The place where I put all my miscellaneous interests. Aro ace agender artist. They/them. WARNING: I do not tag triggers and spoilers consistently as this is my personal blog. I recommend you do not follow me if you have any triggers or wish to avoid spoilers.
You may have seen this post before asking to help us move from Washington to Colorado. … V's Vitrix needs your support for Help Us Survive a
Hi, I'm Victoria. I'm a black, disabled, trans woman in my mid thirties and I have an aortic aneurysm, valve damage, and partial enlargement of my heart, among other complications.
I have spent the last 6 months seeing specialists and being tested, all while fighting my insurance for every appointment. I have had appointments delayed on multiple occassions because of insurance approvals, including my second CT, which would be a major factor in when I have surgery.
My partner, Sam, has taken off numerous days of work to helpe me out or care for me on bad days and it's resulted in us needing financial help.
I've applied for disability as well as SSI, but both of them are now at nearly a year for a decision. I will likely have to appeal after the first denial whenever it comes.
If you can help us in any way it would be massively appreciated, even just sharing this post.
If you don't want to use GFM, but would like to help, there's other places:
Paypal
Venmo
Cash
Ko-fi
Buy Me A Coffee
Patreon
You can also buy handmade crochet dolls from Sam on our Ko-fi as well.
Thank you, so much.
(the art was done by my friend and very talented artist Clown.)
So, I had an appointment with a specialist today and my heart is "borderline", which means they're starting to prep for surgery.
I'll be meeting with the surgeon soon to discuss a timeline, but it's looking like it'll be early in the year. I have a third CT in a couple weeks from now to figure out some final things and prevent complications. After that we'll figure out a date and go from there.
i love when someone outside the toku sphere reblogs an unexpectedly popular toku post of mine and tags it "what movie is this?" like haha buddy. pal. friend. you're looking at 17 hours and 20 minutes of boys in spandex hitting other boys in spandex
"oh this looks fun!! what's the name of the film, might give it a watch tonight :)" this is episode 37 of a superhero show designed to sell plastic noisemakers to 3 year olds and it will take you at least a month to get to this point and you're going to love every second
Varishkava! I adored the flea caravan from the moment I met them--they're a cheerful light in a dark world. Way before I knew anything about Act III, I could imagine them inviting their new warrior friend to set down her weapon and enjoy their company and hospitality awhile before rushing off again on her quest.
And feeling inspired by the bug food other people have come up with in art and fics, I had to draw some, too. Everything here is made with blood--they're fleas!--and I think they'd mostly eat foods that keep well for traveling, with fresh-made foods as more of a special thing.
(also these drawings are set pre-Kratt because he'd spoil the vibe)
It's cute and normal for a girl to have spidery fangs and sharp monstery teeth! Thank you to everyone drawing and writing Hornet with freaky mouthparts, it's inspiring.
At last, it is time. So this post is going to be different from my Hollow Knight one as I drew way more stuff this time around.
I was ecstatic when I found out that Silksong had food related worldbuilding in it. I was really grasping at straws with the Hollow Knight one, so I’m glad I have much more to work with here! >:)
In the past year I’ve learned way more about agriculture and food production. Previously, I was very reliant on Greenpath (I also regret not making proper use of Fungal Wastes)—however, Silksong also has way more varied and “nature-rich” regions which allowed me to spread out crops and resources over different areas. I’ll likely be making another post at some point that’ll go more into depth about my field research since I took over 200 in-game screenshots of plants and such…and then learned how to rip game files so I could get the raw spites.
Also bc I got questions about this with my last hk food concepts piece, if you want to use any of the ideas here for personal projects, fanwork, etc—go ahead. You don’t need my permission, the world is your oyster
But anyway, my commentary regarding the art will be under the cut since this is already getting pretty long.
Spices, Herbs, and Seasoning
Man I didn’t even come up with unique names for like 90% of this. Okay so this section probably takes the most inspiration from in-game environment sprites out of any of the agricultural sections. Thyme, tarragon, rosemary, sage, chamomile, white plum blossoms, the red pea flower, sumac, and of course clovers all are based on my silksong field journal. I added a new blossom to the nectar flower section, the purple ones are more rare but you can harvest saffron from them. The white ones come with plums and nectar. Vanilla blossoms are rare but chamomile is plentiful, it blends in with the white rose-like flowers that are all over Shellwood. The red flowers are called “pea plants” in the game files so i kept that part of the name. But the seeds are a stand-in for allspice. I haven’t decided on what to do with the leaves/main body. Coral stars are based on star anise—peppercorns, cloves, chives, and coriander are just that. I finished this section ages ago, I’ve just been procrastinating on every other section.
Fruit
A lot of these are inspired by either in-game environmental sprites and/or real life fruits. Mossberries and silk fruit are obviously in game, but everything else is made up. So quick rundown:
ice apple → ice fruit, cloudberry → puffberry (I had also called it “powderberry” in my notes), jackfruit → mega-mossfruit, durian → spikefruit, Yang Mei → coral plum, miracle berries → rosary berries, mangosteen → crustfruit, rattan fruit → oocula, sugar apple → plated sugar apple. I didn’t change the name for the Kaffir Lime because I got lazy. My, uh, design for the rattan fruit may have been inspired by the Ooca, tit fruit.
The coral plums were still called yangmei up until like the last second, I truly had no creativity left. The lotus fruit probably should’ve been in this section but reorganizing these pages is a nightmare.
Vegetables, Roots, Yams
The spiral sprouts, moss artichoke, abyss root, lotus fruit, and cotton puffs were influenced by environmental spirits I screenshotted while doing field research. I would’ve just combined this section with the fruits but these pieces are so crowded and convoluted, it would’ve been a mess.
I don’t know where the Silk Squash or Lufta’s names came from, squashes all look so similar that it’s impossible for me to figure out what I based them on. Those may very well have been their actual name but google is not helping me here. Celtuse is the original name but the coloration is different. Lotus root, lotus fruit, oca, mashua, and the bamboo shoots didn’t get special names. As for the others: black radish → void radish, black carrot → void carrot, scorzonera → abyss root, winged bean → verdania bean, cardoon → cotton puff, fiddlehead → spiral sprout, samphire → asparagus, crosne/chinese artichoke → artichoke root
Mushrooms (Bilelands)
There wasn’t enough here to fill a full page so I vertical-ized it. Get condensed fool. Anyway, I got lazy here after the Paper Mushrooms. These are all based on real mushrooms (minus the aforementioned paper mushrooms which are based on environmental sprites), I didn’t really do any research on their habitats or anything (morels probably shouldn’t be here). So this section isn’t super high effort compared to the others. Also I combined Sinner’s Road, Bilewater, and Putrified Ducts together for the Bilelands, since that’s how Vog refers to them.
Extras (+ baking soda)
I’m now going to subject you to my algae farming agenda.
Algae is a super underrated resource, in real life where we have sunlight and large swaths of land for agriculture, its usefulness is less so, but for limited settings (like space faring or underground bug civilizations) algae is a good resource for farming. Algae/spira flour and glucose can be produced through it, as well as oil (which I believe can be used for plastic production). Other sources for flour like rice and sorghum have to be farmed in specific conditions, but for the citadel, spira flour is probably more accessible. Sucrose requires sugarcane which likely became less accessible when the burning bugs took over wisp thicket. Spira flour has a natural green coloration but the capital uses bone char to bleach it white (bone char comes from deep docks). Fructose and glucose sugar have a whiter tint so they don’t need as much processing. Some of this is based off of real life processes, some of it is me talking out my ass.
And yes, I did come up with a method for how they’re acquiring soda bicarbonate, unfortunately it’s very convoluted. In my HK food chart I just listed soda bicarbonate as coming from mineral springs, but Pharloom doesn’t have hot springs everywhere so I had to get more technical.
Salt Spikes (from Sands of Karak) combined w/Ground Limestone to create “Soda Ash” which is then dissolved in water and combined w/Carbon Dioxide (found in groundwater & lakes) to create Baking Soda.
Alternative method: Salt Spikes combined w/Ammonia (found in Deep Docks) and Carbon Dioxide to create Baking Soda and Ammonium Chloride (used in fertilizer).
Can be found (albeit rarely) naturally occurring in basins & hot springs. Sometimes found in mudrock (Deep Docks), co-product of shale oil extraction from solution mining. This is all based on real life, I’ve just simplified it heavily. Method two is literally just the Solvay Process. A lot of this is paraphrased from Wikipedia and I understand the basic gist of it but I’m not a chemist.
This project had me googling insane shit again, but this time it was more to the tune of “do bugs have collagen” rather than “do bugs make milk” so we’ve improved slightly. I’m ignoring the fact that they don’t have collagen, there’s probably some beasts around somewhere that are vertebrate.
Oh yeah also I’m into vinegar now. I had some pomegranate vinegar and it was delicious. Pour some of that into a nice cold glass of club soda and it would be perfect unfortunately my mother has hidden the vinegar. Uh, so anyway, there’s more vinegar options. Fruit, sugarcane, and grains. Oh yeah and the Cheong method of syrup making returns, this one uses a lot of sugarcane so its more old fashioned (in this setting not in real life).
Animal Products
I previously had roach milk as this decadent dairy product and then Silksong introduced roaches and put them in the biohazard area, so, surprise! It’s gone sour now.
Weaver milk is infinitely more rare here, but I should clarify that when I’m saying weaver milk I don’t just mean The Weavers, I meant spiders in general. The weavers aren’t having kids, but the Phallids may produce more offspring that will require some nutrients.
Ant and craw milk are more normal. I realize the craws are bugs, but I’m treating them like birds. So they get eggs and milk. Ant milk is thicker and richer in flavor while craw milk is more watery and nutritious. The cheeses present are all based off of real cheeses—Lebanese white cheese, camembert cheese, and blue cheese. Weaver silk cheese is inspired by the Centaur’s silk cheese in JayEaton’s “Runaway to the Stars” series.
As for eggs, the craw eggs are more like typical bird eggs, while the maggot eggs are gelatinous and usually laid in gooey bunches underwater. I had to google ant eggs for this drawing so you all owe me money for that. The moss egg is me capitulating to the game design, they look like artichokes to me so I used the design simultaneously for the vegetable and the egg. I imagine some foragers have had the traumatic experience of dropping what they thought was a plant and it then cracking like an egg upon impact. Or biting into it and it making a gooey crunch. These are all good ideas.
Oh yeah, meat. Standard meat here. Added some more organ cuts and included some creatures that are referred to as edible prey either in the compendium or by NPCs.
I’m glad my pickling inclinations the last time were fulfilled here, more pickling. Vinegar is great and we should be using it more. Get pickling now! The sauerkraut is here because I was so focused on pickling that I forgot that the page was for animal products.
Also ignore the crust organ, I put it in the animal products section, but in my head its a 50/50 between “stone from the guts of a [previously] living macro-organism” and “big walnut”.
Miscellaneous Musings
I know that in-game the Memorium is meant as a sort of zoo/archive for the fauna and flora of different regions. But I think it would also serve as a useful area for farming, since the citadel likely doesn’t want to have to rely on other regions for food production. Deep Docks serves a strong role in mining/harvesting the materials needed for filtration, purification, etc. for various baking ingredients. But Shellwood and Sands of Karak likely also were and are very important for food production. Salt is a necessary resource, which may still be harvestable post-collapse. If Pharloom Bay somehow gets added in a future DLC/update (Edit: right after I fucking posted this) then I can probably use that for salt production.
I need to learn how to mod Silksong so I can add new regions/areas in. That’ll likely take me forever though, I have a microscopic level of modding experience. The HK modding community is more combat/platforming focused, which makes sense considering the game genre. I just wish modders did region expansions in Hollow Knight like the Rain World modders do. I love the Rain World region expansions, The Mast, Fog Gulch, and Preservatory are my favorites.
But in terms of achievable Silksong mods—the organ harvesting quest is my favorite quest in the game and if someone could make a mod that extends it to like 100-150 per category I’d appreciate it.
Team Cherry should hire me to design/draw stuff for a DLC, I definitely won’t spend the entire time creating 30 food-related fetch quests. I have depths beyond this!
The White Lady and her stepdaughter.
I think she'd adore having little Hornet, even if it takes her a little time to adjust to the more rough and tumble play style. She and her husband had so many children, and none that she could love without dooming their kingdom. So she had more enough love, for Dear Herrah's child.
(Dryya's getting pretty tired of chasing her around the gardens though.)
did some comic ideas with @c-rowlesdraws and this came from it! I love drawing baby hornet sm
com info
In my opinion, the central conceit of Warframe—that you are a Tenno, whose most pivotal power is not destruction but connection—works much, much more effectively when Warframes are interpreted as full beings in their own right, and not just "meat suits" with mere echoes of personality remaining.
For game design reasons (i.e. blueprint acquisition, Helminth system, they don't want to produce unique AI and scripts for every Warframe), they must all be treated as game items, and there have been attempts to explain them in canon as inanimate, Tenno-made replicas. And I'm not saying that this shouldn't be possible at all or that you can't tell that story. It's just not the only way the game of Warframe can or should be interpreted.
The gameplay is about Warframe combat, but the thematic point is that Warframes (and their Tenno) are not mere weapons or tools. That's what the Orokin wanted, and it's why they failed. The Orokin wanted Warframes who were bodies without their own wills, mass-produced responsive war machines. They never got that. Warframes are certainly animalistic, but they are also intelligent, with mannerisms and thought patterns now alien to humans. They can spiral into Infested madness without help, and the solution is for a Tenno to meet them where they are, as the no-longer-human but still person they have become.
Transference is to connect with the person that the Warframe is, to "see inside an ugly, broken thing—and take away its pain." If every Warframe our characters use (save Umbra) is merely an echo of a dead person, they no longer involve this present compassion and care. They no longer channel the essence of what being Tenno means. You can still sprint, bullet-jump, and fire off abilities in an inanimate Warframe, yes, but thematically speaking, that's not and never has been the point.
Warframe is about the power of connection and love. Transference, on its deepest thematic level, is love. It's a Tenno stalwartly acknowledging a Warframe's personhood, communicating with them and taking their needs seriously even when it's not straightforward. It's a Warframe entrusting another with shared control, holding their Tenno close in their very body as they fight in tandem.
Great storytelling comes from embracing, accepting, and confronting the idea that Warframes are beings with their own needs and alternative methods of communication. Both Tenno and Warframes were once merely human, but have since transformed into something both "more" and "less". Their extraordinary abilities come with deep scars and a fundamental disconnection from their former kind, whether that's due to ageless immortality or physical transformation. Most humans can no longer understand what they've been through. In the wake of this ruin, they reach out to one another.
im still obsessed with the observation that the medieval forsooth/have at you guys showed up to Cyberpunk City and were like hey this teenage 16 y/o elf cured cancer let her summon The Pig. and she did. and all the cyberpunk dudes were like holy shit she DID cure cancer doing that, what the fuck. And critically the writers like forgot (?) she had previously cured cancer via this method as a major plot point and had to scramble with a 'oh and btw she uh cured everyone's cancer' scene like a patch after everyone pointed this out. Dawntrail rocks for this reason
‘bout to get caught up with my fan art obligations, but i had to get this out of my system. i really liked this game. raiden’s sneaking suit is still one of my favorites.
