#ESPECIALLY in any au where PK comes back in any form or fashion

[measlyfurball13]

Speaking of “I love cutesy fun things but please allow these characters to have depth” how about Ghost being more than just Baby? Don’t get me wrong I love them being loved on by their sibs, being a dork, and taking a break, but the uwuification of them and Hollow really aren’t fitting nor do their stories justice.

Just like Hollow they are 1) an adult with a full range of personality and emotions and 2) traumatized. We don’t know what they went through in the Wastes but at the very least they’ve dealt with the trauma of amnesia. The trauma of being attacked with intent to kill/killed multiple times. Faced an angry sun god and won because of their stubbornness and spite.

They literally went and found a kingdom of undead zombies and went “anyone gonna kill and loot these bodies?” And didn’t wait for an answer. Yes they are sweet and noble, delivering flowers and helping people. But they are also ruthless and without mercy when they want to be.

Honestly, compared to some other fandoms, the uwuification of both their characters isn't too bad. At the very least, posts in this fandom are very well sorted into "clearly joking" fanon and "clearly serious" fanon, which I appreciate.

But you're right- I've never understood people who see Ghost as a toddler. Nonverbal? Yep. A Genuine Bastard On Purpose Sometimes? Oh absolutely. I always imagine Ghost dealing with their trauma by being purposely spiteful and lashing out, which is a foil for how Hollow handles it, which is by internalizing it.

Actually, most of my takes for Ghost are surrounding them being a character foil for Hollow. Here goes:

I actually think that babying Ghost would be the quickest way to get on their bad side.

Unfortunately, they often misconstrue people's attempts to care for them as "babying" due to their fiercely independent nature.

(All three of the siblings have this to some degree- Hornet is also picky about being cooed over for much the same reason, contrasted with Hollow, who simply doesn't think they're worth the effort.)

Ghost is self-sabotaging in the sense that if someone doesn't allow them to do something, even and especially if it's "for their own safety", it makes them only more determined to do the thing.

Ghost is Not Nice. They are kind, sure, but They are Not Nice. There's a very big difference there, mostly informed by the fact that Ghost's first instinct upon meeting someone new is to swing their nail in that direction and see how the other person reacts.

Hollow trusts too easily. Ghost doesn't trust at all. The most reliable person in their goddamn life is Cornifer, for christ's sake. Everyone else attacks them, betrays them, or dies.

Did anyone say "klepto"? I'm gonna say "klepto".

All three siblings are particularly clingy with their weapons, but Ghost is the only one who'll see murder as an appropriate retaliation to someone touching their nail.

They never inform others as to what they're doing, either through actual communication or any sort of body language. They don't feel the need to justify themselves to anyone, so why bother? They'll do whatever it is they feel like doing and everyone else will just have to figure it out, in their eyes.

(This bothers the HELL out of Hollow, who's whole schtick is being practiced, precise, and reliant on predictable social rituals and people saying what they mean. Fundamental autistic-to-autistic miscommunication.)

Ghost is fundamentally a super empathetic person (evident in the good ending, where you spend the bulk of your time putting the memories of people to rest,) but the one thing they'll never be able to reconcile is Hollow's love for the Pale King.

Scathing hot take that's probably obvious this far down, but I really do think that Hollow and Ghost wouldn't get along as well as is often assumed in fanon. They love each other very much, but there's also a lot of mutual guilt and other baggage between them that I'd love to see explored more.

[thefadedremnant]

PK as I read him really is, kind of an enormous mess. He exhibits symptoms of anxiety, depression, and in general is very prone to obsessive thinking about perfection and restless energy. The manifestation of the White Palace we see in-game is, to my eye, a manifestation of his thought processes and patterns, and what it is, is a ruthless and punitive labyrinth, but one that has this illusion of grace, serenity, tranquility.

It’s very much a mentality of false fairness- that these narrow passages of metal blades is totally safe for someone who is one with the inexorable rhythm they keep, who moves, halts, carries themselves “properly” at exactly the right timing. When the reality is, even the most consummate perfectionist can’t do that reliably, not all the time, especially not when they’re tired or exhausted or sad.

And then in the more inhabited regions, or ones that imply habitation, there’s the unnerving echoes of the Retainers, who are so subservient, so helpful, in a way that makes them inaccessible; the only way you can really ‘get help from them’ is by using them.

It’s the existence of a lonely creature that completely firmly believes himself not suffering. He hasn’t been hurt, and he isn’t hurting himself, and from this perspective he’s pretty much lost empathy for other people’s pain in large ways. It’s the coexistence of “why should they be kept safe from pain? I wasn’t,” with a basic denial that he’s hurting at all, so basically a lot of his thinking is built on these scaffold layers of both denial, and obliviousness. Lurien’s request hits him in the ribs because he hasn’t actually considered the idea that he’s unhappy. 

It doesn’t seem like something relevant to think about, he has so many other things that are more important than emotional health check-ins, but, if confronted, he actually stops and has to think- is he happy?

Because the actual answer is ‘no’. Not often, and not for a long time. He permits the indulgence of being proud of his work, things he feels like he can justify, but, for the architect of a lot of other people’s suffering, it seems pretty clear that PK himself was... just kind of a lonely, empty person. Less in the way of someone who is a helpless victim, and, more in the way of someone who believes the world is already as it should- who actually struggles to imagine the idea of a situation where he isn’t unhappy, if he can even reliably pencil that in as his emotional state.

The game repeatedly questions PK- did he care? What were other people to him? Did he trust them, or believe in them at all, or were they pawns, or toys? His total collapse after sacrificing Hollow and his unwillingness to face the Abyss / that even the people who knew he was doing dirty business, like Ogrim, weren’t told the full extent of it, suggests he wasn’t unemotional about it, but I don’t think that’s just, “oh, so he DID care, case closed!”

It implies something deeply dysfunctional in the shining clockworks that PK, as someone who cared, made a decision that paradoxically required him to care and not care at the same time; that he completely misjudged his creations’ emotional state, that all of his kids are carrying the aftershocks of this broken relationship PK has with feeling, with caring, with being allowed to care, and this brokenness is a demon that rears its head over and over and over again in the cruelest things PK does to other people.

I think of PK as a villain, really- but a tragic villain, and, part of the conceit of this blog and its AU is contemplating the long hard road of the guy becoming a better person. Which leads to the very exciting situation of- it’s not punishment or angst that I specifically chose this guy to have the problem with the Void that he does.

The Void, throughout the game, is conflated repeatedly with rest, acceptance, and reaching a state of peace. Radiance, who basically spends the entire game psychically screaming about how she’s going to live forever so loudly that it’s progressively killing and reanimating everything in Hallownest, is the most opposed to the Void, and because she’s created no path for peace with it, is ultimately ripped apart by it in spectacularly violent fashion. The only way rest and acceptance can come to a furious warmonger who has decided they will never calm down is in the form of a dominating force that crushes them down into silence.

PK’s not Radiance, but, in a way, he exists in a state of false concord to the Void- he uses it and exploits it, makes his own works out of it, but the reality is his state of composure and control is fake, and maintained by dumping endless amounts of refuse down to the Abyss, shoving it into the darkness so he can shine as a perfect, ‘unstained’ thing. 

Achieve a pure existence by getting rid of everything holding you back. This only sounds like a good idea if you don’t think any of those pieces of yourself have any value, and the things PK sees as holding him back from his work aren’t things like “being afraid of pain and death”, “caring about other people’s life and suffering” or “maintaining interpersonal connections at all.”

It’s not a coincidence in this AU that this manifests as a festering hole in his heart, and, I think, not a coincidence that Radiance, who manipulates desires and requests, failed to get a grip on PK. When Radiance’s domain is the heart, PK idealized a state of heartlessness and tried to live without it. He’s the more extreme state of how, at the very beginning of the game, when Elderbug says “maybe dreams aren’t such a good thing after all,” we pull a breath through our teeth because okay, yeah, if something’s mind controlling people through their dreams, that’s one way, we guess, to get away from it, but genuinely not wanting or hoping for anything is completely unsustainable for a person to exist. We NEED to be motivated by at least SOMETHING.

PK at this point is not really being killed by the Void as much as he’s being killed by his inclination to hollow himself out- and the Void is just what rushes to fill the gap.