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nompunhere · 2 years

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Bug Bites 3 (H/ollow K/night Vore Ficlets)

so they're finally here! performing for you! if you know the words, you can join in too- ahem. it's Bug Bites 3, seven months after the last set was posted and about a year after I wrote the first outline for this one! wooooooo

Bug Bites 1, Bug Bites 2

As per usual, all of these ficlets involve Safe, Soft Vore, varying degrees of H/ollow K/night Spoilers, and then some varying size differences and stuff. Most of these have T/iso. I’m not sorry. He keeps crashing on the couch of my brain and refuses to pay rent

Characters, word counts, and specific notes will be at the start of each ficlet. Enjoy!

Stories below the cut

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Chipped

Characters: Lemm, Quirrel Word Count: 980 Warnings/Notes: G/t, Quirrel is shrunk using the magic mask I still haven’t fully elaborated on. Repeats a bit of the same world-building I put in my fic Comfort Between Friends. Oh and there’s like 2-3 swears, all in the same sentence

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Chip. Chip. Chip.

Lemm wedged the tool carefully under a flake of… residue and struck it just hard enough to break the brown matter away from the surface of the King’s Idol. He grumbled at the amount of work he still had to do to get the thing cleaned up. Where had the little wanderer found this thing, the sewers? Knowing them, they probably had. He just hoped whatever details could be gleaned from this one were worth the effort.

He’d done his best to wipe it off, using his finest cleaner that wouldn’t damage the metal of the idol, but some of the dirt on it was so old it’d practically hardened into rock. The next bit just would not come off no matter how much he tried to dig the chisel into it. There was simply no point of leverage to be found. Overcome with frustration, he set the tool in the dead center of the chunk and gave it a good hard ‘thwhack!’

Bits of dust were shaken free, but the chunk was still solidly on there. He moved the tool away to glare at it, revealing a crack running down the center of the spot, a darker silver metal glinting through. The relic seeker squinted and leaned in for a better look. Wait… That brown bit was a decal, not dirt! Who in Wyrm’s name would have their King’s Idol personalized to look like it had dung on it?!

With an angry huff, he turned the idol over to look for a name, ignoring the small shifts in his middle that resulted from the abrupt movement. He wanted to know what long-dead fool he should be cursing right about now. After a minute of searching, he found it.

To the most loyal of the Five, Ogrim the Defender.

That.. sounded familiar actually. The Five? As in, the Five Great Knights? There wasn’t much information still intact about them, and even less on Ogrim in particular. He wasn’t the most well-liked of the Five, though the reports were still generally positive. From what he could glean, based on the few facts that his sources (wanderer’s journals, preserved letters, sparse visual depictions, and the inane ramblings of whatever explorers and graverobbers managed to crawl out of the waterways alive and stumble into his shop) could agree upon, Loyal Ogrim was friendly, devoted to his king and fellow knights, particularly fond of Kindly Isma, fought without a weapon, and was.. a… dung beetle?

Lemm set the idol and his tools aside to bury his face in his hands with a groan. Of course it would belong to a dung beetle. But more than that, it belonged to one of the Five. It was probably the most valuable King’s Idol he’d ever get his hands on! And he cracked it!

“Gods fucking dammit, I’m a fucking idiot,” he lamented.

The movements in his belly picked up again, this time moving to the back wall to begin a gentle massage. “Shhhhhh,” came a quiet voice, muffled through layers of flesh and drowsiness, “it’s alright love, you’re not an idiot. Everything’s okay. Shhhhhhhh…”

Lemm choked. “Wha- don’t shush me?!”

The little rascal just kept shushing, trying not to giggle. He rubbed deeper into the wall, pressing into the points that never failed to make a bug relax, when treated just right. As expected, his ministrations caused Lemm to sink into his seat with a heavy sigh.

“Hmph… Thanks, Quirrel,” he muttered. The miniature pillbug in question simply laughed and continued massaging the walls. “You’re really enjoying yourself in there, aren’t you?”

“What can I say? I love making you happy,” the scholar replied. “And I can’t deny that your stomach is very comfortable. One of the softest I’ve been in, to be sure,” he added.

“How many’ve you been in?” Lemm closed his eyes, allowing the conversation to flow as an excuse to take a break from his work.

“Mm, hard to say. Not many recently, but I used to get around quite a bit in my younger days.”

“That many bugs were willing to eat you, huh? And you let them?”

“Well, it can be a rather pleasant experience, with the right bug. I enjoyed it at the time.”

“Still do, apparently.”

Quirrel chuckled. “You certainly wouldn’t be wrong there.” He relaxed into the wall and traced the folds for a minute. ��...You know, I could show you what it’s like from this side of things at some point, if you’d like,” he murmured, sounding positively blissful.

Lemm grunted in acknowledgement, then stopped to process what the pillbug had actually said. “Wait, what? How?”

The scholar yawned and rolled onto his back, folding his hands over his middle. “I do believe the Madam left a shrinking spell or two lying about the Archives somewhere. They, among other spells, were intended to deter and help capture intruders, but if staff members or trusted guests tripped them, they played more the role of a harmless prank.” He nestled further into the folds, slowly losing the battle against sleep. “‘M not a master spellweaver, but I’m familiar enough with the Madam’s work to, ah, make a few modifications. Either way, it won’t kill you or anything. One version just stings a little, is all. And it’s trickier to undo. But I know how to make it into the safer version, so don’t.. worry…”

Lemm waited a second for Quirrel to continue, and when he didn’t, the rain beetle chuffed and patted at his partner’s tucked away form. “Aye, I’m sure you could. Maybe sometime. …Goodnight, Quirrel.”

“‘Night,” the smaller bug replied, his voice almost entirely inaudible.

The relic seeker simply sat there, savoring the moment for a while before returning to his work. It really was cute how much Quirrel loved it in there. Perhaps seeing the other perspective would be worth a shot.

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Stealth Nap

Characters: Tiso, Quirrel, Lemm Word Count: 1,380 Warnings/Notes: Takes place in the Giants of Hallownest AU, aka my flimsy excuse for more G/t. As you can probably imagine, the vore is G/t. Also involves Unaware Vore. and like one minor swear. (headcanon that Tiso moves a lot in his sleep and is also a sleep-hugger, go!)

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Dirtmouth was windy that evening. Tiso didn’t like it. The wind of the Wastes that made it across Hallownest’s borders had been of a perfectly tolerable temperature for the past several centuries, but the weather had finally started to change again since the end of the stasis. It was getting colder, and Tiso hadn’t insulated his new house. He could work on that tomorrow, but for right now, he needed to find a warm place to sleep for the night. Fortunately, he knew just the bug to ask. Unfortunately, that bug wasn’t home. Fortunately, he had said where he was going. …Unfortunately, it was quite a ways off. Especially for someone who was the size of the average native Hallownest bug’s finger. Damn kingdom of giants.

Pushing open the drawer he had claimed as his apartment was simple enough for the ant, as was climbing down from Quirrel’s dresser. Walking to the door was also fine, though he had to wrap his arms around himself to suppress a shiver. He approached the hole carved into the bottom corner of the door for him, pulled the wad of fabric that was wedged there to block the draft out of place, and put it back as he left. No one was outside to witness him sprinting to the Stag Station, most bugs having turned in early due to the weather. He didn’t blame them; he’d do the same if he could.

As much as he loathed relying on that old service beast, taking the Stag was really the only way to get down to the City of Tears within the next few hours. With a sigh, Tiso entered the building, rode the short elevator down (trying not to flinch at the way it jolted his small form), and made his way to the bell. …Yeah, he wasn’t gonna be able to hit that with his shield from here. Rolling his eyes, he looped the armament around the pole so the strap was braced against the metal, grabbed both sides, and set to climbing. The setae on his feet helped with traction, but it still took a few minutes to get to the top.

Once there, the warrior took a deep breath, braced himself, and rammed his shield into the bell. The resulting sound resonated through his form, leaving his head ringing and body shaking. To a Hallownest native, it was probably more of a light ‘tink!’ Whatever, it didn’t matter. So long as it got the job done. Soon enough, the telltale rumbling of the approaching Stag filled the room. He clung to the top of the bell pole and resigned himself to the incoming humiliation of asking for help.

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A few excruciating minutes of clinging for dear life to the Stag’s horn and a long climb down a few levels of a City building later, Tiso was stumbling through the him-sized doorway positioned next to the main door of the relic shop. He followed the walkway to the back, uncertain if it came with the shop to provide accessibility to foreigners, or if the relic seeker had had to build it himself. He couldn’t tell, and honestly couldn’t care less. He was cold and tired. The miniature door into the back rooms, thankfully, wasn’t locked.

He continued along the walkway past shelves and shelves of old junk—sorry, relics—until he was positioned over the couch in Lemm’s personal rooms. He looked down to see a massive, rounded shape resting on the giant piece of furniture, softly snoring. Bingo.

The owner of the place was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter. He was probably just asleep in the bedroom. Honestly, Tiso had no clue why Lemm didn’t just let Quirrel sleep in the bed. It’s not like that tiny rain beetle could use it. He was pretty sure the relic seeker had his own, smaller bed atop the nightstand, from what he remembered of his few visits here.

The ant hopped down onto the back cushions, stopped to catch his breath, and slid down to land gently on the sleeping pillbug’s belly. He paused. …No movement, except slow breaths carrying his tiny form up and down. Okay, Quirrel was still asleep, good. He slowly crept up his friend’s chest. The larger bug’s mask was off, perfect; he must’ve removed it for sleep. His mandibles were slightly parted as well—even better.

Tiso hooked his shield over the back of his armor and tentatively eased a hand into Quirrel’s mouth. So far, so good. He used his other hand to push the mandibles further apart, just enough to get his head and shoulders in. As he crawled over his friend’s labium and onto the tongue, the mandibles drifted shut, clicking against his sides and softly scraping at his chitin as he moved past them.

A small grunt sounded around him in response to his weight on the tongue. The ant froze. Quirrel shifted in his sleep, his tongue pressing Tiso against the roof of his mouth to drag him in the rest of the way, maw closing around the little warrior. It settled after a moment, leaving him lying still and tense. Another few seconds passed before he dared inch closer to the throat. Just had to get the pillbug to swallow him, and he’d be in the clear.

Staring down into the pitch dark tunnel, the warrior steeled himself before plunging his hand into the soft, damp tube. It passed over the entrance to the—what was it, the trachea?—the thing that took in air for talking, and into the top of the esophagus. Poke the right spot and it’d open, simple as that. He began to press his fingers into the flesh, searching for the point that would trigger a swallow.

He managed to elicit two small gag reflexes for his efforts before finally reaching deep enough to get what he was after. The throat opened wide enough to accept his minute frame as the tongue pushed him forward and down. With one subconscious gulp, he was gone, disappearing entirely into Quirrel’s body. Exactly the result he’d hoped for. He relaxed, allowing the waves of muscle to carry him to his destination.

Released into the humid, plush chamber hidden in his friend’s core, the ant slid down the curved walls to rest in the pit of the larger bug’s stomach. He stretched out, content—only for his foot to brush against something solid. He flinched away.

Sitting up, Tiso leaned forward to squint into the darkness. He couldn’t see much of anything, maybe a dark blob against the surrounding blue at most. But if he listened closely…

Breathing and heartbeat, echoing all around him. The sound of snoring from above quietly rumbling through the space at regular intervals. Gurgles, grumbles, bubbles, and other sounds he didn’t care to think too deeply about from further along the digestive tract. And finally, by focusing intently on the spot just in front of him, Tiso could make out a second, smaller rhythm of snores, barely audible through the din.

Welp. Guess that answered where Lemm was.

The warrior scooted away, careful not to make any sudden movements. He curled up in the corner (or whatever would constitute such in a mostly-rounded space), hoping that his chosen spot was far enough away to avoid kicking the grumpy hermit in his sleep. Either way, he’d have to face the consequences of his actions eventually. He couldn’t exactly back out now. Besides, he’d put way too much effort into simply getting here to do so, even if it were possible.

Tiso nestled into the cushiony folds and quickly drifted off. Come morning, he’d wake to Lemm’s voice demanding to know why Quirrel had let the ant in here, along with the feeling of small hands carefully extricating him from where he’d apparently buried his face into the soaked fur of the relic seeker’s ruff, his arms clinging to the other bug like a stuffed mosscreep. He’d groggily blink in confusion before scrambling away, thoroughly embarrassed, denying any involvement and shouting at Quirrel for laughing.

But he had no way of knowing that yet. For now, he would simply reap the rewards of his journey, sleeping away his exhaustion in the warmth of his friend’s belly. It was worth it.

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Waiting

Characters: Tiso, Ghost (Hornet and Quirrel mentioned) Word Count: 941 Warnings/Notes: G/t again. Implied TATG AU, and also vaguely implied to be post-EtV ending. Really nothing to warn for here. At least Tiso gets to be a pred again (in case it isn’t clear, the game he’s playing is Cat’s Cradle). and he has inconsistent dialogue here bc I was sorta flipping between his canon and fanon speech patterns, rip

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Okay okay okay, two loops on each wrist, and one on each forefinger, right? …Or was it middle finger? Wait, that thread was supposed to be in front. Did it matter? Tiso huffed and took the silk string off his hands to start over. That Weaver game Hornet showed him sure did pass the time, he’d give her that. Or it would if he could get the dang first figure right!

Before looping the thread over his hands to try again, he rested his hands in his lap to glance over at Ghost, perched on the arm of the couch, across from where he lay slouched on the other end. The little wanderer had just been pacing for several minutes before swapping out their regular shell for their tiny one and hopping up to their current location to wait. For what, he wasn’t sure, but clearly they were excited about it, if the fact that they were practically vibrating in place was any indication. He had an idea, but might as well ask.

“You waiting for Quirrel, Squib?” They turned and quickly nodded before going back to their previous position. Ah. Yeah, that made sense. He’d gone out earlier for a walk by himself to collect samples from Greenpath or whatever. Something about wanting to test the chemical properties of gulka venom. Tiso wasn’t sure what that meant, but whatever kept the scholar happy, he guessed. He vaguely recalled Quirrel saying he’d be back by dinnertime, but he’d probably want a “snack” if he returned sooner. …That was probably the part they were excited about, now that he thought about it.

“You know it’s probably gonna be at least a few hours ‘til he’s back, right? He always takes ages on trips like this, looking at every little thing. He’s likely staring at some vines right now, entranced by their.. greeness. Or enjoying a serene view, ugh. If he weren’t such a good fighter, I’d have no interest in him whatsoever.” The pale thing glared at him for a minute. What? Was he wrong?

The two held their staring contest until Ghost looked away and sighed, head drooping. Tiso silently began to loop the silk back over his hands, but stopped, thinking. Looked up at Ghost again where they sat, dejected. He didn’t mean to burst their bubble. And he hadn’t minded their excitement, either. It was almost cute, honestly. But he ruined that. Luckily, he had an idea for how to fix it.

He gathered up the string and set it aside, then clacked his mandibles to get the squib’s attention. They glanced over at him. The ant pointed meaningfully at his middle. They tilted their head. He rolled his eyes, pointed at them, and pointed at his belly again, tilting his head as well. An offer. This time, they seemed to get it, immediately perking up and bouncing over.

He snorted as they eagerly crawled up his chest. “Guess you weren’t really waiting for Quirrel, huh? Just the opportunity to get-” They put a hand over his mouth as they laughed in their own, soundless way. Shaking their head, they leaned against his mouth, requesting entry. “E’ll feel so b’trayed wh’n ‘e g’ts back,” he mumbled into the side of their face. Ghost lightly smacked at him.

The two friends chuckled to themselves, and after another moment, Tiso opened his mouth, letting the tiny vessel fall partway onto his tongue. They wriggled the rest of the way in on their own without hesitation and started to pat around. He obligingly gave them a few licks, having a little fun with them. They seemed happier for it, at least.

A bit of play, and Ghost was ready to slide down his throat. Which they did. It went much more smoothly than the ant expected, probably thanks to slicking them up for the trip, first. They wriggled intermittently on the way down, making the warrior rub at his chest to get the odd feeling to go away.

Upon reaching their destination, the tiny wanderer started to bounce around, having a good time and making themself at home in Tiso’s stomach. He snickered at their enthusiasm. “Having fun, little traitor?” Stumbling over to the nearest wall, they gave it a hard tap. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he’d take it as a yes. “Okay, okay! Just don’t go too crazy in there, alright?”

He gave them a pat or two as they cozied up to the warmth inside. That done, he finally went back to his game. Deepling’s Hammock, or whatever it was called. Mrgh, still as frustrating. He continued to struggle with the thread for a few minutes, until Ghost began to settle down and curl up for a nap. They had been pretty good in there so far; he might as well give them the courtesy of being quiet while they slept.

With the effort of keeping himself from getting too aggravated at the uncooperative string, the ant had to work slower. By going at it with a calmer mind, he was able to puzzle out how to get the loops where he wanted them to go. Maybe the tiny, breathing weight in his belly helped keep him centered. Either way, he was eventually able to get through three different figures—a new record, even counting the times he had Hornet’s help! He spread his hands in front of him to look at his accomplishment: a relatively neat-looking web, looped over all eight fingers. He should show her his progress…

But for now, he was starting to feel a bit drowsy himself. Maybe he’d join Ghost in their nap.

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Nightmare

Characters: Tiso, Oro Word Count: 1,551 Warnings/Notes: Flashbacks, Past Major Character Injury, Blood Mention, Pain. The worst of it can be avoided by skipping the italicized section at the start. This one’s got some ~angst~ (followed by comfort). The vore is Half-Size, and also Tiso’s third time ever being nommed in this timeline

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The crowd cheered on, chanting his name, sending the hemolymph coursing under his shell. It filled him with the will, no, the need to FIGHT. He soaked it all in, taking a breath before the next challenge came his way, listening for the sound of the cages that held his opponents. Instead, what he heard was a particular shout from the crowd.

“Look up, dumbass!”

Too late.

The cheering changed to laughing as all his senses were overcome with pain. Crushing overwhelming PAIN. He couldn’t breathe, they were laughing, jeering, taunting, no one would come to help, please, he couldn’t breathe, it hurt, it burned like red flame, sparks flashed across his vision, he could see his own blood spreading over the floor, PLEASE-

And then he could breathe.

And he was falling.

And then-

Nothing.

Tiso bolted upright, instinctively slamming a hand over his mouth to smother a scream. What came out was more of a wheeze instead, only a tiny hint of a whine getting through his vocal cords. That out of the way, he gasped in a desperate breath, then collapsed onto his side when it made his chest ache terribly. Gods, it hurt. Hurt in his nightmares, hurt in reality, was there ever an escape? The ant stifled a groan, blinking back tears.

It was weird; he could’ve sworn the injury was healed enough to not hurt this much by now. The bandages were more of a precaution than a necessity, with the chitin mostly sealed shut. So why did it feel like he just got it? Was the pain even real, or was it all in his head?

He couldn’t do much, the stinging ache strong enough to incapacitate him for the moment. All the warrior could do was breathe, clutch at his thorax, and try not to make too much noise. Wouldn’t want to irritate his host any more than he did by merely existing, and all that. In truth, he had an inkling that Oro did actually care, somehow, under that gruff exterior, but that was… a weird thought. Implausible. He didn’t linger on it too much.

After several minutes of suffering in (what he thought was) silence, Tiso was shaken by a sudden presence behind him. He flinched at the low voice rumbling so close by.

“You’re not going to be able to fall back asleep, are you?” It was more of a statement then a question. A conclusion that the Nailmaster had already resigned himself to. Stiffly, the ant rolled over to face him, the hulking form of the beetle appearing as a looming shadow in the dark, even with his seated position. How long had he been there?

“...No,” Tiso eventually croaked out, “h-hurts.”

Oro took a few moments to look him over. The smaller bug’s chest was exposed from throwing off the blankets when he woke, so Oro was able to see that the bandages looked clean. No scent of hemolymph in the air, either. He grunted. “Where’s it hurt?”

“Dunno,” Tiso whispered, “Jus’.. had a nightmare, started hurting.”

“Nothing torn open, then?”

The warrior shrugged. Oro stared at him for a few moments longer, making him shift uncomfortably. The Nailmaster sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and asked, “Anything I can do about it?”

By the tone of his voice, he didn’t sound like he expected a ‘yes.’ Tiso found himself agreeing with the sentiment, giving into the fact that he’d probably be left lying awake and in pain for at least a few more hours. In response to the question, he merely shrugged again and started picking at the blanket, trying in vain to ignore the bad memories dancing at the edge of his thoughts and the stupid, pulsing ache that refused to go away.

It was at that moment that Oro’s stomach opted to voice a complaint. The two bugs froze. Slowly, Tiso focused his gaze on the Nailmaster’s middle in consideration. The beetle stared back with a searching look, seemingly trying to read his thoughts. Really, the ant wasn’t sure what to think just yet. It.. maybe..? It was a ridiculous idea, but…

“I mean,” he started, trailing off for a moment. Was he really about to acknowledge this as an idea, let alone ask for it? This was stupid. He had been terrified the first time. The second time was only because there had been no other way to warm up, except maybe just straight up cuddling the Nailmaster, which- ew, no. This idea, getting.. eugh, eaten… It wouldn’t help, would it? Would it? It was warm, true, and soft, sure, but it was weird. So vastly different from any other experience he’d ever had. Well, the process of getting down there was a bit too close for comfort to the feeling of being crushed, but after that, it- it wasn’t so bad? Maybe…

Tiso looked up to meet Oro’s eyes. The larger bug didn’t look like he liked where this was going. Still, it didn’t technically hurt to ask, since the ant had lost a lot of his sense of shame long ago. Not all of it, but a lot. Cringing, he gestured vaguely at the other’s midsection. “Could- uh. Could you..?”

Oro continued staring for a few seconds longer before heaving a weary sigh and putting a hand flat over his mask. Tiso picked at the blanket again while the Nailmaster muttered to himself. Something like “Why do I even put up with-..” Another moment of awkward silence, and then- “Sure.”

Oh. Okay. Cool. He didn’t think he’d get this far.

…

A little under a minute later, he found himself with his head in Oro’s mouth, the beetle’s mandibles poised carefully over either side of his neck. It took effort to remain calm in the dank heat. He breathed only through his spiracles and held his mouth shut, not wanting to take in the other’s air until he had to. He tried not to focus on the taste of saliva clinging to his antennae. At least it was easy to keep the nightmare off his mind.

The large mandibles opened wider, wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. Slowly, hesitantly, the hand resting heavily on his back pushed him in further, until his head was up against the back of the larger bug’s throat. The first gulp sounded around him as it began to pull him in.

Gross, Tiso thought, uncertain of how much he truly meant it.

…

Another few minutes, and Oro was standing up to go back to bed, a certain injured warrior tucked away in his belly. Said warrior took in his surroundings, feeling conflicted. This was quite far from the nightmare, or any other bad memories, aside from that of the first time this whole—whatever this was—happened. It was a closed space, but it was safe. Oro had made it clear that he had no interest in hurting him. The walls undulated around him, kneading at his form, but passively enough to indicate that they did not consider him food. The stomach swayed a little with each step as the Nailmaster made his way across the room. It was… oddly calming.

A line of hearts softly beat somewhere beyond the back wall, pressing up against his legs. The sound and feeling of breathing surrounded him on all sides, betraying the thoughts and feelings of his host, not letting him forget that he was in Oro. That gruff, unsociable, brick wall of a bug had taken him into his body, holding him there in some strange way of helping him sleep, because he- he asked. Tiso asked for this.

If he focused on the feeling of the wall behind him, there was a gentle, unmoving pressure. He could imagine it as the hand of the Nailmaster, comprehending the fact that he had his ward inside just as much as Tiso was letting the reverse sink in. He thought he’d felt that small pressure the other two times as well. If he was right about what it meant, he wondered why Oro did it so much. He didn’t seem the type—far from it, in fact. He didn’t touch the ant except to change his bandages, or that one, no, two times he had to carry him in from outside, and then the other two times he.. ate him. But that was it. Maybe that was odd, maybe he was just overthinking it. For now, he was too tired for this.

He leaned back into the flesh around him, letting the waves of muscle push him around as they would. He might as well try and get some sleep. That’s what he was here for, after all. Once Oro laid down, leaving Tiso resting on his side, it wasn’t hard at all. Every quiet gurgle, every soft pulse, every gentle squish, all served to lull him further under. He even forgot that his chest was supposed to hurt.

Yeah, this was weird. But “weird” might as well be his life now. Because why not? This wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him. It… maybe wouldn’t be terrible if it happened again. Not that he’d ever say it, but. Eh.

The warrior had only one last thought, before drifting into a dreamless sleep: Since when is being eaten alive so comforting?

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Overheard Conversation

Characters: Ghost, Oro (Tiso’s presence is heavily implied but not stated) Word Count: 1,126 Warnings/Notes: Woah, an actual direct follow-up to the last one! None of the same warnings apply, but there is some swearing. and Half-Size Vore, but from an observer perspective of the next morning more than anything. side note--while writing this, I remembered that Bug Bites 1-1 exists, and I didn’t want to directly contradict it, so in this one, Ghost doesn’t know that Tiso’s staying with Oro yet. Bug Bites 1-1 takes place a good while after this, when Tiso is more casual about the whole “getting eaten” thing

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Ghost was once again wandering, and just so happened to be in the general vicinity of Oro’s hut. They were getting better at fending off the great hoppers at least, but it still wasn’t fun, they’d had a long day of exploring, and they were tired. Didn’t Oro at one point say something about being obligated to let them rest in his house? They might just take him up on that.

Shuffling through the entryway, there were two things they noticed. One, the Nailmaster wasn’t in his usual spot. Two, the skylight was closed, casting the room in deep shadows. They looked around, curious. Maybe he was out hunting?

Moving towards the back of the room, they could hear the faint sounds of breathing, coming from somewhere behind one of the curtains. They walked up to it and cautiously pulled it aside, just enough to look. Oh. There he was.

Behind the curtain was a little nook, with a bed just large enough to hold the Nailmaster that rested atop it. He was facing away, but they could tell by the slow rise and fall of his sides that he was probably asleep. Ghost had… kind of forgotten that regular bugs had regular sleep schedules, to be perfectly honest. They idly wondered why he wasn’t sleeping in the larger bed across the room. It looked like it’d be a lot more comfortable for him. Whatever, other bugs’ sleeping habits weren’t really their business.

The little vessel strode over to the other bed and hopped onto it, since no one was using it right then anyway. Some part of their mind took note of the fact that it looked to have been recently occupied, the sheets having been haphazardly pulled into place and the pillow still having an indent from the weight of someone’s head, but they were too tired to read much into it. They wriggled under the aforementioned pillow and promptly passed out in the pitch darkness.

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They woke to the sound of blankets rustling. They instinctively tensed, remaining still and hidden, but prepared to bolt at any second. It took them a second to recall where they’d fallen asleep, relaxing slightly when it came back to them. Right, this was a safe spot. They weren’t the most welcome here, but they wouldn’t be hurt for intruding.

The sound that had woken them wasn’t even from too nearby—it was rather muffled, actually. Ghost was just an incredibly light sleeper most of the time, and their sense of hearing was better than most. They scooted towards the edge of the pillow, allowing the tips of their horns to poke out from underneath so they could hear better.

By the sounds of the rustling, Oro was likely getting up. He had sat up, but not gotten to his feet yet. A subtle crack of chitin accompanied a big stretch, a long draw of air through the spiracles signifying a yawn. The Nailmaster huffed and began to mutter, seemingly to himself. Huh, that was odd. They didn’t think him the type to talk to himself. Then again, some bugs acted differently when they thought they were alone.

“Mmh… Whelp? You awake?” Wait, what? Had they been spotted? But he didn’t sound- “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Did you sleep okay, at least?” -surprised. …Was he talking to someone else? “Good. Wyrm knows you need it.” The beetle clicked his mandibles a few times, then added, “Come on, then. Let’s get you out of my space.” Who could he be talking to?

The wanderer’s musings were interrupted by the sound of retching. In their shock, they couldn’t tell what he murmured next, but it was followed by the sound of even more intense hacking. Utterly at a loss for what he was doing, they pushed up corner of the pillow and peeked out from their hiding spot. On the other side of the room, Oro was sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched forward and by all means looking to be trying to throw up. He had his hands out in front of him, draped in a towel that he’d grabbed from… somewhere. Honestly, who kept towels by their bed?

They started to understand when he put a hand to his chest and mumbled down at it. Ah, he’d eaten someone. It wasn’t a completely foreign concept, but still rather strange to them. Who the heck would Oro eat? There weren’t many bugs living around here, and Ghost couldn’t think of anyone Oro, of all bugs, would even talk to like this, let alone ingest. They opted to continue listening to see if that’d help them figure it out. They let the pillow back down to cover them, lest their little guessing game be cut short.

The Nailmaster coughed again. “Why aren’t you..?” he voiced, trailing off. There was a pause. “Yeah, ‘course I’m sitting up. What are you talking abou-?” A long, long pause. “How in the FUCK did you get yourself SIDEWAYS?!”

It was a good thing Oro wasn’t looking up, because he’d easily spot the shaking of their hiding spot as the vessel broke into laughter. It was noiseless, but their whole body was quivering with mirth. They didn’t know what they’d be intruding on when they came in here, but it sure was worth it. Poor Oro. And poor… whoever was in his belly.

“Okay, shit, just uh- fuck, I don’t know, get unsideways?”

Whatever the beetle was hoping to achieve with that, it didn’t work, if all the shuffling, grunts, and awkward hacking that came after were any indication.

“Ungh, gods, stop—hrrk—STOP. You can stay there for now, I don’t care, just stop moving. We’ll get you out when you’re more awake. Just, for the love of Root, don’t get any more stuck, alright? Alright. Godsdamn…” Ooookay, sounds like the entertainment is about done. They should probably go.

They slipped out from under the pillow and off of the bed as Oro stood up from his own. The Nailmaster jerked into a fighting stance upon seeing them.

“Who-?! Oh, traveller. Must you invade my home like this?” the larger bug muttered, untensing. He put a hand protectively over his middle, looked to the side, and loudly cleared his throat. “Right, well, if you’ve gotten all the rest you need, kindly get out of my house.”

The little ghost promptly nodded and turned away to walk to the door. As they silently padded away, they thought they could just make out the sound of a cackle somewhere behind them. Something about the voice was familiar, but it was too muffled to tell. It was soon interrupted by a dull ‘thump’ as Oro swatted at his middle. “Shut up,” the Nailmaster hissed.

The laughter continued.

************************************

aight, there we go. *checks end notes of Bug Bites 2* aha, ha, yeah. haha. nailed that goal. watch as Bug Bites 4 takes 12 months to come out!

Bug Bites 4 actually does have less Tiso in it. by a slight margin. and heckin Hornet appears, woahhhh! but I’m gonna write some more oneshots between now and then, maybe even a multi-chapter fic if I can get around to it. wish me luck!

Thanks for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated, and criticism is accepted, so long as it’s constructive/respectful. Asks are open.

————-

DNI NSFW blogs, blogs that post exclusively hard and/or fatal vore, weight gain blogs, proshippers, TERFs, ace exclusionists, etc.

#soft vore #safe vore #extreme cuddling #g/t vore #half size vore #hk vore #fandom vore #hk spoilers #vore fic #my writing #ficlet collection #tw bugs

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w0rped-moss · 1 year

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tell us about something you love!

you don’t even UNDERSTAND how much I can ramble about that hollowed knight. read more because Im gonna go crazy

hollow knight is an indie metroidvania game released in 2017. it’s about bugs. the player is a little guy only referred to as “the knight” or “little ghost” (that is a reference to the fact that you are small). the game takes place in the kingdom of Hallownest, which was once a thriving kingdom but has now been basically completely destroyed by a plague. the main mission is to find the three dreamers in three different places, fuck em up, then beat up the hollow knight, who was created to stop the infection

you and the hollow knight are the same type of thing, a vessel. They’re these fucked up little guys that are the kids of the king and queen of Hallownest and then got thrown into the abyss to be absorbed by the void. all but three are dead by the beginning of the game, and you can see their shells scattered throughout the game. Vessels were created to stop the infection, which was caused by a funky moth goddess lady who’s also the sun called the radiance. I’m gonna go crazy about her later. The reason they needed a vessel is because the infection preys on emotions. As the king himself says in a flashback sequence, “no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering” which he believed made them immune to the infection, and therefore could contain the radiance herself. Unfortunately, although its unclear exactly how the king knew, but only one of the vessels was “perfect”. That was the hollow knight. You escaped the abyss and left Hallownest after the hollow knight was chosen. However, the vessel wasn’t perfect. It’s unclear if the vessel was always imperfect, or if the king caused the imperfection, but I believe it was the king because I like it. In a six second cutscene after finishing the hardest section of platforming in the entire game, you see the king and the hollow knight sitting together. The king looks at the hollow knight, and then everything goes white. My personal theory is that despite how much the king needed to think of the vessels as objects, he still thought of the hollow knight as his child, which caused it to gain feelings, and then could be effected by the infection.

Hallownest is also full of a bunch of places that are really cool from a lore perspective, like how there’s several giant corpses in the kingdom’s outskirts. One is the king’s corpse, though he has two. One is his bug form in the palace, and one is his wyrm form, which he shed when he arrived. The king is also the founder of hallownest, which is stated by the characters. This is shown as just the nature of the wyrms by the character of Mr mushroom, who says that “wyrms pull bugs into their thrall”. There’s also the coliseum of fools, which is built in the shell of a big thing. It’s unknown what the hell this thing is. There’s a weird spider thing in the ancient nailmaster’s house, there’s queen Vespa’s corpse. There’s also a lot of lore implied in the story, through the ghosts and the important characters. Like there were five great knights, and only two of them are alive. One of the ghosts attacked the king and got fucked up. Gorm.

there are a lot of npcs that i love. There’s cloth, a cicada trying to find a battle to die in, there’s tiso, who tries to find the coliseum and fucking dies, there’s zote who dies, there’s the nailmasters who have beef, there’s the nailsmith who’s in gay love with one of the nailmasters, theres quirrel, who was the assistant of one of the dreamer, theres elderbug who ruins speedruns, theres a bunch of little freaks, theres myla. im still sad about her and there’s Hornet, who’s your half-sister (the king is a whore) and the protagonist of the companion game silksong which is hopefully coming out this year.

im talking about the societies now. fuck you. There’s only one still-functioning town in Hallownest, which is dirtmouth. It’s the entrance to the whole kingdom. Deepnest and the mantis tribe technically aren’t a part of the kingdom since they never accepted the king’s rule (tho the mantis tribe was chill with him. they hung out. to me). The mantis tribe likes you if you can beat up their leaders, who are three sisters. Then they think you’re pretty epic because they respect fighting. There’s also the abandoned town in the forgotten crossroads and the cities. you can go into the sewers. there’s a poop boss. I love him. dung defender is my best friend. the Deepnest village WAS full of weavers and other spider people but the weavers fucked off.

then there’s the moth tribe. The radiance was originally the god of the moth tribe, though they abandoned her for the pale king. My theory about it is that the radiance only appeared in dreams and the king was right there. so she got pissy about it and made a zombie virus.

OH there’s also dlcs and they’re cool one of them has grimm and I like grimm I think he is neat. he’s a scary vampire looking bug with fire powers who talks like someone who’s smoked a thousand cigarettes a day for thirty two years. The other one is Godseeker and she likes to fangirl about the bosses. it’s basically just a boss rush but there are two new endings so that’s neat.

there’s more shit I can talk about but I’m done now

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fungal-wasted · 1 year

Text

[Start ID. A tumblr made GIF reading "my year in review" in all caps and bright colors, surrounded by stickers. End ID.]

I posted 3,569 times in 2022

That's 3,563 more posts than 2021!

458 posts created (13%)

3,111 posts reblogged (87%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

shadowyscarletowls

fungal-wasted

boiledegghole

voidsiblings

hellofastudysession

I tagged 3,301 of my posts in 2022

Only 8% of my posts had no tags

#no id - 2,099 posts

#ghost - 721 posts

#hornet - 584 posts

#hollow - 318 posts

#quirrel - 187 posts

#pale king - 141 posts

#monomon - 99 posts

#hollow knight - 98 posts

#radiance - 90 posts

#oc - 89 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#it wouldn't surprise me that by coexisting with others they managed to make mechanisms of storing information in ways that others could see

My Top Posts in 2022:

It's kinda easy to see Midwife attacking the Knight in a light that is basically "Everything in Deepnest is evil and out to get you", and therefore assume she actually means harm. But tbh to me she's just joking, the way you do when you're telling a kid a horror story you made up at the spot and getting to the big reveal, ready to scare them.

IDK I just like her so much

347 notes - Posted August 6, 2022

It's past 2 am and it's the perfect time to post this UQuiz. What kind of bug would you be in Hollow Knight based on seemingly arbitrary questions?

420 notes - Posted March 27, 2022

Alright put in the tags: What is the MOST embarrassing thing you've done in Hollow Knight? Or what was your worst misconception?

439 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

On one hand, girls fantasizing in great detail about dudes who are "below average" is a trope that is used for female characters and shows a skewed perception of women. On The Other Hand have you seen the way tumblr acts about pathetic men? Bretta embodies this website extremely well whenever their pathetic little meow meow shows up on screen and team cherry were visionaries for replicating it before the esurgence of this phenomenon.

680 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

(ID in alt text)

Buying some maps from Iselda allows us to see stuff like this.

Edit: added a couple more in the reblogs

1,091 notes - Posted February 15, 2022

I FORGOT THAT POST EXISTED LMAO

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

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celestial-citrus · 2 years

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ok so that sounds totally rad but unfortunately even though I love viddy games I am terrible at all of them and ive heard hk is SUPER hard so I'd probs die too much to get to the cool story 😂

ouuughh yea it's pretty hard. people who do no-hit or no death runs terrify me. i dont think im ever gonna try steel soul. (steel soul is like hardcore mode, one life permadeath deal)

well, any other lore i can think of is: before she went into her deep sleep, one of the three "dreamers" i mentioned before said she would only do it if he gave her a child, so PK and her had the one character hornet together. (she's the pointy one with the pinkish red cloak) so she's half sibs with ghost (the tiny dude you play as) and the hollow knight (the really tall pointy one).

there's another character you run into every so often named quirrel. he's very inquisitive and friendly, but he's still skilled with a nail. (nails are the weapons most of the bugs seem to use, you get to upgrade yours throughout the game.) he was the apprentice to one of the other dreamers monomon she was like a knowledge keeper of sorts. he wandered out of the kingdom and lost his memory (as all bugs do apparently when they leave hallownest) and he came back later and you meet him.

my favorite place in the whole game is the city of tears, the music and the whole vibe is so melancholy and sad? like that's a huge reason i love the game, the worlds already over and everything is empty and gone. you only see and hear echoes of what used to be. :\ the city is raining perpetually and it's a deep shade of blue, the architecture is pretty too.

i like to stand in front of the statue and listen. it's very peaceful. i have the top pic as my lock screen.

bro idk the game gets me so emotional, it like touches a specific part of my soul. it's beautiful. (id highly suggest listening to the whole soundtrack on spotify or whatever platform you use. ive joked w myself if my story ever got some sort of adaption id like christopher larkin to score it. lolol as if)

one part of the game i haven't really done is the pantheon of hallownest, it's like... you fight the bosses you already have again but... worse. and harder. also the path of pain, it's a really difficult platforming uh, puzzle/map i guess. you get a special cutscene when you complete it. i haven't gotten far at all in it. 🥲 i really want to complete it though.

the bosses are pretty difficult, but once you really get the pattern down pat and get a set of charms you like to work with, it's a lot more tolerable. speaking of that, you can acquire these things called charms which give/boost certiain abilities. you have a limited amount of "charm notches" to fill. i think the ones i like best are quickslash (well, makes your nail quicker), weaversong (gives you little weaver ((spider)) buddies who can damage enemies for you, and sharp shadow. (you gain the ability to dash through things, and equipping this charm makes it so you can damage them too.)

my first round playing HK was a disaster because i have never really played these kind of platform-y boss fight games before. just getting out of the first tiny area in the flipping game was a chore. but then i worked my way up and have beaten one of the hardest bosses twice, so thats... good. i suppose..

oh another thing i should mention if you have options in the game for different endings, depending on the things you pick up, enemies you defeat, and how you fight HK at the 'end' of the game. there's technically like, six endings in total? like you can either kill HK and absorb the infection yourself, enter HK's mind and kill the radiance, have hornet assist you in killing HK and getting you both sealed inside- etc etc.

one sad little part of the game is on one area, the crystal caverns, you meet this little miner bug myla. she sings to herself while she mines, but visiting her over time as the game goes you can see her getting taken over by the infection until eventually at one point she attacks you and you have to kill her :(

one challenge you can do is this pkace called the colosseum of fools. its has 3,,, uhh,, levels i guess you can do. i've only done the first 2, ive always gotten overwhelmed right before the end of the third one. you get geo (hallownest's currency) and some other rewards, like a piece of pale ore you need to upgrade your nail. it's basically wave of enemies and the terrain changes to make things difficult, like having you jump on platforms and putting spikes on the ground.

anywho, a really good person to watch on youtube is mossbag, he does a lot of lore videos, and there's a mod called hollow knight randomizer which is reallllyy funny to me. i'm probably forgetting a lot too lololol

thanks for asking me about stuff 🥺💗

#ask #hk

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reksink · 2 years

Note

for the silly hollow knight ask:

ghost

hornet

cornifer

myla

the grey mourner

pure vessel

Man I'm gonna have to write an essay's worth, hehe

Ghost: Why did you decide to play Hollow Knight?

What really started to kick things off was seeing all of the wonderful fanart for it! (Especially from my mutuals, ALL of you caused this /lh) Over time I just got really curious, but I was also under the impression that it’d be way too hard of a game for me, so I foolishly just bunched a ton of lore videos. Eventually I snapped, and decided to finally buy it! And I am so glad I did, I love this game so much!! I’ve always been a soft fan of metroidvanias, and Hollow Knight made my love for the genre skyrocket!

I really wish I didn’t spoil myself like that though. I would have loved to have a fresh experience with the lore and character for myself first. Still hooked in though, and now I have over 160 hours in this game about the bugs that be people. (Shout out to Path of Pain counting for 20 hours of that. Never again)

Hornet: Favorite boss battle? Most difficult boss?

Favorite: Pure Vessel. To make my thoughts as TLDR as possible: Everything in that battle feels earned. Every hit, every dodge, every moment to heal, the fact you can even fight them at all, you’ve earned it. The fight swells with pure emotion and focus. The wonder triumph I felt after beating them at the end of the pantheon-finally getting my 112% completion-is a feeling I’ll remember for years to come.

Honorable Mention: Dung/White Defender. I love Ogrim’s fights so much, but the fear and horror I was in when I first saw his pile of dung in the Royal Waterways will haunt me forever.

Most difficult: Nightmare King Grimm. 8 hours of work for that one baby!! When you finally understand the rhythm to the fight, it flows so well, but while you’re trying to figure it all his punishments are BRUTAL.

Honorable Mentions: The Watcher Knights, I HATED THOSE BITCHES. But now I kill them all in like 2 minutes during my pantheon runs. I have slaughtered my tormentors.

Cornifer: Favorite area in the Hallownest?

God, this one is gonna be difficult, I love nearly all of the areas ingame (Some more than others, but shhh) The first that comes to mind would be the City of Tears, more so the scene where you get to sit with Quirrel on the bench. The city is lonely, but knowing that at least for little while you have someone to sit with, was something really special.

In a more general scene, Greenpath! I'm a sucker for green and plants, plus they have my favorite enemies and lore bits!! And of course The Hunter is there, the lonely lanky man himself 💚

Honorable mention: Weaver's den. I love their bits so much. (Also the poor weavers that cared about Hornet so much that they're wills turned into Weaver's Song breaks my heart 💔)

Myla: What's your favorite song from the soundtrack?

I naturally never have favorite songs, but I can list the ones that rot my brain!

Sealed Vessel, Nightmare King Grimm, Mantis Lords/Sisters of Battle, Greethpath, City of Tears, Queen's Garden, White Lady, Hornet/Daughter of Hallownest, & Lace (Lace's theme typically counts as a Silksong track, but for now I'm counting it)

Honorable mention: Myla's singing. Infection be damned, my girl can sing!

The Grey Mourner: Who would you give a delicate flower to, if you could?

Cloth!! Considering where she is most of the time, it'd be difficult as all hell, but I’d love to see her with one! She’d possibly break it by accident, but just seeing her have a little holding flower sprite for it would be the greatest of blessings.

Pure Vessel: What game achievement are you the most proud of?

Typically I don't have it yet because I need to get an ending again, but it has to be getting 112%. During my playthrough I kept joking about how I'd never be able to get 112%, BUT I DID BABY, 142 HOURS OF HARD WORK.

#ask #ufofunk #ask game #long post #Rambling about Hollow Knight my beloved 🙏💚

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awigglycultist · 2 years

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Pt 1 of The Guide: Starkid/Team Starkid/Starkid Productions (SK). I can't really think of much to say about them as whole. They make musicals and few webseries. I love them. They got started off in 2009 in college thanks to Harry Potter. I'll get into the more later.

Little White Lie (LWL). This is a webseries not a musical but it has plenty of songs in it. This was actually made before AVPM though it wasn't uploaded until after. It absolutely screams early 2000s. Everything about it is very early 2000s. Will probably give you the same vibes as Zoey101 if you watched that show. Ends on a cliff hanger, they were gonna make a season 2 but never did, tho there is a summary of how it would've gone. Its pretty short. It's good, it was one of the first things they made so not 10/10 but it's certainly not bad. It's Dear Evan Hansen but better.

Summary: Brother and Sister Duder and Sami Reese are a band that suck. After someone else gets into an accident they decide to lie and steal all their music to make it big.

A Very Potter Musical (AVPM). Was the first musical of theirs to go on youtube (bc it was cheaper than making DVDs for their family), and launched Starkid bc it went viral in the Harry Potter fandom, and thanks to this they kept making musicals and putting them on youtube. Made back in college, it's simple, funny, especially if you like Harry Potter, not amazing quality, and that goes for several of their early musicals, but hey it was 2009, it's kinda a mix of a few of the books and doesn't really take place durning a set year of school. Have you that hufflepuffs are particularly good finders? Or heard the audio "did someone say Draco Malfoy!?" both of those come from this. Also btw there's three Very Potter musicals and together their knows as A Very Potter Trilogy (AVPT). Also, Starkid hate JKR so dw about if you'd be supporting ppl who support her.

Summary: Uhm I'm honestly not really sure how to explain the plot to it. Ginny tries to get with Harry, Harry tries to get with Cho Chang, the tri wizard tournament happens, Quirrell has Voldemort attached to him and Voldemort plans on destroying Hogwarts.

Me and My Dick (MAMD). Ppl have anthropomorphic genitals. It's pretty sexual. But also funny and honestly a pretty sweet and cute story when get past the innuendos.

Summary: This dude named Joey is best friends with his dick (named Dick). He has a crush on this hot popular girl. Meanwhile his friend Sally has a crush on him. Joey and Dick get into an argument and quite literally Dick like unattaches himself and runs away.

A Very Potter Sequel (AVPS). Takes place in their first year of school. It's probably the most liked of AVPT, and it's definitely my favorite of AVPT. Warning the depiction of Umbridge in this is a bit transphobic but they've apologized for this.

Summary: Lucius Malfoy wants to get rid of Harry Potter once for all, so he travels back in time to Harry's first year at Hogwarts to do so.

Starship. Quite long. Imagine The Little Mermaid but instead of Mermaids it's a planet of huge bugs and instead of ppl on a boat it's astronauts. Or maybe imagine the Bee Movie but space. It's great. Theres also a subplot romance of a robot and one of the human astronauts. It's hilarious, it's fun, it's a good story, it's a long one, definitely one of my faves. Not gonna explain the plot bc it really is very similar to the plot of The Little Mermaid, but also it has more characters and is better (sorry Little Mermaid, space bugs are better and cooler).

Holy Musical B@man. A Batman parody. It's more like Lego Batman then any other Batman movie. It's a parody, it's not serious, it's just stupid and silly and fun. Lots of puns. It's ridiculous in a good way. My dad likes this one. Have you heard "I wanna be a modern dancer!"

Summary: Batman is sad and lonely. Superman is a jerk. Alfred finds Robin and is like "hey Batman check out this orphan kid!" in an attempt to get him a friend. They ofc become best friends. Sweet Tooth (basically The Joker) wrangles all the villains together to properly take over Gotham for once and for all.

A Very Potter Senior Year (AVPSY). Sorta fan fair, and it's a sweet ending to the trilogy. A lot of ppl are put off by the stage and the fact they're holding scripts, but: they performed this at a convention, and they only had two days to rehearse. So if you can look past that it's good (at least imo). Takes place in their last year. Long.

Summary: Gildroy Lockhart is a new professor at Hogwarts and everyone's lost interest in Harry and only cares about Gildroy and Harry is not happy about it, until he find out that Voldemort has returned.

Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier (or just Twisted). It's like Wicked but for Aladdin. It's amazing and awesome and fantastic and the best. An amazing mix of humor and seriousness. Amazing music. Amazing story. Amazing acting. Literally everything is amazing.

Summary: Aladdin but Jafar is the protagonist/hero. Trailer

ANI: A Parody (or just ANI). It's a parody of Star Wars. Also makes Darth Vadar the good guy for the most part but not really inspired by Wicked like Twisted is, in Twisted the point is that Ja'far is the good guy, in this its not the point. A lot of ppl don't like ANI bc they find it not very funny and the way the music is done strange. It's not a typical musical, the actors on stage aren't the ones singing, they still have choreo to the songs tho. Personally it's definitely not my favorite but it has some really funny characters in it though I'm sure it's best enjoyed if you actually know Star Wars.

Summary: Anakin is a little loser man and no one likes him but he used to pod race and he now he's gotta prove that he still has it in him and pod race once again. Trailer

The Trail To Oregon (TTO). It's a parody of the game The Oregon Trail. It's got quite a bit of potty humour, well particularly the ending, but overall it's still very funny. It's, I believe, the shortest SK musical. My dad likes this one a lot too.

Summary: Follows a dysfunctional family and their journey down the Oregon Trail. The dad is an idiot. The mom is overbearing but also the only one with sense. The son is a 7 yr old boy so ofc he's stupid too. The daughter is a typical teen girl. And the grandfather hates the dad (his stepson). The daughter falls in love with this mysterious cool man who then kidnaps her! Oh no he evil! The family breaks apart but then ofc has to bands together to save their daughter. You also get to pick the ending you want, it's all really the same ending you're just changing who sings and getting to hear a couple different jokes. Trailer (skip to 1:23)

Firebringer. The dawn of humanity. Dumb cave people. Dumb gay cave women. Like ANI it's not the funniest as a whole to me or to most people, but it does have one of the funniest characters, it does also have some really cool music. But it is a really fun and great story. Have you ever seen the "I don't really wanna do the work today?" vine/meme? Or heard the "what if I tried something new and it-" "backfired!" audio? Both of those come from this.

Summary: Zazzalil invents the spear but Jemilla is like "no that's dangerous!" the whole thing is kinda about safety vs innovation. Also Jemilla is the leader of the tribe. Then Zazzalil accidentally discovers fire and kicks Jemilla out and becomes the new leader. Turns out fire is very dangerous oopsie! Also there's this big saber toothed tiger thing that everyone's afraid and they decide to go kill, Also the ending is VERY suprising and unexpected (although the writers somehow thought everyone would except it) Trailer

Movies Musicals and Me (MM&M). It's a short webseries wheres there's no real plot exactly. It's just an excuse really to make parody songs for fake musicals. It follows a guy whose been in all of these musicals and is iconic and stuff but he's also super egotistical and the series has him going through singing different songs for the musicals he's been in and talking a bit about them along with others who were in those musicals with him or directed or produced or are a fan or something also taking about him and how Great™ he is. Trailer (which explains the series better than I did I feel like)

VHS Christmas Carol (VHSCC). It's they're shortest musical, being only one act, and unlike their other musicals it's 100% songs. It's easily one of my favorite Starkid shows and I could watch it a million times in a row. It has some the best songs of all their shows, it's so hard to choose a favorite.

It's the classic Charles Dickens tale A Christmas Carol but a musical and in the 80s! Originally it was done in 2020 with everyone in front of greenscreens and edited together to give it an 80's vhs tape vibe. In 2021 they a did a short live run of the show still with an 80's vhs background and 80's clothes, this is the version that's on youtube. Trailers: first, second

#starkid #team starkid #starkid productions

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flecks-of-stardust · 2 years

Text

Dreamless AU: Major Announcement

to any and all readers of my au that have still stuck around: hi i’m really fucking sorry

tl;dr version: everything is getting rewritten, official starting from now all previously uploaded chapters are defunct and being scrapped. i’ll keep them up because... sure, i guess, but i’ll be updating all of them shortly to reflect that they are outdated.

longer version is that i’ve done a Ton of worldbuilding since the au’s conception. (it turned a year old last month!) a lot of areas have a different layout than they did before, when i was still trying to stick loosely to canon, a lot of the characters that appear have been altered in both design and motivation (notably quirrel and sly, respectively), the background lore of the world has been fleshed out way way more, and everything is just... different. it’s too different. anything i’ve referenced before is no longer useful. i was going to go back and rewrite the earlier chapters at some later point, but with how much things have been altered—the crossroads’ layout has been Completely rebuilt, so the first three chapters are useless now—it just isn’t going to work out. it won’t make sense, so i figure it’s better to start over from scratch. frankly, i’m not even writing the same story anymore; my bugs are way more actually bug like now, there’s a lot more kingdoms beyond hallownest, and i’m working on language systems and everything. it’s a lot easier to just rework things from the ground up.

i can’t promise anything about, like, an updating schedule. my current school quarter is pretty packed and i don’t know how much time i’ll have to write, but i have a clearer view of what story i want to write now. so hopefully, going forward from this point on, things will be a little more solid. if you’ve stuck around this long for the story, i appreciate it, and i hope you enjoy the new story too.

also to come: more worldbuilding focused posts! i have ideas, i just need to find the time to write them. still slowly slogging away at the intro posts too; herrah’s will get finished eventually.

#dreamless au #dreamless whispers #augh i'm removing the current chapters from that tag

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eyelessfog · 6 months

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i have beat the first battle with the hornet protector. i am lost in depths

(dw about spoilers i already know the story)

OH MY GOD?? OH MY GOD? YOURE PLAYING HLLOW KNIGHT???? HELLO TO HORNET IM SO PROUD OF YOU FOR BEATING HORNET. squints wait can we try something. where are you in hollow knight - like what area.

oh my god. okay so right right hollow knight so hollow knight is a tragedy its about a dying kingdom its about a kingdom already dead, its about coming back to the place you came from, its about family, its about the people left behind, the people who live in a place that is long gone and its also about horrific violence on the part of the player character . i love waving my nail around

you as the character, ghost, show up and you as the player don't know where you are. you're small and just about everything is your size or bigger, but so quickly you meet people. bugs who don't hurt you by interacting with them, bugs who aren't husks of themself walking. elderbug, who's alone and who's been alone for all this time, watching people fall into the depths and never come back out. you meet quirrel, curious and confused but knowledgeable. he knows this place, but he doesn't know how, he doesn't know WHY.

you find him all the time and its great because hes my best friend ever

you meet cornifer, and you always see his paper, hear his song, a sweet melody that lets you know that it's safe enough, here.

you meet hornet, who points her needle at you and speaks as though she knows more - because she does know more. she fights you because she needs to be sure that you can keep on going. can you keep on going?

you win. the little body that falls over when she leaves looks a lot like you.

your mission starts being laid out for you - you find monomon first, let's say. quirrel stands outside of her archives, knowing, knowing, knowing. you walk inside, you dodge the exploding jellyfish [monomon what the actual hell was the thought process, bless], you find yourself in a room, a floor of acid, blubbling, bubbling - Uumuu, and quirrel knows what to do here. he's the only one that can break through the protection, can allow you to hurt it, and after you beat it, he runs down to find the woman who caused all of this for him. his teacher, monomon, who sent him off with little more than her mask and a nail, to never come back unless she thought it was worth it to allow her seal to be broken

she knows what a broken seal means. i think quirrel might too. when you break the seal, she disappears, and she disappears forever.

[the knights are tragic in their own right. hegemol, gone, other than his armour, puppetted by a maggot - the memory of a great knight fallen down to a home to a scared creature in a body too big for it. isma, turned to greenery, no way to leave, nothing left to give but her single tear - the only blessing she can offer. dryya, her final stand outside of her queen's hiding place - a knight till the end, but for what? she could have survived, but she didn't, all for her queen. ze'mer, holding on only to give a final gift to her dead love - she just needed that final flower to her dearest's grave before she could let herself go. and ogrim, the last and alone, living as well as he can, finding enjoyment in his simple and zombified opponents - hiding the way he misses his friends in a small cave beneath the surface.]

lurien is terrifying - 6 knights out of what was once 13 to protect him, and yet you go up to his tower, a long and lonely elevator ride, and there is no one there but him and his butler. well protected, but so alone.

herrah is at home. you can see it - she has no final boss to protect her because her home is treacherous all on its own. you find her in one of the webs of deepnest, one of the nests themselves - she isn't at her place of work like either of the others; or, perhaps, she is, as queen of deepnest.

when you break her seal, her daughter sits there, solemn.

"she was my mother," hornet says. "i think i'm allowed to grieve."

your own mother, the queen, the root, hidden away from the horrors that cover this world, gives you half of the kingsoul. her husband's soul, broken in two, one piece of it hers, and now yours. she thinks you can save the kingdom - clean up this mess

the other half - your father's - is with him, in his palace long gone. it's kept so close to him - through this memory where you must traverse a castle much sharper than it ever would have been in life. you take his half of the soul from him, and you go.

if you meet hornet for the second time, in the place where what was once your father rots, she has to fight you again. this isn't just to make sure you're prepared for hallownest anymore - this is for the king's brand. this is for the closest kept secret of the king, of your and hornet's shared father. this is for the truth of you.

you beat her. you enter the abyss. you go down.

the floor is littered with skulls much like yours. this isn't scattered here or there. this isn't some here or there. they are the floor beneath your feet, and when you go further down, you see that there are so many more than you could have ever imagined. and down, down, down, there is an egg. you see your reflection in it, and you remember.

you climbed this once, while your siblings rained down around you. you did well - made it all the way up when others couldn't, but you failed the last jump.

at the top, someone else got there ahead of you. they saw you, there, hanging on to the ledge, but then your father walked away, and they walked too.

you fell.

the kingsoul isn't his soul anymore. it's your heart. voidheart.

you make your way out. up, to the egg, to where the seals have been broken, to where the infection that puppeteers these people begins, and you go inside.

your sibling - 7 times your size - hangs there in chains. they let you fall once.

you break the chains and let them fall.

they're in pain, the source of the infection trapped inside of them and wanting out.

you don't know much, but you know how to fight. if nothing else, you can try to weaken them - weaken the power within them.

hornet comes to help, pressing her needle to their forehead and keeping them still. you unsheathe your dreamnail and find the world within them.

when you look off towards the sun, when you raise your nail, the sun spreads her wings in response.

the radiance cries out.

#[asks]#im NOT explaining the radience everyone good NIGHT <- lying i have other asks im going 2 answer :DDDD

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pseudepigraphon · 2 years

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love ur hk designs! how did u come up w/them? do u have any notes?

aww thank you so much anon !! i DO in fact have notes but theyre a lot so [cracks knuckles] lets go thru this --

i love designing and humanizing characters as its a real fun brain exercise and such, but humanizing the hk characters has really given me a lotta gusto that perplexes even me ?? either way im not complaining its very fun and im glad to elaborate on all (bc its a bit much) the thought that went into these!!

Image Description: Digital art of humanoid Hollow Knight Characters. Quirrel, Hornet, the Knight, and the Hollow Knight are all hanging around a bench and looking at the camera. The Knight is sitting on the bench, their legs dangling off, and holding their helmet. The Hollow Knight, all bandaged up, is sitting on the ground but leaning their head on the back of the bench. Quirrel is standing and leaning on the bench back, making a thumbs up and smiling a big smile. Hornet is also standing, though she rests three of her hands on the bench with an unimpressed expression. End ID.

in this post i’ll be talking about inspirations and show off the designs of the knight, hornet, quirrel, thk, the dreamers, and some less polished higher beings designs -- and go over it all with my neverending commentary! everything's under the cut in order to spare y'all's dashes LMAO

one must begin with groundwork. try to figure out what aspects of the character you want to be most important. do you want their silhouette to be immediately recognizable? are you inspired by a particular time period or region, or want to set it in that time period or region? do you want to prioritize colors? are you willing to let go of silhouette / direct visual relatability in lieu of emphasizing personality in the little details of appearance? try to strike that balance and see what is to your taste.

you should also consider how seriously you want to take things. will you consider things down to material and essentially fabricate hallownest's textile economy or do you just want to ball off of vibes? (i like incorporating historical garments and feels into things because i think they're neat, but i do get silly here. maybe i'll bow to my inner desire to ground everything some day and take another stab at, well, all of this.)

there are some things you can easily render turning bug to person (as i love diverse face shapes so you’ll see a trend of pointy in game, pointy here) and some that are much harder. either you can go for what is straightforward and easy for someone to be like “oh hornet head shaped mask! that must be hornet!” or you can not do that! your humanizations, your rules. hollow knight has a very simple, curve and shape-based art style, so you can incorporate a lot of subtle details on that! you can also do any other motif and really lay into it -- if you look at my monomon i have all these that are jellyfish-esque: her gown shape, her choker, her braids, the embroidery on her gown, etc.

or you can ignore all my advice and do what you want! i’m not the boss of you.

so , FIRST THINGS FIRST: aesthetic inspirations ! i did a few passes based on a variety of regions but i decided go with a pre-modern era european influence, largely because of the general influences and vibes i saw in the in-game architecture and appearances for things and places. i decided to land my inspirations anywhere from the 1500s to late 1700s / veery early 1800s, though im just aiming for fantastical with a heavy side of inspiration.

i decided to have individuals from before the fall of hallownest have look inspirations from Later in this time frame with those after being Earlier to get this kind of ‘technology and society has backslid’ idea. that, and because i thought the aesthetics of later monarchist europe -- l’ancien regime and all that, if you will -- quite fitting with hallownest right before its fall. because of this extremely broad time frame (300 years!) and also me just generally not trying to be concerned with ‘historical accuracy’ as this is both non-historical and very fantastical, there’s going to be a mess of silhouettes and such -- though i do love a rich deep dive into history, this is a time for fantasy fun and nonsense :-)

i decided to constrain myself with a few internal rules: one being the inspirations i draw on, and another main one being regarding masks. i decided to restrict mask wearing to as little as possible -- no shade to people who include masks in their gijinkas! i think they look wonderful with them And are lore relevant! but i felt like me, personally, using masks would keep me at times from being at the very top of my design experimentation game. so, as a little sort of fun challenge, i’m keeping away masks as much as possible in these people’s everyday wear. this means it is harder to keep silhouettes, but my priority is less 100% sticking close to silhouettes (though that is something to consider) and more evoking enough motifs and such to where they’re recognizable.

SO LET’S BREAK DOWN SOME DESIGNS!

Image Description: A reference sheet with various views of a humanized Knight. They’re a pale little humanoid thing armed with a shortsword, their skin and hair that same color of off-white, and always maintaining that same wide-eyed, small-mouthed, and neutral (yet almost determined?) look. They’re dressed in virtually rags from neck to boots, and all dark colors - navy blues, greys, dark brown leather, and even the deepest blacks. Charms are studded to their outermost cloak (and there seems to be a pair of vestigial, black-soaked wings under said outer cloak). They have a flat, square face, and a flat, square nose, though their corners are blunted. Their hair should be straight but it has gone long unbrushed; it stops in bangs at their forehead then cascades to their chin, where it hugs their jaw, especially at two points on the left and right where two ticks stick out on each side.

They can be seen also wearing headgear: a chainmail hood with old, yellowed horns poking out at either temple. They are also shown with their hair up in a little bun, or in two pigtails remniscient of their canon horns (one can thank Mato!). There is a little drawing of their exposed arm, showing how all their joints are harshly segmented, as if an insect or porcelain doll. In the corner, their dark shade chases after them. End ID.

an idea i wanted to play with for the knight -- and any of the vessels, for that matter -- is that of the uncanny. they are almost human! (as im approaching these humanizations with the idea of ‘human au’ and less so ‘everyone must be humanoid’, the higher beings are markedly less human here. ill get to that in a bit.) i decided to go for the concept that the knight is a living porcelain doll -- hollow, white, uncanny. they’re probably not shiny -- their surface probably feels like it was once porcelain smooth but is now ever so slightly abraded -- and theyre also not LITERALLY a doll. they do have a crackable exterior, yes, and are hollow, yes, but their segmented joints and such are less ‘doll’ and more ‘insect exoskeleton segments’. thank their dad (though i always thought he was more of a tapeworm / platyhelminth. but that aside--)

them being this humanoid non-human lends to some fun details! this is an example i like but is extraordinarily hard to communicate thru just stylized art: their eyes cannot close as they have been ‘carved’ that way & their pupils are just a hole into their void interior, and thus if you look at their face at an angle or profile you can see a little ridge / rim of the thin layer of their eye-white ‘porcelain’. they are also virtually dressed in rags, though the bottom cloak layer of those rags are wing-shaped, but still vestigial w/o the monarch wings, like in-game. and the two little hair-ticks on either side of their chin are meant to evoke their horns! :-)

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hornet. She’s a thin, lithe person, with a long thin face wider at the top than the bottom and a thin chin. She has four eyes, and four arms. She has brown skin, with the exception of a patch of pale skin in the shape of her canon head right over her nose, with the ‘horns’ extending up into her scalp. There’s a flash of white coming from her forehead amongst her curly black hair, which is tied back into a bun by a hairtie shaped like two lightly curving pale horns. She has a long and pointy nose with a thin bridge, but it is crooked slightly. She largely has an unimpressed and stern look on her face.

She wears a bright red cloak with three weaverling buttons on the front, and white embroidery on the collar, back, and hem. The design on the back is a heavily stylized spider: a round body of eyes, with floral arms extending out from the junction between the body and the curving leaf-mandibles. Underneath her cloak she wears a white top with gold embroidery down the center (that goes up her neck to the underside of her jaw, and can be optionally decorated or plainly wrapped in white) and a bodice that is black on the sides but gold and white in the center at her torso. Tied to her belt is a silver chatelaine with sewing supplies. She has red puffy sleeves, slitted to show white fabric showing through, and black forearm-length fingerless gloves. There are a few more sketches: one of her with a double-horned hennin (her formal wear, maybe she wore when young), one of her as a child shouting excitedly for her ma, and a tiny her standing unimpressed next to a wide-eyed Knight. End ID.

hornet was kind of difficult, particularly because… of her head shape… but i fired out several solutions! the double-horned hennin (the funny two-cone hat) is from history, though the idea was scrapped as i imagine hornet in the present, as you see her, would not be of a mind to wear such finery. thus, i decided to give her a hairpiece shaped into horns, to evoke that silhouette. much more practical. (same idea goes with her patch of pale skin.)

as i mentioned this is a not-strictly-humans scenario, so i decided to splurge on the weavers and spiders and give them some differing anatomy, ie some extra arms and eyes. as a treat. i havent entirely sussed out (lol) the exact logic of her wear -- turns out making real things fantasy makes them, construction-wise, rather odd -- and is always subject to change. hornet wears things rather simple, for practicality reasons; and though her outfit is highly fictionalized (lmao) her garments under her cloak are somewhat based off of the portraits by cranach the elder. (all weaver clothings generally would feature repeating shoulder puffs. not leg-of-mutton style, but moreso in the image of the 1530s-40s. you'll see this more on herrah.)

the knight is a bit too ’young’ to have these features be quite apparent so they are the exception, but the trend with the ‘pale lineage’ is that of very pointed chins, long faces, and thin long noses. you'll see this on the hollow knight and the pale king, and you almost see this with hornet. she is still somewhat her father's creature, though he was never quite in her life.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Quirrel. He's a portly brown man (with warm-toned skin) with a squat (but not comically so) face, a pointy and stick-out nose, freckles concentrated around the top of his nose and where his eyes meet, relaxed, monolidded black eyes, and straight black hair. His hair falls short onto his forehead and comes down his cheek in sideburns, but is pulled back into a low bun -- though it is usually covered by a dark grey-blue headscarf. He has silver plate armor on his upper body, upper arms, and over his thighs, with a sash winding 'round his waist and holding up his scabbard; he too wears long black gloves, and thigh-length leg gaiters over brown breeches. Covering his neck is a white neck stock. He has a bit of a hunched posture, his hips and neck both leaned forward; his belly is well-rounded, and his long legs are rather spindly.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here); and he's clad in a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings covering brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here). He has a couple possible outfits: a more realistic one, a dark greatcoat with multiple capelets over a sky blue waistcoat, high collar with a white cravat and pin, high black hosen with brown breeches; and an alternate one: a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings with brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

quirrel was both easy and hard. to mimic his segments i decided to give him plate armor -- reasons for this are fairly obvious i imagine LMAO (segments!) (though his armor isn’t based on or accurate to any particular armor style. this is because i do not like drawing armor.) for his outfit pre-fall of hallownest, i gave him some breeches and leggings, as is typical for his very regency / turn of the century inspirations, but those give him the effect of white legs. to sort of mimic the black legs he has in-game, i instead gave him black thigh gaiters! i could have gave him long boots (and i imagine he did have a pair) but 1 i liked the gaiters more 2 i forgor :(

a fun little add-on eagle-eyed viewers (?? i feel like a youtuber saying that) may spot is that the brooch on his neckcloth is an isopod shell! in some illustrations i draw this brooch directly on the cloth / above the knot and not on the draped part. no man would wear a stickpin / brooch like that on his tie in real life. i just don’t like drawing knots. younger quirrel also features more teals and greens in his design, along with gold accents, to fit more with the archive’s colors. (even in the present day, hidden under his headscarf, he uses a green ribbon to tie his hair back.)

honestly, he and monomon were the main reasons i decided to extend the period outside of late medieval. it’s their fault! not only did monomon fit really well to the dress silhouette of one of these later decades, but i really wanted quirrel to have a napoleonic / regency feel. this is largely because with the enlightenment there came the rise of natural philosophers and the scientific sorts of fellows, which have become sort of their own iconic archetype in the public consciousness (and in fiction. stephen maturin my beloved.) i thought that would fit him well, and so i went for it.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hollow Knight. They’re a very tall and svelte hollow humanoid, almost gangly in their proportions. They have a very elongated face with a straight, aquiline nose, large almond-shaped eyes, and a permanent expression that is all at once solemn, neutral, and melancholic. They look a lot like their father. They’re pale white on their skin and hair -- hair that is parted in the center at the forehead and tucked behind more hair, which cascades down to their torso when not tied up. Framing their face on either side are two slightly shorter bits of hair with three little spikes on each.

As the Pure Vessel, they stand straight and tall, completely cloaked in deep grey cloaks and holding a broadsword in firm gloved hands. Over their cloak is pale silver-white armor, with three-layered spaulders, a cuirass, and a helmet with large horns. Holding the Radiance within them, their cloak is torn and their armor and helmet are gone, with their hair splaying out loose. One of their boots is missing, exposing a segmented leg. Their right arm is gone, and a crack runs down their face down their forehead, into their eye, and down their cheek, exposing a bright yellow light from within. Still, they clutch their sword. In a corner of the image a tiny Hollow Knight looks with wide eyes at an even tinier, shouting Hornet. End ID.

the hollow knight’s design was fairly straightforward as i had figures out their siblings before them. even their armor -- which has been pointed out to be largely ornamental and they do not actually use it when fighting -- was easy to transpose. i was, admittedly, trying to avoid helmets (especially those that completely cover the face, though their’s isn’t) largely because i just dislike drawing them, but i felt i really HAD to with the hollow knight and so i just went for it !

i purposefully gave them a sort of gangly and out-of-proportion feel to them -- i like to think their grace is that of a stick-legged bird, like a heron or flamingo... someone stretched them in taffy help! /j but it also speaks to their true delicacy and fragility - both emotionally and literally. they’re a perfect hollow creation, but could very easily fall... or something like that !

but-- yeah, as i mentioned earlier, their design was a natural conclusion to come to from that of their relatives, so there’s not much new to say about them!

next, let’s look at the dreamers!

Image Description: The three dreamers, standing primly. In order from left to right there is: Herrah the beast, Lurien the watcher, and Monomon the teacher.

Herrah is a tall brown and broad-set, wide-shouldered woman. She has six eyes and an aquiline nose, and curly hair; on her head she wears a horned metal helmet and a dark blue bandanna covering the lower half of her face. From her neck there is a waist-length dark blue-grey cloak that cascades out behind her back. She wears a pale grey-blue doublet with a full skirt; on her arms there are rows of pinched pale fabric to look puffed, and her forearms are covered in dark grey fabric to the knuckles. She has striped grey spanish breeches and black hosen and shoes. One pair of arms is crossed, the other pair of arms rests on the hilt of a thin sword.

Lurien is a short brown man with an upside-down droplet shaped head. He has very short wavy hair and a long straight nose; a large teardrop shaped mouche is placed at the bridge of his nose and between his eyes. He has a navy blue cloak draped over his entire body; underneath he has a white circular millhouse ruff that hugs close to his neck, a black doublet, black breeches, and white hosen. He has two strings of beads: around his neck with a king’s idol, and in his hands -- which hold each other -- with a silver pomander.

Monomon is a tall black woman with an oval-shaped head, a wide nose, and a long, thin neck. She wears a rather unadorned teal gown with a wide, almost bell shape skirt, split down the center. At the top of the bell meeting the waist are two layers of teardrop shapes in light cyan fabric emitting out, similar to those on a jellyfish. At the bottom of the bell are more cyan embroideries, this time of floral motifs in the general shape of jellyfish. Her sleeves can either be puffed (for inaccuracy but design fun) or unpuffed (for accuracy) and then drape to the elbow, and she wears forearm-length white gloves. Her stomacher is green, with lighter green designs: four eye-like ovals, two smaller ones on top of the larger ones, with floral decorations around them. She has a dark blue headscarf, but seen coming out of it are four braids. End ID.

first to clarify: monomon’s braids are floating so you can see her gown easier! it’s not literal :-) second to clarify: in this sort of little half-baked au-thing i decided to make their masks a part of the spell. that is, their mask is one of the seals binding them to their slumber, and all that good rot. this means they follow my no-mask rule when not sleeping AND their masks remain relevant (namely, quirrel taking monomon’s mask to her.)

the dreamers are all based off of different centuries and it is pretty easy to tell with them standing side by side, hah! hell, they even go in order: herrah i largely based on the 1500s, lurien the 1600s, and monomon the 1700s...! that was unintentional.

herrah largely has this kind of puffiness to her body segments in the game, and so my first thought was immediately: 1500s style puffs. the sleeve puffs (as also seen on hornet, and they were often slitted. think the og disney snow white!) and also the very wide and puffy breeches (which i always thought were hilarious). unlike hornet’s hairpiece, i gave her a helmet to show her horns! i felt it fit her more than it did hornet -- maybe it’s just me, but i feel like hornet wouldn’t be one for metal armor. in formal or dressy wear she likely switches the helmet for a headdress like a hennin or escoffion.

however, i am feeling not 100% satisfied with her design as it is right now, though i do think it works on the levels of thought i put into the other designs. i dunno! i’ll change it when i feel like it -- such is the nature of these :-)

ngl i put the least effort into lurien out of the 3 dreamers… sorry king i just don't care much about you comparatively… im pretty content with his design though! i decided to base him off of the more subtle and understated north europe fashions, as i felt they’d fit him. however, the bigass ruff is the biggest staple of this design for me (in my mind at least!) it’s drawn from the period and it also introduces a big round shape into his general design (when his in-game design is literally Round + drapey cloth LMAO)

i decided to have him wear largely black to show status! normally in this time period richer folks would wear black - which may seem odd and plain to us but is rather telling of status as rich, deep black is quite hard to dye. however i still gave him a dark blue cloak to more allude to his ingame design.

i imagine he is devout from the few bits of in-game characterization we get -- hence the idol. he also has a pomander! they were medieval scent-objects thought to keep away miasma, or plague air. (they contained strong scents! it was for the same reason plague doctors stuffed their beaks with herbs: good scents keep away bad air! or so they thought.) i draw people with them a lot -- i just think they’re neat things and one of my favorite medieval objects :-)

as for the thing on his face - a mouche! what are mouches? i recommend you watch mina le's wonderful video on the subject -- she could explain it far better and in a more entertaining way than i.

i had SO MUCH FUN with monomon! (and i think that’s easy to see, hah!) dresses and gowns from the latter 1700s (though not yet regency like quirrel is -- dresses got kinda tube-shaped in regency) really do give the look of a jellyfish bell. a thin waist (comparatively speaking from the wideness of her dress -- though one can also look to the corset) would mimic monomon’s sort of thin neck (??) you see right before the grey-blue cloth in her in-game design. and since she isn't wearing a mask here, i put the imagery of the two pairs of eyes on her stomacher instead! wide puff and then pinching / thin segments is kind of the theme of her entire design - in her dress, in her sleeves (though it's innacurate and also optional tbh), even in her neck and head. sort of bowling ball -esque i suppose! (sorry monomon.)

her braids being similar to her tentacles was an idea i believe inspired by @valdotpng 's depiction of her, and it's a great idea ! another allusion to jellyfish is the four little oval shapes i put on the skirt of her dress, to mimic that on jellyfish. (those are, in fact, their gonads.)

i haven’t drawn them, but if you or i were to draw them while in sleep then there would be cloth completely covering their shoulders and up, and the mask over where their face would be. just like in game !

last but not least i have some tentative sketches of some higher beings !

Image Description: Sketches of some higher beings.

The Pale King is a segmented worm with several rows of arms; he wears a rather simple white robe with embroidered trim. He has a svelte, high-cheekboned face, with a long aquiline nose and long straight hair with some pulled back in a bun -- his entire surface, skin and hair, is entirely pale white. Atop his hair he has a spiked crown. However, that human face is a false magical add-on; this ‘face’ is detachable, with the true head and mouth at the ‘crown’.

The White Lady is a large tree-woman; she has a oval face and delicate, pointed nose, but out of where her hair would be if she were a human extends out innumerable tree branches out in every direction. from the branches and to her face and downward are dignified wrinkles of bark. She is, however, restrained and bound in magical cloth.

Unn is a large hunched woman, her form covered almost completely in water plants that droop down to the lake she comes out of. Amongst the shadows of the fronds peeks a weary smile, though all else is covered. However, out of the plants peeks out two eyes on stalks. She is smiling down at a very small Knight.

The Radiance’s face is entirely obscured in darkness, and long hair flows down from her sun-ray crown. Out of her back come countless moth wings, large and small, each one covered in countless eyes of various sizes, though the lower wings turn into longer ray-like fronds. From under the wings comes a long-nailed hand, which is held up to her hair-covered chest. End ID.

outside of the pale king and mmmaybe the white lady im rather unsure about these...!!! radiance i’ve barely thought about -- so ill have to work on her a bit more ! this is more of a sketch of general motifs and the direction i wanna go in

as aformentioned i wanted to take more non-really-human designs for the gods. they’ve just got a different spin on their in-game motifs, with ‘humanoid’ added to the blender as well. for example-- the pale king is still the rather insectoid-wormoid-wyrm that he is in the original, but what he is trying to do here is appear like that of a man and not a common bug. (an extra thought tidbit: the lines on his face and wyrm body are meant to evoke the seals of binding, though they’re rather simplified here they’d be more detailed in an actual polished picture.)

since they aren’t meant to be human we get fun stuff like literal tree woman white lady, and all that !! it’ll be fun to think some more on it.

NOW, that’s it for the characters for this post! i’ll go over more if people want ‘em lmao but i cant let this post go on forever HAH....

a few more scrap thoughts:

1 there is a common thread amongst Hallownest clothing, despite the decade differences, that i want to keep in mind when drawing these characters, to maintain consistency and believability that they're from the same region. the main thing is embroidery and just general decorative choices! i’ve tried to involve a mix of straight and curvy lines (heavy emphasis on lines in these designs in fact) along with floral motifs. though not a direct inspiration, try thinking about the motifs of real life period decorations, paired with the swirling curves balanced with geometric / curved / straight lines of the ui menus and such in the game !

2 hallownest would still have insectoid iconography in its art and its architecture -- the gods they worship are still rather insectoid, after all. and there is still no reason they wouldn't use insects in their iconography the same way european cultures have historically used bird and mammal motifs. as for what their architecture would be -- i think in game is a perfectly fine, but also i’d tentatively throw the dart at gothic with some dashes of late romanesque.

3 my art, me drawing these designs, is horribly inconsistent. that’s fine with me!! these are all for fun -- i think putting metric tons of thought into these are fun, as much as i think making tweaks depending on how i’m feeling is fun.

with ALL OF THIS IN MIND… i bid thee, reader, adieu! i hope you enjoyed my ramblings! id love to hear your own thoughts about all this and feel free to ask me questions about characters i haven’t mentioned here, an aspect you’re curious about, or anything at all! hopefully it made sense! (and if you wish to and are feeling either exceptionally charitable or exceptionally inspired, i give my express permission to draw all these, just please @ me so i can see it! i’m bad at social media so i don't like, check tags and stuff.)

:-) <3

#THIS IS SO LONG LORD HELP ME.... but i hope you like that i went in depth!#hollow knight #hk gijinka #the knight #quirrel #hornet #the hollow knight #monomon #hk lurien #herrah the beast #the pale king #the white lady #the radiance #unn #newt art #ask #anonymous

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queruloustea · 4 months

Text

Stew is served, and some things are learnt.

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel/Quirrel

Characters: Quirrel (Hollow Knight), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel

Additional Tags: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel Needs a Hug, Quirrel Needs a Hug (Hollow Knight), Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Angst, tired bug adopts eldritch void creature, eldritch void creature in turn adopts tired bug, Post-Embrace the Void Ending (Hollow Knight), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Fluff and Angst, Soup

Summary: A bug and a so-called vessel, both having given everything to a plan ultimately failed, get to know each other.

soup time pt. 2. a little bit of eye squick in this one—nothing you wouldn't expect, though :)

#hollow knight #fanfiction #quirrel #the hollow knight #tea-seasoned soup

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payasita · 3 years

Text

a request for some quirrel and grimm interaction

The scholar sits upon the shore, His duty done, his purpose naught

For his madame he had fought with her to sleep forevermore.

But why another dreaming loop? The memories alone can burn,

You only have to light the lantern--

The bug before him faltered slightly, the top-heavy lantern in their hand dipping down an inch. Quirrel continued to gawk for another moment, then hurried to catch up with his mouth.

"Ah-- that is, no thank you. I'm quite content where I am, good, er... sir," he assumed, and held up his hands peaceably, eyeing the nail embedded into the sand just an inch too close to his colorful new guest.

"...Are you, now." The guest in question pulled back the lantern some, and stood idle. It did not sound like a question, which Quirrel found just a little bit disconcerting.

"I am," was all he said in turn.

"Hrmm. The master is seldom wrong about… prospective recruitment." The being that was probably not entirely a bug eyed Quirrel curiously. He guessed it might be curiosity, at least. It was of course difficult to glean any expression behind the mask, and with his strange getup that a bemused and apprehensive Quirrel could only describe as either "whimsically menacing" or "menacingly whimsical".

"Well," he cleared his throat, "He's wrong this time."

"Is that right." Again a question-non-question.

"It is." His affirmation was terse, just a bit too tired for his normal sociability. "While I could certainly understand the attraction in your offer for some, I myself have no desire to be rid of any memories. I've too little of them left as it is, you see."

"Hrm. You'd rather take them with you, then." The being gestured with a nod to the lake, unassuming as it ever was. Quirrel balked, but any fears of having been caught were quickly found irrelevant. There'd been no accusation or judgment in the nightmare thrall's tone.

"...Yes," was his only response.

The thrall only hummed again, throaty. And then waited for an uncomfortably long moment, finally speaking again a split second before Quirrel had been about to try.

"What's keeping you?"

What, did he intend to watch? Quirrel blinked, and bit back that response for a less hostile one.

"...I am waiting for someone, actually."

"Best be on my way, then. Mrmmm."

Of everything he might have expected to hear, that was probably the most relieving. He nearly sagged with it.

"...Safe travels, then," he bade wanly. The thrall hummed from the back of his throat at that, and then wedged the tall lantern he held into the ground, right next the nail. He offered a short, casual nod before turning to leave. Quirrel scrambled to stand, nearly sputtering.

"Wait-- you're just going to leave tha--?" Somewhere in the milliseconds where he was pushing off the ground and not looking directly at his guest, the strange bug had vanished. He hadn't even been moving with any sort of haste.

Quirrel stood mutely, staring out at the empty cavern for a second, and then looked at the lantern. It was a pointy thing carved so its stone (or metal?) appeared hastily braided, with a scarlet flame flickering away up top over whatever hidden burner or robust kindling fueled it. Even if his curiosity for the unknown and peculiar hadn't already been extinguished, there was little about the lantern or its recent bearer that made touching it seem like a great idea.

And neither did he particularly feel like extricating his nail beside it. What would be the point?

Little to do for it, then. Quirrel sat again in the same spot he'd been, (he had been here first, after all,) and resigned himself back to his waiting. The flame made no sound as it burned, and with his back turned to it, he could easily forget it was there, if he ignored the slight tinge of red glow now reflecting off his carapace. The blue of the water much nearer was brighter, and easier to focus on.

He briefly worried that the little wanderer might be deterred by the clashing new addition to the cavern, but concluded that it would take far more than a spooky lamp to stop them from coming in if they wanted to. There was little in Hallownest that could stop them from doing anything they wanted to, really.

And Hallownest really did tend to attract such oddities. That fact had amazed and delighted him such a short time ago. Now though, it was just another thing for him to forget.

The lantern was attracting pests. Little red robed creatures came by and flitted about the cavern, at first so quick and unpredictable in showing themselves that Quirrel thought he was imagining them.

But they slowly got bolder, and now flew about in erratic circles around the lantern and over his head. One halted right in front of his face to cackle, and he'd fallen backwards in shock. That had greatly amused the little terrors.

He shot back up and righted himself, wildly swatting both arms around for a moment in a vain attempt to convince the little intruders to bugger off. They kept a wide berth of him, but seemed happy enough to keep their aimless racket up slightly further away.

"... Alright, then," he relented, shifting to rest an arm on his knee, "Suppose it was just a little unreasonable for me to have more than a moment's silence, down here." The ruins of Hallownest were a lot of things. Gloomy and shambling, first and foremost. But it was never truly silent between all the skittering, buzzing things about the crossroads, the burble and rustle of the Greenpath, and the din of rainfall in the city. Even the darkest reaches of the spiders' realm were haunted by the mournful whispering of long dead predators, still hissing at anything that came to close.

He theoretically remembers the archives as always bustling, though he couldn't say with any certainty whether that was true. Maybe he just would have liked to see them full of life again. He couldn't remember what it was like.

It must have been far less annoying than all the chittering creatures up in the air, all glaring him down and making the air behind him hot on his back. The lantern too must have been glaring.

Quirrel had lost track of time. That happened easily, especially up in the wastes. It was less that he couldn't tell how much time had elapsed, and more that he couldn't remember how long ago he'd sat down. The difference was slight, but it was as disturbing to him as it was convenient for a long wait.

The lake shone before him, still and serene as ever. The surface of it still fascinated him, for the slight and particularly Hallownest flavor of wrongness to it. A body of water normally darkened as it got deeper, but this one did the opposite. The entirety of the Blue Lake was as if illuminated by some distant and massive source of light far in its depths. He theorized some joined phenomena with crystals and bioluminescent algae, but there would have to be quite a lot of both to make that feasible.

"It is a spell," a dry wheeze of a voice spoke up beside him. "The cavern below was the only one big enough for the city within to be built, but the great lake above proved a threat to it. Its drainage would adversely affect the entire ecosystem, and the ceiling would only crack more and more. What is now rain would have been a waterfall, devastating everything."

Quirrel had jolted, and was staring at the new visitor as they spoke. He did not consider himself an inattentive sort, even if he was prone to get a bit lost in the sights. He would have surely perished in a place like this if he were, by now. And yet, he hadn't even heard the tall stranger come in.

Very tall. Not even with the bulk he'd expect of a bug that size. The being looked more like a cadaver in stage paint than a living bug. One that had died of smoke inhalation from some wildfire, by the sound of them.

But they weren't actively trying to stab Quirrel at the moment, not that he could defend himself if they did. His nail was still propped up alone out of reach behind them. Thankfully, he usually preferred to talk these things out, as it was. He relaxed his posture again, keeping a careful eye on his ominous new guest.

"...So there's a seal of some sort down there, then?" He asked. The stranger nodded.

"Of a sort. It was already cracked enough at the bottom to cause the rain below, before the powers that be took action. The lake drains eternally, though never loses a drop. Neither does the soil in the waterways beneath where it'd already collected ever lose its moisture," they explained, head cocked slightly.

"...So the stillness of the lake is older than that of the kingdom, then," Quirrel gathered. He'd started watching it again without even noticing, heedless of the stranger. They kindly continued their streak of not murdering him, so Quirrel went on with a quiet sigh.

"Incredible. Magic so consequential to the day to day lives of everyone living down there, but only known to them as the rain. Something so mundane."

"Only an inconvenience," the stranger agreed.

"...And a comfort, maybe." Quirrel had rather liked the sound of it, and it was nice to watch. He sincerely doubted he'd have been the only one to think that way.

He did have another thought, though. "...Why couldn't they have simply reinforced the cavern ceiling?"

The stranger laughed, a sound like a smoker’s death rattle that set Quirrel's spine rigid.

"Why indeed. Perhaps they simply hadn't had anyone around to ask good questions," they posited, all scornful mirth. Quirrel took the implicit compliment, and smiled faintly.

"Thank you for telling me, dark stranger. I admit I'd been curious about this place." He found himself trusting their information, though he had no idea why. Any curiosity he might have had about it had easily given way to exhaustion.

"You are welcome. In turn then, perhaps you might indulge a question of mine," they said while still looking out at the lake. Not once had they turned to look at him since they got here (or at least since he noticed them), though he could not confess to feeling ignored. He was even waited on for his answer.

"...Of course," it came dubiously.

"Why here?"

It took a second. But after that second, Quirrel found no reason to feign ignorance. He got the sense they already knew why he was here. Perhaps that was why they were here.

(It made sense enough, then, that he'd not heard them, if they were spectre rather than bug.)

He shrugged, then. "I wanted to see the source of the rain."

"That is all?"

"That's all. I just wanted to see it."

The spectre was quiet for a moment, not moving, nor changed in their countenance. Both merely watched the lake.

"And for now, what are you doing?" they finally asked. Quirrel let out a breath he hadn't noticed he'd been holding.

"For now, I am waiting for a friend."

"That is what keeps you."

“It is."

"And what if that has already happened?"

"...Pardon?"

Quirrel turned back to the stranger, and found them looking right at him. Between the brilliant scarlet of their eyes, and the utterly alien intensity of their stare, he found himself a tad grateful they'd avoided doing that while they spoke. He doubted he would have been able to so much as move, much less respond.

"What if the little shadow has already come and gone?"

Those eyes were not all that kept him frozen to the spot. The question had him searching them, though he could find nothing he liked within them beyond the way they shined.

Somehow, though, he felt his exhaustion ebb. He'd expected it to deepen, but as he broke their gaze to watch his hands, his pulse picked up from under them.

"...Then the next logical action would have already taken place, as well." He’d had no intention of waiting any longer. He'd not been afraid.

Above, the stranger said nothing. And again, they both gazed out to the lake, to the unperturbed peace it offered any observer. He could hardly hear the rain before, but as he listened, the thrum of it picked up incrementally.

"It is beautiful here," the spectre offered amiably.

"It is," he agreed.

"The choice is yours, then. It is an ultimatum, but it still comes down to you, even now." The stranger's voice was getting just a bit more difficult to hear, over the din of rainfall.

"Is it, really?" He asked, sounding far more drained than he felt, and just a touch bitter.

"It is," they repeated.

"Why? Did you come out of pity, then?"

"No. You need not worry about that. None shall ever hold any pity for what becomes of you. If there were ever any alive who once could, none are left to remember you," they promised. He had no idea if they meant for that to bring him despair, or peace.

"Then why?" Quirrel pressed, having to shout over the rising roar of water.

"Simply to offer a choice at all. It is clear you had little in the way of that in life, and something within you feels the same ought to be true about your death. After all, an obsolete tool is given no choice about when it has outlived its use, and so must be thrown away."

Quirrel felt as though he might burst from his shell, and in the deluge it was getting very, very hard to hear. Bright red eyes, like a distress beacon, kept him focused on their words, for just a few more moments.

"Another purpose might await you if you decide that is wrong," they bent down some, and took the chin of his mask between their fingers.

"But if you do not… It is beautiful here."

And like that, all was dark, until it wasn't. Then it was much too bright, the light coming from somewhere below, from some unseen seal placed centuries before his own birth.

There was some flailing, and precious seconds to get his bearings, but then, Quirrel swam up.

He broke the surface of the lake with a painful gasp of air, and the cavern was silent save for his frenzied splashing. He was actually much closer to shore than he would have guessed, and was able to haul himself back into the sand after a brief and rather undignified show of more desperate scrabbling. It'd apparently been a remarkably steep drop into the deep end, and he was sure it must have caught him by surprise.

He coughed as much water as he could get out of himself before rolling over to catch his breath. The first thing he registered was the cavern ceiling, and how the height and vastness of it was presently causing more nausea in his waterlogged skull. With a short groan, he turned his head more to the side, and caught sight of his nail, and the lantern. Still jammed into the shore side by side.

Quirrel laid there as long as he needed to until the need to vomit was obliged, and the nausea subsided some. He was freezing, and his legs buckled numbly under him when he first tried to stand. Another few seconds of shallow breathing, and he tried again, slowly.

When he reached past the nail and grabbed the lantern, the effort to stand came a bit more easily as he leveraged himself against it. After that it was just another moment of recovery, and then with it, he shuffled out of the cavern.

The torch did not provide much warmth for the height of the flame, but something told him he'd warm up quickly once he found his destination.

He'd already lived once for someone else, and in a sense, had died for them. If he was going to do it again, at least he would not suffer the cold.

And a circus troupe does lots of travelling, Quirrel understands. Maybe he could come to enjoy that again, given another mask.

But he’d not give up the memories. Not again.

#hollow knight #drabble #doodles #2k fic under the cut #hi grimm and quirrel anon i didnt know how to attach this multimedia nonsense to your ask #i just think hed be sick of erasing himself for folks yknow?#but avoiding that #goth circus certainly beats DEATH

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