#Don't mind me just spreading the worm theory | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

feathers-feathers · 9 months

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Has anyone else made this connection?

Long post alert. Most of it under the cut tho.

So, I was exploring some NPC pages in the wiki - and when I had a gander at Bardoon's page, I was surprised to see it refer to him as a caterpillar - the credit for the assertion going to the Wanderer's journal. Unfortunately I do not have that myself, so I couldn't see where. Either way, it struck me as obvious after seeing that. Just looking at his whole body plan… yeah, of course he's a caterpillar.

Knowing that some of the bugs in this game were based off of real life insects, I decided to make a cursory inspection of known real life caterpillars that fit the bill. Which would be, uh… stark white, I guess.

Wouldn't you know it, the very first one I see was the caterpillar stage for the Bombyx Mori - AKA the Silk Moth. AKA the Moth that a lot of people have connected to the Radiance due to being a very fluffy and very pale moth.

A comparison, for your viewing pleasure - CW I suppose for two images of real life insects - under the cut.

Right: Silk Moth / Radiance, Left: Silk Moth Caterpillar / Bardoon

It's not an exact fit for either obviously - but even then, known examples of bugs based off their real life counterpart don't often fully conform exactly either. Bardoon of course is very familiar with all this godly business. He can quite easily resist the infection, and quite easily resist even the awakened dream nail. He is possibly ancient - and knows things that are pretty much only known by other gods. Of course, this is more head-canon than theory. But it is such an interesting idea, is it not?

Let's take this idea and run with it: The Radiance and Bardoon are the same species.

This would add another interesting layer to the Radiance herself… she really wouldn't be all that different to the Pale King in this case. In fact, they would have almost identical backstories of arriving to Hallownest as worm-like creatures, transforming into their current form, possibly eradicating the previous rulers (the ancient caste and their void shenanigans in the Radiance's case), while starting up their own nation as replacement.

And if the Radiance isn't simply a one off thing, and is actually a member of a species of moths gods - then, of course, there would be others likely outside the kingdom. Unless, like the Wyrms, they too are going the way of the dodo.

And then, of course, there's Bardoon himself. If he eventually pupates into another Moth god… that would… probably be the best case scenario for a good future outcome, wouldn't it? I honestly can't see Bardoon causing any problems. Dude's just so chill.

I've always seen this world as being very high entropy - needing the supernatural power of gods to impose enough order for life to truly thrive. With most endings in the game, Unn is the only god left and she's not likely to last much longer. There's also the White Lady, but I really don't get the feeling that she's up for the task. So unless the life-sapping Void could somehow… not do what it's very nature does, post-Embrace The Void… I never really thought there was much hope for Hallownest to return to prominence. But with this whole concept, then there definitely is a chance.

Another cool idea: Take the normal ending. Post-Hollow Knight. The protagonist is containing the Radiance. Let's say the protagonist isn't a pure vessel, and the Radiance escapes again eventually. She begins spreading the infection once again. Except by now Bardoon has fully matured, and has very similar power. Bardoon has already spread his own much more benign form of the infection without all that mind control shenanigans. So the Radiance simply cannot find purchase in anyone's minds, as Bardoon's benign infection… basically acts as a vaccine, inoculating the minds of Hallownest's bugs.

I really did not expect to be thinking about Bardoon of all people like this, considering how out of the way he is. But here we are. I think this is a very interesting idea. Lots of room for speculation here of course! I want to see some more takes on this, if some of y'all are willing?

#hk #hollow knight #bugs #insects #moth #caterpillar #hk the radiance #hk bardoon #hk theory #hollow knight theory #hk headcanons #hollow knight headcanons

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keroascrazy · 9 months

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I got a question for any of the Jumblr who follow me. I guess it's something of a discussion topic? Help me to better understand this.

I saw the post explaining that there is no such thing as a non antisemitic conspiracy theory and it got me thinking about media representation.

Specifically the stereotype of characters who are around money a lot. Not all merchants are codes Jewish, but almost all Jewish people in modern media are depicted as being highly concerned with their personal wealth.

And specifically I'm thinking about this capitalist character named Zeki from this free to play game Palia.

He is a wealthy merchant, and all of your early game experiences with him have him shilling his products to you, at one point he makes a joke about paying one of the towns folk kids in candy to dig up the worms he sells to fishrfolk. He'll ask you to spread flyers to people for his underground buisness. And while he claims his products aren't illegal, I get the feeling he's tax dodging.

Other than being a seedy merchant who always has an eye on his coin pouch, nothing else stands out about him. He's friendly enough but because he's putting on a good public face and that's just good for buisness.

I guess my question/issue here is that Zeki is the ONLY Grimalkin we get to personally encounter so far. So he's like... an ambassador for his race? Currently the players AFAIK can't leave the immediate area. So now we kind of have this unconscious expectation that Grimalkins are merchants. Whether intended or not, our only other experience with Grimalkins are secondhand stories and a series of journals from a Grimalkin pirate that you can find.

Not really sure what my point is here but with recent posts on my mind and understanding that people are still killing Jewish people for dumb shit like blood libel and stupid conspiracy theories its just led me to be a bit more critical of some character tropes?

I don't think Zeki's design is malicious,, but im a goyim trying to listen and learn and it just feels.... off that they made this one non elf character the proprietor of the general store with a seedy after dark, tax dodging buisness, who always is trying to sell you something....I mean it's not too far of a logic leap to imagine people making stereotypical jokes that he must be Jewish because he's a merchant?

Idk. Its probably just my internalized antisemitism materializing and making something out of nothing in an attempt to "be better"

When really I could be committing Jewish holidays to memory to make it easier to not bother them during family stuff.

#jumblr #jewish #zeki #palia #i swear im not trying to cause a problem i just Noticed A Thing and wanted to ask people with actual real life experience about this #because its so easy to fall into believing a stereotype and not even know it #so without even realizing it youre actively spreading harmful or at the very least tiresome rhetoruc

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citrusella-flugpucker · 6 months

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20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @novantinuum! Nearly forgot to make the post because I cleared my Firefox session around when I finally updated my install. XP Which is sad because I love a good tag. XD

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

105, though three are tests. The remaining 102 are spread across 7-8 fandoms (depending on how you count spinoffs, though the fic that falls under that purview is one fic tagged with the original and the spinoff so maybe safer to say 7? XD).

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

465,512, though it should be noted I'm listed as an author for Connie Swap's omake collection (which is a standard fic with chapters) in which I wrote 2 of the currently 82 chapters/oneshots present in it. That fic has a total current word count of 223,825, so my personal word count is around/a little more than 241,687.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

(In order of fic count, excluding Testing)

Steven Universe (91 works)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom (7 works)

Habitica (3 works) -- Feel like noting 2 of these are hard vent fics (current pinned Tumblr post is a good summation of why) and the other is a draft fic that crosses over with (and is also counted in) Steven Universe)

Wreck-It Ralph (1 work)

Infinity Train (1 work)

Holes (book and movie are listed but it's the same fic) (1 work)

Suite Life on Deck (and Suite Life of Zack and Cody since it's the same fic) (1 work)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All Steven Universe, and excluding Connie Swap's collection which has more than any listed here

He's Gone (544 kudos)

The President Kisses Babies, and Other White House Briefs (447 kudos)

I Can't Say with Confidence (373 kudos)

Eternity in a Moment (343 kudos)

Change (339 kudos)

Interestingly, three of these are based in the SU Future "worm theory" popularized by (but not originating from) the person who tagged me. XD

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I want to and make a concerted effort right after a publish, but my likelihood to reply to a comment lowers exponentially the further from publish an update gets. XP I read them all! It's just that unless I find the specific comment really interesting and have a reply to it, after a certain point I just kind of... don't recognize I can do more than read the comment that comes in. Like the idea of replying to it does not cross my mind for reasons I don't fully get? Might be an executive function thing... or maybe I'm just lazy. DX XD

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

He's Gone, without a doubt. It's tagged the way it is for a reason. Technically the extra chapters serve as a little bit of angst ointment but it's originally and intentionally a oneshot (so the extra things are more like deleted scenes, epilogue, sequel vibes). And this oneshot ends in the saddest way possible for all involved. It earned its archive warning.

Branching out of AO3 and over to FFnet for a second, an old Suite Life fic I wrote, Not Worth It (which I'm not linking purely because I'd have a hard time explaining the sort of warnings I'd want to attach if it were on AO3), also ends pretty awful but that's mainly because it was for a "make a strong emotional impact in as few words as possible" contest, and the fastest way to do that is angst, specifically the kind where someone dies and their closest companion feels/sees it coming but is powerless to stop it. (I won the contest by less than one point. ._.)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I... don't know???? I have a lot of oneshots that are pretty happy all the way through (or end happily after a pretty mundane conflict). I'm having a really hard time bringing up any specific one that ends especially happily (other than joking my fake fluff fic, "Steven x A Nice Calm Life Please and Thank You™: A Case for the Realization of a Bold New Ship", ends the "happiest" XD).

I would like to say that out of my current incomplete fics (the ones I still consider myself to have a high likelihood of finishing, that being Intelligent, Educated, and Capable of Earning the Children's Trust (Tears of the Kingdom), You Get Proud By Practicing (Steven Universe), and Realism (SU)), I'm imagining endings that feel happier than prior multichapter endings I've written.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not really. A long time ago, I got one (1) flame on an FFnet story from someone who was clearly a kid, who was mad I'd written angst (I think this was on Not Worth It, but it could have been on a different Suite Life fic shortly after I discovered how to write angst), but I've been delightfully hate-free.

Closest I've gotten on AO3 has been that one time someone actually complimented He's Gone for its archive warning being relevant to a character they hated. It was clear this person was doing this because I was connected to Discord servers and people who they hated--they had tried to troll a specific Discord server I happened to be in, and they'd by happenstance targeted several people I knew in a different closed-invite Discord server who had posted explicit content to AO3 (leaving them flames for daring to write smut at all, that kind of thing).

Oh, and now that I've typed that, I did forget a handful of commenters came to flame one of my Habitica vent fics back in January/February, but that was because some kid on Roblox Twitter or something decided to spread a falsehood about me abusing disabled children because I told them on a different website (Habitica) that something they were doing could come across as ableist. (AKA I was trying to do the opposite of what they were accusing me of. Also it was a little funny after the initial terror because they were all accusing me of being a nondisabled person (no) who was being awful and unknowledgeable about the disability that I have. XD) Guess I didn't initially think about this one because it had almost nothing to do with the fic itself--they were just trying to find a place away from Habitica's site where they could attack me. XP They probably just searched my name and Habitica and happened to either find AO3 first or for some reason think it was better than coming to my Tumblr or something to do the same thing. XP

This is getting long, but for that last one I'd like to shout out the person who initially came and commented on one of my SU fics for that reason (the only comment from that debacle still up) and then after a confused reply from me, they actually chilled out and explained what they knew about the situation and we parted ways amicably, which is why I have a good idea of where that kid posted about me at all. o.o

TL;DR: Not very much, but that means the few notable instances are REALLY vivid and/or complex. XD

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

...I am a sex-repulsed asexual who is not entirely sure whether or not she's heteroromantic because she's not sure she understands romantic attraction at all, doesn't actively ship very much, and needs help from other people to type out curse words. What do you think? (No. The answer is no. XD)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have three works on AO3 considered to be crossovers: Changes (Suite Life/Wreck-It Ralph), Your No-Good, Dirty-Rotten, Gem-Shattering, Rebellion-Leading Mother (Steven Universe/Holes), and The Forgotten Quests (Steven Universe/Habitica, which is the draft document I mentioned in #3).

From a meta standpoint, the craziest is probably The Forgotten Quests, which is a draft document that was going to be a series of challenges in Habitica's Crystal Gems guild which would have seen Steven visiting Habitica and traveling its lands, visiting each region and either accomplishing something or neutralizing a bad event (i.e. a monster attack or weather event or something)--at some point Lars or Lion was gonna show up, all sorts of fun stuff. But the story as these challenges progressed wasn't particularly zany; rather, what makes this one strange from a meta standpoint was that I was going to try to figure out the logistics of running a script or bot that made the challenges run more like a party quest rather than a traditional challenge structure. The logistics were so hard I didn't figure them out before I lost motivation, stopped coding for Habitica, and then got banned for publicly criticizing staff behavior, so I just... posted the planning doc to AO3.

From a story standpoint, it's absolutely the Holes one--Steven gets sent to a prison camp for delinquent youth because he accidentally shoplifted from a store Kevin's mom owned (something fell in his bag), and then some police officers not from Beach City noticed he was connected to Lars' disappearance (while Lars was still in space) so they decided to try him for it. The events of the SU movie were due to start happening while Steven was in jail.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not on AO3 but someone stole the first chapter of a fic I now no longer have up on FFnet. Got that shut down real quick.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not truly. I've provided input (I was one of the people the Connie Swap crew consulted with for their episode 16 story, Loud and Clear) and have been credited/listed as a co-author for someone's fic where I suggested exactly one line of the fic but they wrote the rest.

Unless... I guess you could say I co-wrote the exquisite corpse fic(s) I've been part of--that is, I wrote a section in them with little input from another user, and then someone else wrote a following section with little input from me. The only live on AO3 one is The Cluster Halloween Exquisite Corpse 2019, though.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I don't... really ship? But I can vibe with Connverse (Connie/Steven, SU), Zelink (Zelda/Link, TOTK), and Jeff/Peedee (SU)? I guess?

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Probably Rose to the Occasion (I just can't figure out where I want the fic to go), Auto-Injector (I can't get myself to write the ideas I know I have), Lost and Found (I don't know who to focus on), or the Holes one (how do I make the movie happen while Steven's in jail???).

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I'm good at painting a descriptive picture... except when I'm not. XD

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Microsoft Word 2007 says I regularly write "long sentences". I have since found out Word considers a long sentence anything more than 60 words. So that's fun!

Also I struggle with figuring out endings, especially in multi-chapter plots.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'm not fluent enough in any language with a commonly used written form other than English! So I don't!

I have been known to write in ASL gloss in some drafts, though I don't publish in gloss, because the gloss helps me know how the sentence would be signed by that character if I'd like to describe it in the surrounding prose (I'm reasonably fluent in ASL, though my lack of recent interaction with the deaf community means I'm a bit rusty in practice--but you don't literally live inside a deaf school for a year and complete all your deaf ed classes for your deaf ed + mild intervention major without becoming reasonably fluent).

When I don't do this, it's often because it's less likely that the character in question is signing something mutually intelligible with ASL--for instance, I don't do it in Intelligent, Educated, and Capable of Earning the Children's Trust mostly because while I don't know that I'm comfortable imagining a whole signed conlang from a linguistic standpoint, I know enough in my head about its imaginary origins to be sure it doesn't really look as much like ASL as some other passages of characters signing I've written in the past.

One thing I definitely don't do in any sign language writing I ever do is describe a character's name sign. This isn't because the character in question wouldn't have one or wouldn't assign one to someone else but is instead purely because under US ASL deaf culture rules, it is taboo for me (as a hearing person) to give people name signs. My obedience/observance of this cultural more extends to me writing a character, even if assigning the same rules to that character means that they would be able to assign name signs in-universe. I just can't make myself describe a name sign (either that a character already has or that a character assigns someone else) because it feels like me, the author, creating and assigning a name sign in opposition with that cultural more that says I shouldn't/can't. I feel weird doing it, so I simply don't.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody! Way back in 2007 or so! Fic isn't even still up! (It was a crossover with Full House but was more firmly grounded in the TSL side of things, i.e. taking place at the Tipton, focusing on Suite Life characters often, etc.)

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Hmm... I've really enjoyed the work I've put in on Rose to the Occasion and Intelligent, Educated, and Capable of Earning the Children's Trust. Honorable Mentions to You Get Proud By Practicing (and its soft companion, The Candle Burns Low But Still It Burns), Beach City Zombie Club, Just a Little Something Else Instead, and I'm Supposed to Be Able to Tell.

Tags:

I find I tag people who aren't so interested in doing these things half the time, so I'm including no specific mentions here. Interested in answering these questions? Then do it!

#long post #really long post #SUPER long post

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