Through their sacrifice, Hallownest lasts eternal.

[Image ID: A digital art drawing of the Hollow Knight, they are limp and possibly dead on the floor of the Black Egg Temple. They have been ran through with their nail, which is allowing the infection to bubble straight from their chest. There are chains and rocks in the background, alongside random bits of infection scattered around./End ID]

the hollow knight for the ask thing ?

Hey a bingo! Anyways HOLLOW KNIIIGHHHTT

briefly ended my divorce with spotify to make a playlist for the radiance bc i feel very strongly about associating songs with her in particular

Could you talk about the Shade Lord? Especially the apologist part, what needs apologising (genuine question)?

Oh the apologist part is just me joking about how I'd defend LOS no matter what they do, not necessarily because they actually did anything bad lol. And if they did, I'd fight for them all the same bc they're my little meow-meow and some murders are funny (there's a reason why my Destiny 2 sideblog is ahamkara-apologist, even though the Ahamkara as a race are vastly more problematic than the LOS- they're space dragons and I love them). Ofc, there's always those people who think that the Lord of Shades is some kind of evil entity unleashed by Ghost that'll bring about the ruin of Hallownest twice over (usually people who don't realize that the Lord of Shades is CONTROLLED by Ghost- it's the shades of all the dead vessels with Ghost as its Focus), but mostly its just bc I adore them. Though it does have the added bonus of pointing out that while I like the Pale King and the Radiance as characters, I'm ultimately sympathetic to the vessels the most, which is a core point in my ramblings that I fear often gets lost, especially when I get angry about the 'PK is a colonizer and the moth tribes/Radi were the natives he genocided take'- because idgaf about people hating PK, what I hate is how incorrect that was AS WELL AS how it ignores the fact that the Void Civilization came before the Radiance did, which always seems to be conveniently forgotten or brushed over in those arguments. The fact of the matter is that Radi and PK aren't the 'secret heroes' no matter how you spin it, they're monsters that abused, tortured, and manipulated the voidborn- aka Ghost, their siblings, and (maybe) those that used to worship their element. Sympathetic monsters, yes, monsters who are caught in a tragedy, but still monsters. It's the Void that's the victim, and I stand by that in its entirety. Every act of retribution was justified. Even them killing Godseeker- which is the argument some people use for them being evil- because why shouldn't they? She was awful to them, cruel and rude and scornful just like the Pale King was cruel and the Radiance was hateful. SHE was the reason why the Radiance grew in power to become Absolute Radiance. She deserved what she got, 100%. Ghost and their siblings endured a lifetime of torment from the moment they were hatched, they deserve EVERY little scrap of retribution they get- and they aren't monsters for lashing out at the ones who caused the pain in the first place. It's all justifiable

(Also, neither PK nor Radi are my favs. Hollow is, with their relationship to their siblings [specifically Hornet] being my fav dynamic. I only like to explore PK and Radi in depth because of their impact on Hollow's life. So needless to say I'm a void stan through and through, and since the Lord of Shades is all of them, it fits)

As for the Lord of Shades themselves! I think I already sort of covered why I love them so much just in the first two paragraphs- they are all the shades of the dead vessels poured into one entity, with Ghost as the Focus, and thus the Lord of Shades is in essence Ghost (and co, minus Hollow probably) in their ascendant form, as a true Higher Being. Which is in of itself a monumental feat for something that was hatched to die, a godling denied their deific status by beings who could not understand them as anything but death. They're vengence and defiance made manifest, and they were reformed into the shape they are now because they looked into the eyes of their creators and tormenters and said no more. The first step towards their creation, the catalyst for their metamorphasis, was turning the Kingsoul into the Voidheart- very literally rejecting the Pale King's edict and reforming it into a beacon of their own power, accepting their nature and defying their maker. They looked at the very soul of someone who had cast their eggs into the dark sea below, who hatched them into a graveyard and watched them die in the millions, who made them to be slaughtered for his own cause because he thought they as the voidborn were less than alive- and they said 'I reject you. I reject what you said to me. I reject what you represent. I reject your vision, the way you made me to be. I will forge my own path. I will make my own way. I will accept what I am and I will show you right now that I am alive, I am here, I am not heartless and I am not thoughtless. I am what I am. I am the Void. And I will do what I must to save the family that you left behind.'

AND THEY DID IT FOR THE LOVE OF THEIR SIBLING, they did it for the love of the Hollow Knight, who let them fall and left them to die when they were both just hatchlings, who they had no obligation to save and yet rushed back to do so anyways. And they soldiered on through impossible odds, through endless fights in life and dream all while a spiteful, hateful creature hissed at their worthlessness and empowered their worst enemy, so that they could destroy the Radiance in her entirety, before she could be brought back at the peak of her power. The entire REASON that they could become the Lord of Shades in the first place and WHY they achieved that metamorphasis was for the love of their family- and for a vengence long-overdue, to say 'enough, enough!' and end the torment that plagued their kind for so long for no other reason than the selfishness of other gods. Dream No More was a beautiful ending that encapsulated the vessels finally getting peace, but I love the Embrace the Void ending because to me it feels like Ghost (and the other vessels) are reclaiming what was rightfully theirs, by force, from the entities who subjugated them for so long, and taking their rightful place as the major god of Hallownest- a birthright stolen from them by the Radiance, and denied to them by the Pale Gods.

(Also you can very easily imagine the LOS as Ghost being essentially a streamer with the other vessels being their chat and I love that sm. The-Many-Who-Are-One. My beloveds)

So yeah, that's why I'm the Shade Lord apologist. I fucking love them. 1000000/10 god

Arcie please give your honest opinion. do you think aemond will now be mean as hell to alicent because he murdered luke hurray he can feel better about himself. Why he was weirdly looking at her like this?

Hello my darling anon 💜

Here is my speculation on that scene from Green trailer that dropped yesterday. This is based on my Fire & Blood knowledge as well as my blatant favoritism of my darling baby girl war criminal.

Read more for spoilers.

HBO's interpretation of the aftermath of what I will tastefully (pun intended) refer to as The Incident, shows Aemond's reaction to Lucerys becoming a snack for Vhagar as him looking shocked. Possibly remorseful?

In the least, it is a definitive oh shit moment.

Anyway, in the book Fire & Blood, after The Incident, Aemond then returns to King's Landing to share what happened at Storm's End. The book details the reactions of his mother and grandsire:

Queen Alicent went pale when she heard what he had done, crying, “Mother have mercy on us all.” Nor was Ser Otto pleased. “You only lost one eye,” he is reported to have said. “How could you be so blind?”

If HBO commits to this decided scene (as we later got a snippet of his other possible reactions*) that shows his remorse, it may have carried with him in the small council chambers and is only lifted by his brother.

My theory (and mind you, this is me being hopeful, reading far too much into this, plus my tagline is literally Aemond Apologist™, etc.) could be that smug reaction is in response to when Aegon finally speaks up to defend, as he does in the book:

The king himself did not share their concerns, however. Aegon II welcomed Prince Aemond home with a great feast, hailed him as “the true blood of the dragon,” and announced that he had made “a good beginning.”

So that moment we see between Aemond and Alicent in the trailer could be the guilt/grief/whatever he was feeling prior just being lifted with how Aegon responds to Aemond's news of The Incident.

“Good. To war then!”

Guess we'll see on June 16th. 🥰

*Shoutout to @zaldritzosrose for helping me try and find that alternative scene HBO shot. We both knew it existed somewhere.

Mrityunjay: Durykarna (1)

bro B r o BRO I'm halfway through Mrityunjay, right now on Duryodhan's POV and I SHIT YOU NOT his description of Karna is straight (hah) out of a fucking romance novel.

I MEAN THIS SHIT;?!!!?! Fucking G O L D

(The following translation sucks but trust me when I say that this gay loser describes Karna in the most flowery way POSSIBLE)

He (Karna) has a way of making all those who were close to him, his own in every way. With his many attractive qualities, he has won over the vast majority of citizens in this capital city. But his most powerful and mesmerizing trait is his enviable personality (in this context; his physical appearance). Whenever he stands in front of me, I don't know why but it feels like there are countless particles of radiance fluttering right in front of me. Every time I look into his blue eyes, the blue vastness of the sky pales in comparison.

Sometimes, I would run into him on the royal staircase of the palace as he was returning from a bath (in river Ganga). I will never be able to forget the way he looked then. The way the residue of the clear droplets of Gangetic water shines brilliantly in his wet, curly golden hair, it reminds me of dewy sunflowers in the garden that dance to the tune of the wind.

His gentle swaying earrings, his magnificently smooth forehead, his nose as straight as a flagpole, the colour of reddish-pink lotuses flushed across his cheeks, arched golden eyebrows racing towards his ears, biceps as large as an elephant’s trunk, the carved, glowing muscles of his calves, his broad and elevated chest could be likened to the huge back of one of the mega turtles of Ganga, his neck round and thick like an arrowhead, his shoulders were strong and chiseled, not unlike a bull’s and all of these features were beautifully enhanced with his sunlike round face!

In my opinion, there was no other man that could rival Karna’s distinguished beauty (and caliber) in the entirety of Hastinapur. He’s reserved and talks very little. But his silence is a living commentary! Whenever he speaks, the sound resembles the clear gong of a mace smashing against another, grainy and deep. 

In the terms of voice and the style of speaking, Karna is only second to the Grandsire (Bhishma), who is my favourite. 

Sometimes while talking, he would break into a breath-taking smile and his teeth would cast a golden glow and I...

and I forget Guru Drona’s hurtful neglect towards me, forget the insults hurled at me by Bhima-Arjun, hundreds of wounds that scrap the deepest corners of my heart are long forgotten. I forget that I’m the crown prince of the Kurus, forget that tomorrow I’m going to be the emperor of Hastinapur. And like the endless buzzing of a bee, only one thought starts spiraling in my head--

“Is Karna really a Suta (the son of a Suta)? In the modest hut of a charioteer, could a man bearing such an ethereal form be born? Is Karna really inferior?”

Then my soul tells me quite defiantly, “Karna is not a charioteer’s son! He is the epitome of brilliance! How can a glowing jewel (*paraphrased) be born in a cave of darkness? Karna must be some celebrated king’s bright and courageous son. Karna must be a Kshatriya!”

@kaurava-apologist​ @rorapostsbl​

The Hollow Knight, Bretta, Nightmare King Grimm

One of these is solely because I want to see you admit your favorite ship on main, I cannot stop myself

I think I need to not attempt ask games because I am too talkative and make long ass posts help

The Hollow Knight: What was the saddest part of the game for you? Which ending is the most sad to you?

All of it

But seriously, so many moments. I’ll throw the Nosk Den out as one, alongside the Abyss. A lot of the settings give feels, like the empty basin. The White Palace’s everything always makes me feel Emotions. A lot of the ghosts make me sad. MARMU. Agh. 

Which ending isn’t sad? That said, I am going to go with Sealed Siblings as the worst feeling ending. It feels like the one that has the most damage caused and the least hope. Dream No More is a ‘good’ ending, though, but it gives many sad feelings (just of a different nature than the long scream of SS/THK ending)

Bretta: Favorite Hollow Knight ship? Favorite fanfic?

Why you do this

I have so many ships, because I’m the type of person to read what looks like a crackship and if it’s written with crunch then now I’m shipping it (hi grimmnet). It doesn’t take much and I don’t tend to have notps, my personality is a continuous shrug (me out here sometimes reading pale nightmare and causing you unknowing psychic indigestion) 

Grollow was my first HK ship and I’d probably call it my favorite. I also really like Pale King/White Lady. Some of the more cursed ships I favor are Pale King/Radiance (or PK/Radi/WL) and Radiance/The Hollow Knight, exceptionally messy and toxic. There you go, Ashe, get me on main saying it all. 

All of yours are the answer XD (I mean it). From Eyes to W&G/Red Sky to Butterfly, sorry not sorry. Other favorites are Soul of God, Form of Moth by @basilbellona, which has been my favorite HK fic since April 2022, and In Defiance of Time (and associated oneshots) by @ganondorf--apologist. 

Now for a list of absolutely random things I’ve got in my bookmarks, which are excluding the multiple HK fics I have open but am still reading. I’m going to make too long a post just because I always want fics to get more love. Some of my other non-Ashyr favorites from bookmarks (no specific order and genre) are: Captivated, Until Dawn Shall Break, Not Too Late for Second Chances, Hold The Future With Silver Hands, Camouflage of Great Renown, It’s All Well Above Wonder Anyway, The Clock Stopped Ticking Forever Ago, Pale Revival, A Tribe Betrayed, Void Given Focus, Workshop Safety, To Reclaim A Dream, To Love A Lamprey, Moving Onward, Will Terribly, If You Will At All, I Swore I’d Have No More Knights In Shining Armor, We’re So Close But So Distant

Someday I’ll have even more to recommend when I finish reading the fics open in my tags (hi Tori fics, hello)

Nightmare King Grimm: Which boss battle was the most intense for you? The most satisfying to defeat?

What if I said Nightmare King Grimm

Each one I came across the first time I played faskfsdaf. I’m going to go with Absolute Radiance just because I remember the noises I was making on stream when I accidentally beat her in P5 the first time. But in terms of my favorite boss fight/the one I’m most satisfied about my skills in, I’ll go with the cliche of the NKG fight XD My one skill in this game is being able to absolutely bully the man and kill him hitless before the best part of his song plays. I put all my irl XP points into getting good at him. Other favorite fights are Sisters of Battle, and probably Pure Vessel even though they are gatekeeping me so hard in my all bindings P4 run and so I cry.

not rbing OR maintagging because im not playing no gods game today but

pale king was NOT doing his best he could have done a million other things other than what he DID do

fuck him

hes a shit dad

he DID colonize hallownest (cute edit: just because he is "praised" and his rule was at least a little bit okay in theory does not change that he DID colonize. we're not on semantics here.)

still a shit dad

l + ratio + pale king apologists should have better reading comprehension and understanding of implications over direct statements because not every piece of info is going to be told to you outright! damn!!

its almost like they painted his ass in a positive light on purpose to hide the infanticide + genocide + colonization

GOOD I AM THE NUMBER 1 TRAITOR LORD APOLOGIST. I AIM TO RAISE PET MANTIDS NAMED AFTER THE LORDS (I GAVE THEM NAMES IN MY HEAD). he has infact dethroned the pale king as my favourite hollow knight character as of yesterday and i've been rotating him around my head since then - 👹

:00 WOW THAT'S A HIGH HONOUR

He's definitely up there for me but Hollow has glued themselves to my number one spot

Do you know any good Vic-centered stories/fics? I’ve been reading a really well-written one only to get to a part where the author’s started introducing bits of aura-truthing and taken me waaay out of it, so I’m on the lookout for a replacement to get into lol

Ugh, I hate the Aura Theory truthers so much. Victim blaming and rape apologists are so rampant in the Parahumans fandom.

I've written a few Victoria centric stories!

Point Me At The Skyrim: Antares from arc 18 of Ward wakes up in Skyrim as the Dragonborn. Explores the political and moral questions of the setting through a superhero perspective.

Hers Is The Fury: Victoria Baratheon, firstborn of King Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei Baratheon, has strange memories of a different world and even stranger magical powers!

Janus: End of Ward Victoria falls into a coma, waking up in the mind of Taylor at the start of Worm! Now they have to work together to save this timeline from Scion.

These are my most popular and ones I update the most!

Special mention to For Honour and Glory: Glory Girl ends up in Westeros and massively derails canon when she intervenes in the Lannister plot.

If you have read other Wildbow stories, I'd recommend: Tres: Fusion of all of Wildbow's settings, a short story where the Lambs are sent to Brockton Bay to get rid of the Undersiders and Glory Girl, while Blake and Rose seek shelter from their enemies.

Abyssal Plain: Breakthrough and the Undersiders end up in the Abyss from Pact/Pale, needing to work together to survive its madness.

Peer: All the WB protags wake up as spirits summoned by Blake... or do they? All of them must work together to figure out what is going on and how they can help fix each other's problems using their unique skillsets.

Hope this tides you over for a bit!

pinned post cause why not

hi, call me Henry, i use he/xe/fae/vir/they, and i am a sucker for whump & soft content.

my honest fav blorbo for HK is Hollow, with Hornet in a snug 2nd place (& TPK is also a blorbo, unfortunately). i will make oc content in the future (including canon x oc). if i find your headcanons about HK that i like, i likely will steal them. Currently busy with daily gijinkas of the HK characters.

feel free to block me if i make you uncomfortable/just don't want to interact with me.

more beneath the cut;

DNI: regular dni stuff, like being bigoted & similar

soft DNI, i guess? (like you can still like/reblog/follow me, but i rather you not talk/message/ask me):

Radiance apologist/pro-Radiance (like sympathizing is fine, but i will not want to interact with you if you say she was in the right)

morally simple TPK, and i do mean both people who say he did nothing wrong and people who think he's amoral apathetic man bordering on cold evil (he's complex imo, feel free to bully him tho lmao)

similar with The White Lady (complex lady, feel free to bully)

ship Ghost with Grimmchild or any other canon characters (i headcanon Ghost as an immortal child till the ¨start¨ of my au, which makes shipping awkward without making it take place in the future with an oc)

ship Radiance & Grimm (they're siblings to me)

misgender the canon vessels/Ghost & Hollow (by that i mean use he or she for them, if you do that i won't respond to you)

tags explanation:

pale siblings: Hollow & Hornet & Ghost

my darlings: Hollow & Hornet

the prison suffers by its prisoner: Radiance being awful to Hollow

you're my king and i'm your lionheart: The Pale King & Hollow, mostly as seen through Hollow's eyes

daughter and her only father: Hornet & The Pale King

married pale monarchs: The Pale King &/x The White Lady

{BLANK} angst: character-specific angst

drawing requests are open, tho only for hollow knight & know i have the right to reject anything

Last time i tried to get 112% in Hollow Knight, I got stuck at 108%.

But this time im gonna do it. because im not gonna save Zote. because you dont have to save him for 112 and i got stuck on him in the pantheon with the Tamer and it sucked.

Plus some of the boss fights are so satisfying to learn and beat. Like Grimm's fight is my favourite because his attacks are so fun. and Radiance has a good fight too liek when you reach the top of the climb and realise 'wait i did it' its so good. I'm very excited to cry about the Hollow Knight fight too my poor guy :(

There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark. One's monster is another's beloved. The wise know that.

me w pale king

Not sure if I ever stirred up an actual controversy or if I'm just being paranoid of misinterpretations here, but just a note of clarification here, me saying that PK and WL aren't colonizers doesn't mean that they're exempt from being responsible for some nasty shit they did when establishing their place in Hallownest. Colonization merely a subset of conquering, and while they don't fit the requirements for colonization (the beetles they ruled over were natives, the White Lady seems to have sprouted in Kingdom's Edge due to the abundance of roots there, so she also came from Hallownest, there's no evidence of any attempts to establish colonies in lands outside of the City of Tears/Dirtmouth pipeline [the Deepnest tram doesn't count, thats transit/trade], and the different tribes in the caverns ARE able to establish borders and barter with them, which would NOT happen if they were intent on colonization), they're still responsible for:

-Conquering the Radiance's lands, then turning a good chunk of them into crystal mines (assuming, ofc, that the Crystal Peak was once the home of the Moth Tribe)

-Assimilating their moths into their culture and encouraging them to destroy what they had of their legends; the Seer blames this choice on her ancestors, and there is no proof that it was forceful, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't coerced

-Annexing huge chunks of Greenpath to mould into the Queen's Gardens and Fog Canyon (ofc, this could have been bartered for, but either way the Mosskin were driven back or changed, and what would one elder god be against two younger ones?)

-Getting involved with intertribal politics between the Mantis Tribe and Deepnest

Additionally, this is NOT to say that people cannot interpret what they did as colonization, or to write or produce fanwork with that mindset. Pretty much the worst thing in fandom is when there's a monopolization on people's views of a character, and Hollow Knight lends itself very well to fluid interpretation. I personally tend to default to a more biological/ecological interpretation than sociopolitical myself, because PK having a beef with Radi and WL and Unn fighting for reasources screams 'same niche, different species' competition to me. I'm merely pointing out that the original story of Hallownest appears to be more in line with a vague message about damning the cycle of different powers conquering others and abusing each other rather than anything explicit.

Additionally, I am wary of the concept that claiming that the Pale King and the White Lady are colonizers will downplay the horrors of what the Radiance did to all of the tribes of Hallownest, even those who were politically independent and had no stake in the war between the Gods of Light. There's also the matter of the Void Civilization coming before Hallownest; we don't have much information to definitively prove anything about their fall, but what we DO have seems to point to the Radiance doing the same thing, with the Knight reclaiming their birthright, purpose, and land when they ascend as the Lord of Shades to tear her to shreds, explicitly against their parent's will

So tdlr: yeah I did write up a very long angry post once about PK and WL not being colonizers, but that's only because I'm a stickler for details, not because I think they're innocent. It's like the difference between venom and poison- both will kill you, just in different ways. Also I feel like those who tend to go for the 'PK and WL are colonists' narrative tend to overlook the fact that there was a whole other civilization of people who worshiped a different god who seem to have been totally- or at least mostly- wiped out by the Radiance. And ngl I kind of think those would be the snails bc that rock where you get the Abyss Shriek that can be dreamnailed is full of rocks in the background that look like a fuckton of the snail shaman's charms/spells, + they are the only ones other than vessels to use void magic

So basically no matter how you view it, Radiance = The Pale King = The White Lady in terms of war crimes, genocide, and body count. Unn is just vibing. The Lord of Shades

So, uh, I heard about Pale King Apologists in the HK fandom. And while this is my username in my small HK discord, which is a JOKE btw, I think it is clear that I am not like this. Anyone who read my fic knows how much PK regrets his actions and how much his dead baby pit haunts him. Heck, the latest chapter had a scene of him hurting himself because he couldn't stand to see his face in a mirror. I only disagree with one fanon thing and that is that he tossed the vessels back in the Abyss when they climbed up. In my interpretation, he stood there and waited for the ones who made it. That doesn't made it better though, for he did hurt them by inactivity instead of activity. It was very hard for him, seeing them fall, and he prematurely sealed the Abyss when Hollow climbed out, for he couldn't stomach it anymore, seeing all the vessels fall. So yeah, he did do a lot of stuff that wasn't okay and I make sure to explore this in my writing. He isn't excused from his actions, regardless of how much Hollow forgives them.