peacefully like a sleeping kid
To me it shows a paradox - one can have compassion for this enemy as a human being only in the moment after there is no chance for him any more, if there was a chance for him hed be using it to try to destroy you
The thing about the moon is maybe you don’t need to write a poem about the moon. The moon’s been done, we’ve discussed it. It’s a coin a mirror an eye a lantern in the darkness. It’s a rock in space. It’s the dang moon we’ve all seen it! Is there something you can notice that’s is more surprising than the moon???
so.. im posting some drawings for a favorite headcanon + monumental yapping, bc i have free will, but the wisest thing to do here is to give you a little preview and a couple of content warnings beforehand that could apply, i think:
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cw surgery (non-graphic), cw body horror, cw injuries, cw blood
ok so i have literally nothing to back this headcanon on more than logical assumptions, but sometimes i like to think that, beyond god-king and knight, beyond father and child, the pale king and the pure vessel are creator and creation.
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the pale king is an engineer who decides to make his most sophisticated kingsmould to date: the hollow knight. the key difference between his other creations and the hollow knight is that the latter has a biological shell, a solid body that resembles the ones of bugs. this complicates the matter, because the pure vessel (a creature that, to the king, is one in a million, if not the last of them - and who will require much investment to prepare it for its role. in other words, it's too precious to lose) has to be trained, and it might get hurt; it might get hurt to a threatening degree! due to it not having a voice to communicate nor mind to protest its pain. to save the vessel's life in circumstances where it cannot heal itself, could pk truly approach the vessel just as an engineer? wouldn't the vessel need in equal parts someone to play the role of its medic?
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and that's the second issue: vessels are void, and if we look at the effects of void in both games, the sheer proximity or contact with it has negative effects on the well-being of common bugs (and higher beings alike, though they're more resistant). even if the king did not know of these effects (implied by the retainer in the lighthouse), vessels, as crafted by the king (soul of wyrm, soul of root, heart of void) are also creatures with no reasonable precedents, so who knows how much void warped the insides of the vessels. combine that with the idea that, even ignoring the void's involvement for a minute, the understanding of root biology must be rare and the king's current anatomy even more so (he made up his anatomy when he transformed, and we already have hints that his body is a little different from other bugs). so a cross-breed between root and wyrm must also be incredibly unique.
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all this I mention to merely question the idea that the pure vessel could ever be treated by mortal doctors of the court in the first place. it's too precious and it's too foreign, maybe even too dangerous. But it would certainly require diligent and careful studying, lest the king were foolish enough to start training it in battle with 0 understanding of its body, and then be at a loss of how to treat it when it gets hurt. there could also be other motives for studying it: the combination of a pale offspring cross-breed with what's essentially its primordial predator (void) could turn out to be incompatible and start to affect the vessel's development and well-being. I have seen many ideas about it, im certainly not the only one who has this headcanon.
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but the king!! is not!! a medic!! unless you believe the snail shamans treated it (a cool idea, though i doubt it), the only other person with some knowledge about void, with some experience studying it and handling it, with proven resistance to its prolonged exposure, and whose light can calm the void is the king himself. he also has access to knoweledge about pale root and pale wyrm anatomy, plus sufficient interest in void research beyond just spearheading this whole hollow knight plan. if he's already done this much, why wouldn't he accept being the best man for the job?
anyways yeah the hc is that the king probably was its private medic and surgeon beyond just being its god-king and parent. just saying that though would heavily gloss over the idea he cannot properly educate himself with existing medicine bc they are just not that applicable to whatever the pure vessel's body has going on. so he has to substantially learn in real-time, empirically, as he risks the only hope of his kingdom, as he operates on what's simultaneously his toddler and his primordial enemy, all while being no more than an engineer with a blindfold playing at medicine.
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I'm sure that isn't incredibly nerve-wracking and traumatizing, I'm sure that wouldn't lead to episodes of dehumanization, humanization, and trauma-induced fondness over the pure vessel <3
in fact, I'm sure this concept doesn't have the potential of deriving into other things, like the king finding the pure vessel's heart - would his child's heart be dead or beating? - like its inner void tendrils trying to attack him mid-surgery, or idk - him having a journal where he writes down his understating of the pure vessel.
all this without mentioning how this hc could affect the pure vessel's understanding of the king -> when the one that orders when and how much pain you are put through is also the one who can make it cease. when being the hollow knight is measured by how well you stand the pain. smth smth their duality between love and pain, heal and wound <- yes, op is incredibly tormented by a headcanon.
I love how whenever ATLA recognizes Sokka is smart enough to solve a problem but it’d be too fast they just stick him in some kind of situation. Like he COULD’VE stopped jet from drowning a town so they tied him up and dumped him in a forest. He COULD’VE figured out what that spirits deal was so they lost him in the spirit world for 24 hours.
This is how writers should deal with characters who are too smart for the arc instead of making them suddenly dumber for no apparent reason.
If you frequently find yourself in random situations while your friends happen to be experiencing problems maybe you, too, are too smart for the narrative.
One thing AtLA did really well is combine the Smart Guy with the Comic Relief in a way that works. I think it works because Sokka is genuinely skilled in many ways, but in the areas where he isn't, his inexperience, sarcasm, and skepticism is funny.
my senior english teacher told me that any scene with a woman in a cornfield in every piece of literature ever is about her journey to womanhood/pleasuring herself in the field and i just.... believed her
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