She/Her My AO3 My bsky (currently just for FFXIV) My FFXIV side blog: alicesadventuresinffxiv This is a multi-fandom blog I update very irregularly. Expect a lot of Hollow Knight and Locked Tomb these days. I'm also a fan of Undertale, and I usually get back into Deltarune theories for a while when new chapters release. Previously and might still talk about: Higurashi, Umineko, Madoka Magica, Magia Record. (Sometimes other things too!) I try to tag, but beware of spoilers for all of the above! I only reblog fanart posted to tumblr by the original artist, and I despise genAI. If I get something wrong and accidentally reblog stolen/AI art, please let me know! My Japanese is very rusty (and was never great in the first place). So if you spot a mistake in my translations, also let me know so I can fix it!
Silksong Progress #14: Maybe pale beings are just Like That
Back when I was just watching a Let's Play of Silksong and chatting on that community's Discord, the first few theory/analysis bits I wrote were my attempts to wrap my head around the implications of the Caretaker's dialog here, and how it fit in with the lines from Lace's Silk Heart dialog.
So before I finish this analysis series, I'd like to revisit these lines now that I have a lot more knowledge of the game! But if anything, that knowledge has only made me realize that the line can be read in even more different ways than it first seems.
-One common read I've seen of the line is that Lace was spun by Grand Mother Silk in such a way that she will forever be a child in both body and mind. And I can see why this read is popular - it vibes quite well with the rest of the game's themes on Lace being created to be unusually and eternally dependent on her mother.
But the Silk Heart text is that Lace was spun mad and frail and pure, not spun immature.
I just think the Caretaker isn't a reliable enough source to base a lore claim as wild as "in addition to the other ways GMS limited Lace, she also did a secret fourth thing to ensure Lace literally can't grow up." It would be one thing if any of GMS, Hornet, or Lace explicitly corroborated the idea, but they don't.
In any case, that's just one read! Other interpretations I enjoy rotating in my head:
-Lace being frozen in childhood was some kind of stasis spell GMS had to actively maintain on her, and now that GMS is gone and/or Hornet can undo it, Lace will start maturing normally. This seems the most far-fetched without direct proof of such magic existing, but it also seems like a potentially fun thing to play with. You could even apply it for Phantom as well, honestly! Could they have been trapped as a child too, in this read? Did they only start maturing after they were discarded?
-Lace was intended to be permanently a child in body and mind, but GMS was unsuccessful in creating such a being, in the same way the Pale King was unable to create a truly mindless vessel. This is another very common read I've seen, and I find it equally, if not more thematically compelling than the first. After all, Lace seems to consider herself "a child, too broken" - not a child but specifically a failure to be a child, in some critical sense.
-The Caretaker, who is notably characterized as a curmudgeon and who has ample reason to dislike Lace due to her attacks on mortal bugs, isn't even trying to imply Lace is truly a child. He's passive-aggressively insulting Lace in the same way Hornet does, calling her mind comparable to a child's to insinuate she is an annoyance and her self-imposed duty is no better than a fool playacting as a knight.
My favorite part of this read is what it could imply about Lace and the Caretaker's relationship. Maybe the feeling was mutual and Lace hated that slippery snail who kept eluding her pin too! I'm very amused by the thought of them giving each other stink eyes from a distance and badmouthing each other to anyone who will listen.
-And lastly, here's my own pet theory: The Caretaker, having no special insight into Lace's creation and going out of his way to avoid her, has mistaken Lace's strange appearance and manic laughter for childishness. But there's actually nothing special about Lace's growth at all - she's just following the normal Pale being life cycle!
As for how that life cycle works - I'm hardly the first to theorize that Pale beings do not naturally mature into their "adult form" unless something actively pushes them to ascend. Absent that, they tend to clock as immortal children because technically, in terms of life stage, they are children. They're the larval form of gods. (getting real bloodborne up in here)
Indeed, compare Hornet's "Gendered Child" title and her mask not being considered fully "resolved" by the Mask Maker, or little Ghost not growing up to the Hollow Knight's height despite the two of them being the same age. Heck, compare Phantom, still nearly identical to Lace's height/proportions despite their Silk being "grey with age."
There are some real life bugs that do similar, after all. Cicadas or dragonflies spend the vast majority of their existence as nymphs, and their brief adulthood is a transformation that’s rather horrifying to consider from the perspective of a sapient being. Other types of arthropods (and salamanders, apparently) may stay in a larval form their entire lives - even reproducing that way! - unless they are placed in an environment that triggers their metamorphosis.
So Hornet taking mates despite technically being in a "child" life stage? Not unrealistic for a bug, if extremely bizarre by human standards.
All of which is to say - perhaps the solution to the mystery of "did Grand Mother Silk intervene to force Lace to stay a child?" is that it isn't a mystery at all. She merely didn't train/raise Lace in the way Hollow was raised, and so Lace's body wasn't likely to mature past her current form.
As for Lace's mind - well, as we see in the case of Hornet, non-ascended Pale beings look like children but their mindsets are actually more comparable to adult bugs. The Caretaker, just like the White Lady with the Knight, is letting his biases cloud his assessment of Lace when he should really know better.
Anyway, I'm rather fond of the simplicity of this theory, if nothing else! It nicely ties together and explains the weirdness of a whole bunch of Pale characters.
Here is my take on post-canon void Lace with the void that stays in her core, but becomes a part of her instead of possessing her!
🖤 The boundary between what are silk fibers and what are void tendrils is fuzzy inside her
🖤 It starts to instantly repair her silk if it is cut or loosened
🖤 It keeps her silk fresh by aerating it, rinsing it when she submerges in water and fluffing it so she will dry faster (think of a bird fluffing its feathers)
🖤 It can consume silk and incorporate it into her
🖤 It does not exactly solve all her problems because it has a mind of its own and kind of just shapeshifts inside her and develops new functions according to her whims and subconscious, so at first it causes more body horror than help
🖤 She can also consume organic material, though she doesn't get any material benefit from that, just the experience
🖤 If she meets any void being again, she can talk to them :)
🖤 She cannot shoot it Pure Vessel style on command anymore, void beings only do that when extremely stressed. Not cute
🖤 It is more noodly than whatever synthetic frame she had before, so over time she might become less constrained by things like having knees or elbows
My happy ending pilled brain can’t handle the fact that Phantom has to die or will continue fraying until there’s nothing left of them, nor do I like the concept of Lace being dependent on Hornet for silk…
So introducing controlled void as a binder to keep the silk in stasis! Allowing the siblings to be sustained forever~
originally I started drawing this for an ask about chaotic baby hornet but then I strayed away from the main question so now it's a separate thing. also hornet is silly
I really love your writing and general hollow knight related thoughts. assuming that post silksong hornet returns to hallownest with lace in tow, how do you think lace would fair in hallownest? Going from a rigid religious society to hardly any society at all
Hmmm, I guess this depends on a number of things. Lace WAS in a rigid religious society, but also kind of not really? Like, the exact timeline is hard to parse, but we do know is that the society has largely fallen apart (though the haunting at large is a recent thing I believe) and specifically per the caretaker's dialogue, it doesn't seem like Lace was involved much in that. She was mostly stabbing people. Given that the choir's song is part of what's binding her mother in sleep, this kinda makes sense?
So Lace probably wouldn't have been like, part of the society so much as opposed to it. What she would've had is her mother and a persistent fear of ending up like Phantom. Rather than a lot of societal pressures, Lace has one, very specific, incredible real and dangerous divine pressure on her. A mother who is seemingly very distant and very controlling. Lace can disobey her, but she also seems strongly motivated to try to play her part when under her mother's gaze.
So I think that all leaves Lace in an interesting position for going back to Hallownest, and I actually think the lack of society/people would be something she finds comforting, at least at first. Being alone is familiar space for her, and I think it might feel distant enough from her own mother that she would feel safer in Hallownest than she would in Pharloom, a place literally soaked in her mother's soul.
What bugs are in Hallownest still, last we saw, are odd sorts, but tolerant of weirdness as a result. Most of them would be pretty easy for Lace to have neutral to good interactions with. I think she would love the Mantises wholeheartedly. Literally the only thing we've been canonically told she likes is fighting. And the Mantises aren't going to be pulling their punches or anything like that. I think it would be an really important moment of catharsis for Lace to get the Mark of Pride. To have put skills she's trained in to use, and to be told without exception that she did good enough. She won, she has the respect of this group of people. That's all she had to do.
I really don't think Lace would have any problem with 99% of Hallownest. Certainly not with any of the bugs.
But uh.
There's one person there whose not a bug, and who I think would be a HUGE problem for Lace, regardless of how they behave.
The White Lady has a lot of options for how her character goes in a post-silksong game. I can't imagine that Hornet wouldn't visit her after everything. Even if they don't seem to have spoken recently in HK, I think Hornet would want to to as least tell her like 'hey I made it out alive'. And if Lace finds out that Hornet is going to visit one of her mothers, (she still has a living mother?????) of course she's going to tag along.
Only to find herself face to face with a pale being, whose also made some fucked up parenting choices, whose one of the 'mothers' to her situationship.
Again, to some extent, it really doesn't matter how the White Lady acts, she could be doing everything in her power to help and I think just her existing in Hallownest would fuck with Lace pretty badly. At least to start out. It's a huge trauma trigger for her, and would probably hardcore reawaken a lot of her fears about surveillance/abandonment/rejection/punishment. She might straight up try to kill the White Lady at some point, although I don't think she'd get very far. She could also very easily convince herself the White Lady has some sort of control over Hornet and thus Hornet isn't to be trusted anymore. Mostly though I think a lot of the trauma that she was maybe able to set to the side being in such a different place after such a big event (murdering her mother) would just all come back to haunt her.
To add to it, I think that the White Lady could be a genuinely toxic force in Lace's life. I believe in her, she could do it. She's got a pretty literal habit of not seeing things she doesn't want to, and that could pretty easily be stretched to Lace. Hornet's dialogue is pretty clear that she sees something of her siblings in Lace, namely personhood. If the White Lady feels the same, we know she didn't see the vessels as people, so she could easily extend that to Lace. I doubt she'd be overtly cruel, but she sure as hell could put bad thoughts in Lace's head.
Overall, I think Lace would like Hallownest and being there would do a lot for her healing, feeling a sense of safety and getting along with the bugs there for the most part. Learning how to be a person. Only for this to go crashing down the moment she meets the White Lady and all of her trauma is back with a vengeance.
The apocalypse has come and gone, and against all odds, Pharloom remains standing. The time has come for Hornet to return to Hallownest, accompanied by friends and allies: Shakra hopes to explore the mythical land beyond the wastes, and properly lay to rest a member of her own tribe; Lace fears unraveling without the aid of a Weaver, while contending with the immensity of a future free of her mother’s threads; and the Green Prince lives only only to spite the Citadel, passively seeking a more honorable end than might be found in the rubble of his homeland.
Meanwhile, Hornet returns from Pharloom with magic and knowledge that might aid in the slow recovery of Hallownest and Deepnest–and perhaps offer the chance to call home the sibling she once thought lost to her forever.
Chapter 7: The Shape of a Future You Can't Yet Grasp
[<<Prev] [Chapter 7] [Next>>]
It's been ten thousand years since we had a chapter properly focused on the green bean, but it looks like he's finally stopped dissociating long enough to participate in the plot. It's probably because of the Emotional Support Grubs, let's be honest.
At any rate, we're kicking off his plotline properly, with mantis politics and the introduction of the only major original character in this comic--Vise, a mantis who until recently existed in my notes exclusively as "Himbo Mantis."
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Hollow Knight Fanart Masterpost
Transcript:
Page 1
Vise: A challenge to the Lords?
Hornet: Yes. My companion seeks passage through mantis territories... however, we have been informed that travel through the wastes is restricted at present.
Vise: You have been told true.
Vise: The Second passed during your absence. The Last remains strong in mind, but increasingly frail in body. Until a new Lord is named, our borders remain closed.
Hornet: Frankly, I had expected you to be Shakra's opponent, Vise.
Vise: Alas, no. As bearer of the Mark, you know well the pride of my people--change does not come easy, and I will not prove the taint of my lineage by seizing power not freely given.
Page 2
Hornet: Regardless, I should like to meet with your Lord, if only to declare my return to Hallownest. I would have your Guard as escort to avoid any undue confusion.
Vise: An excellent suggestion! Your presence would be most welcome!
Vise: And your green friend's as well, should he wish to join us.
Lace: Wait! Why is he invited, but we are not!
Vise: ...
Vise: ...because he's a mantis?
Hornet: ....
Lace: ....
Hollow: ?
Vise: ...no?
The Green Prince: ....
Vise: ...Helter, he's a mantis.
Helter: As you say, sir.
The Green Prince: ....
Page 3
Vise: So, foreign bug... From where do you hail, if not a distant tribe?
The Green Prince: Ah... but by your own decree, am I not a mantis?
Vise: Ha! You speak well, fair kin! However. Were it not so, what might you be?
The Green Prince: ...I am a Verdanian.
Vise: Auntie, what is a Verdanian?
Hornet: Him. Clearly.
Vise: ....
The Green Prince: ....
The Green Prince: And you are the prince of these lands?
Vise: ...I beg pardon?
Page 4
The Green Prince: They treat you as an heir apparent... so I had assumed you of royal descent.
Vise: ???
Hornet: The mantises swear fealty to neither god nor queen.
Hornet: Their rulers are elected by council, often based on demonstrations of leadership and martial skill--both arenas in which Vise excels. But the Lords have not ceded power.
The Green Prince: What stays his claws?
Hornet: The current stewards have held jurisdiction since my youth--longer than memory for many a mortal bug. Under their guidance, the tribe maintained sovereignty despite the encroachment of the Pale.
Mantis Youth: Vise! You're back!
The Green Prince: So it is an issue of politic rather than strength-- To depose a leader so regarded would reflect poorly, even in tradition's name.
Vise: Denna! Mel! Claws! Claws! We've spoken about this!
Mantis Youth: But we missed you!
Page 5
The Green Prince: ...
Vise: ?
The Green Prince: ....
Vise: Hello Auntie!
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