#bishoggoth

[ruthlesslistener]

An interesting bit of Hollow Knight lore that you can get from the Hunter's Journal is that "They devoted their worship to no Lord, or Power, or Strength, but to the very darkness itself" so there was no concept of something like the Shade Lord existing or even coming into existence at the time of the Void civilization. The bugs of the Void civilization worshipped the Void, used it I'm their everyday lives and yet it never manifested into some form of higher power until it's people was annihilated by light and it was exploited by light.

I think that's arguably up for interpretation- the void is a very difficult entity/substance to pin down, after all, and pretty much escapes definition by default. That there are so few remnants left of the Void Civilization to begin with (thanks Radi) doesn't help much either

The way I interpret that phrase is that the Darkness/OG Shade Lord was not a true god in the sense that it was a magically living creature that needed to ascend to a position of worship and higher power to continue on to an immortal existence, as the gods of Hallownest are today, but that it was a sort of...proto-god. Alive in the same way that a virus was, a being from a time before life itself that only became 'alive' because it is the antithesis to all things, including nothing. It is essentially Death, but the opposite of death is Life, and so it held a semblance of it much in the same way that the roaring waters of the ocean give the semblance of a great living thing. It straddles the border between living and nonliving, so it was worshiped as the singular entity that it was, but there was still a presence there that reacted to attack and was worthy of the Radiance's fear. Whether or not it died when she tried to destroy it is up for debate- how do you kill something that was on the cusp of life- but it was just alive enough to rush into the vessels and fuse with them as living beings, and alive enough to react when called upon. It just couldn't be categorized as a Lord, Power, or Strength because, well...it wasn't any of those. It just Was, the same way that the ocean Is, and thus was beyond the scope of any modern being that mortals aligned themselves with after they learned to dream

[cloudy-dayys]

@bishoggoth here u go boo mmmwah mwah

[radiationmeat-archived]

Are ya pinning over hot fictional and possibly non human men, sonny?

[bishoggoth]

A NEW CHARACTER TO CRUSH ON HAS ARRIVED (a short comic ft. @nefariouscryptid )

[nefariouscryptid]

Finally done! I hope it lives up to expectations. 

Owners of designs in order: 

1) rottencowboy (insta)

2) thenightmaresmaker 

3) Smiledog (insta)

4) stocourt (insta)

5) wilsonthescientist (insta)

6) redflowercrown (insta)

7) nemo_re_imagined (insta)

8) @bishoggoth 

9) @letthesparksfly

REBLOGS>LIKES

[ruthlesslistener]

Seeing you talk about Wyrms made me want to go back and look at the Hollow Knight lore again and...I think Bardoon the Caterpillar should be spoken about a whole lot more. He's very aware of the Pale King, his species, what the Radiance is and what Ghost is doing. It's no wonder the guy is often mistaken for a Wyrm because he's very knowledgeable and very aware of the world around him. That begs the question then, is his species a case of convergent evolution or is Bardoon's species perhaps a distant relative of the Wyrm species?

I think that the biggest reason why people don't talk more about Bardoon is that, well a.) He's not charismatic like Tiso, Cloth, or Quirrel are, and b.) He's such a strange being so set apart from the others that it's hard to conclude anything about him other than the fact that he is very old, perhaps old enough to predate the Pale King. Certainly if he knows about the wyrms then he's an ancient creature, for PK seems to rather wish that his old corpse be forgotten about than remembered at all

I don't think that he's related to wyrms at all though. I think that he's simply a member of a very long-lived mortal species compared to the rest of the denizens of Hallownest, like elves are to people. And if that is the case, then he likely hasn't evolved yet to fit that more 'humanoid' approximation of a civilized bug's life where their adult morph constitutes most of their lives, and is instead living the way many bugs do in the wild- where his larval stage makes up 95% of his life, and he only moults to his adult stage right before he dies. Smaller beings tend to live faster, shorter lives than larger ones, and adapt quicker to new situations than their longer-lived relatives, so it would make sense if that were the case

[ruthlesslistener]

Since the void can be made into things like solids, liquids, gases, physical beings and can even mimic a soul (The shades)...do you think that The Void could replicate emotions? Like they'd be expressed differently but they'd still be present in some way. Perhaps even imprinted upon The Void forever, leading it to lash out in anger, weep in sadness, long to be loved...

I don't think that it's a possibility, I think that it's canon. For one, the entire tragedy of Hollow Knight is based upon the Pale King's and the White Lady's fundamental misunderstanding of the Void- the assumption that because it is not like them, it is incapable of feeling pain, sorrow, or some form of existence similar to a lightbased being. They weren't trying to be intentionally cruel, they just were not capable of understanding the experiences or tells of a being so fundamentally different from them. And it wasn't just them- people who still play the games assume that Ghost is hollow despite a myriad of evidence pointing otherwise, simply because they do not speak, write, or use body language that is close enough for us to easily understand. To pick up on what they are trying to tell us, we have to first accept the lack of similarities between how a vessel emotes and how we do- which is not something that many people are capable of, or willing to try. Everyone wants to feel like they know more than others in the room, and so it is simply much easier to assume that the lack of familiar cues they pick up from Ghost indicates that they feel nothing at all (or, in reverse, they project their own emotions and desires onto them to 'humanize' something that is very much not human, thus crowding out the subtle cues of their personality that we DO get in-game).

Similar things happen in real life, for example- people assume that animals that can copy human speech are more intelligent that others, and a great variety of nonverbal or crudely-speaking human beings are treated as nothing more than dumb beasts despite speech itself being a poor indicator of one's intelligence. Many times, it's not intentionally malicious- it's merely due to our own human bias, as a species that communicates exclusively through sight and sound. We are not unique from other animals in the advanced nature of our communication skills; we merely have the most complex version of auditory communication to accommodate our similarly-complex behaviors, and somewhat limited range of body language. Unfortunatly, this complexity has lead us to assume that because we react in a specific way to certain stimuli, like pain, love, or displeasure, then other animals that don't are incapable of feeling the same way. Therefore, it's not too far off to believe that gods like the Pale King or White Lady would be incapable of understanding their own children until it was far too late, simply because the gap in communication would have led them to falsely assume that none of the vessels- and the void themselves- were fully autonomous.

So yes, the void does feel, and it reacts as a living being, but compared to most other beings or gods in Hallownest, it's extremely alien and hard to understand. Whether it does so because the Pale King essentially induced life into it via the vessel process (hatching children, killing them, and returning their shades to the Sea), or because it clings to some scrap of life that it had before the Radiance felled it in battle isn't clear, but it does experience some sort of emotion. We're just not sure what that is

[ruthlesslistener]

To add on to my theory, I think the Pale King communicated with The White Lady and Hornet through dreams to make sure that both were aware of his final plan, but the method of communication only made them aware of so much. It's why they both assume Ghost would just replace Hollow rather than do more than that. They know better than that later, but they assumed killing the Radiance would be impossible even if the Pale King informed them of the contrary. It's likely in the vessel's instincts to contain the Radiance or attempt to do so and that's why she's so damn ready to kill you and the other escaped vessels because even a weak one can pose a challenge to her, this instinct is also why Hornet and the White Lady only think of one possibility before they get to know Ghost.

Bonus theory: You think with how The White Lady and Hollow note that Ghost reminds them of the Pale King that Ghost is just as much of a bastard, but just in a more void flavour? Like that small body must contain much bastard energy.

Honestly, I personally think that the Pale King told them of the plan in person because he thought that it was the only way for them to kill the Radiance once and for all (remember that WL and Hornet both have a flawed perception of the Void's nature, and that WL herself starts to question her beliefs after enough interactions with her), but the end result would def. be the same- especially since the way that PK and WL speak in canon is already so fucking vague to begin with. Kind of hard to get specifics from gods.

But lmao yeah Ghost 100% inherited their bastardness from the Pale King. It's much more toned down in him, since his whole thing is that he considers emotion to be a weakness and looks upon his own subconcious biases with great disdain, but Ghost doesn't give a shit about any of that masking bullshit and WILL show off their temper when they feel like it. They do not have the restraint that their father does, nor the patience of their mother

[ruthlesslistener]

So I have this headcanon that the reason why despite the fact that Ghost and Hollow are the same age and yet one is fully grown and the other isn't is because Ghost being the catalyst/vessel for the creation of the Shade Lord means that they need different conditions to molt. That and Ghost likes being small and being able to be a child since their childhood was robbed from them.

That's pretty interesting!! For me the whole Shade Lord thing is more circumstantial, where any vessel could become the Lord of Shades, but only Ghost managed because they had the right mindset for it. Likewise, gods grow based off of physical nutrients and mental maturity, so Ghost wandering around a wasteland that eroded their memory meant they stayed a child vs Hollow, who was raised by a mentor figure in a soul-rich area.

Same hat with Ghost deliberatly staying small, though- I don't write them as needing parental care, bc lets be real they're capable of handling themselves, but I write them as wanting to grow like a 'normal' bug, so even after they ascend they stay small to not cheat out of that process

[ruthlesslistener]

Okay, small theory that may not be possible but is still fun to think about: Those tablets that the Pale King put talking to Higher Beings are actually for Higher Beings and are an attempt at establishing some form of relationship with other God-like beings, but failed due to Higher Brings being so used to competing with one another for resources. It just strikes me as interesting as to how the Pale King was intent on being worshipped but also didn't mind the presence of other Gods or even rulers, he still tried to implant his will upon others but he still try to back off and let other Gods and Tribes do as they will.

I think you're actually in the realm of canon with this one! In the Wanderer's Journal, the ladybug character (fuck forgot her name, it's late) mentions that the lore tablets are entirely incomprehensible to her. Whether this is because she's an outsider to Hallownest or not isn't made clear, but one thing is for certain, and that is that higher beings like Ghost have no trouble with them. So it is very likely that those lore tablets are only understable to other gods, since they're not mentioned by any other bugs and seem to whisper directly into the mind of the listener with the voice of the Pale King (which is a bunch of incomprehensible whispers and echoes to us).

I personally think that the tablets PK put about Hallownest were a mixture of an attempt at courtesy and establishing territory- it would explain the arrogance, at least, as well as the outlandish claims of power. For the Pale King and the White Lady were kind of odd in terms of gods, with how they chose to rule in the guise of mortals instead of a distant power that lived apart, so it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to pick up on bug politics as a way to be more 'civilized', or if it was merely PK leaving his thoughts among his territory so that it would be commemorated through time eternal. It seems to have not had much of an effect on the neutral gods, at least, as everyone either appears to consider him as pitiful at best or a mild irritant at worst. Discounting Grimm, of course, because Grimm is another fuckin' weirdo and should not be counted among typical gods when analysing their traits.

And the thing with PK is that I think he was very self-aware of his boundaries, and didn't ovrrreach much. That isn't to say that he DIDN'T conquer land and be an absolute pain in the ass to civilizations that didn't want to deal with him (looking at the succession of Greenpath to build Fog Canyon here), but I do think its telling that the only god he tried to directly oppose was the one who was also a being of light with a strong influence on their follower's minds. It's like when two different species fill the same ecological niche, leading to competition (take lions and hyenas for example), but in the case of gods and worships, there can be only one. So neither the Pale King nor the Radiance could live anywhere close to each other, but the reason why PK and WL can be married and not cause any problems for each other/why PK encourages other Higher Beings to be themselves is because they don't pose significant competition like Radi did. Sure, there might be territory scuffles, and poor Unn for sure had her land slowly eaten away at her by two ambitious young gods, but if neither poses a threat to the other's supply of worshippers, then why bother with a fight? Better to passive-aggressively eye each other over territory borders than to throw hands over followers who don't even care about your element in the first place.

[ruthlesslistener]

I've been thinking about this a little bit too much and I've gotta share it. The mosskin would have likely been much more okay with the White Lady if she established a kind of mutualistic/symbiotic relationship with Unn. They warn others to be cautious of WL because she "does not share our dream" but they don't seem to mind that she made her own space to live in. So I'd like to think, what would an AU with the White Lady and Unn having a symbiotic relationship look like? And what would Unn's status be after Hallownest's fall? Would her relationship with WL have allowed her to have enough strength to do something?

Ngl, while this is cool, I think that it's less of an AU and more that something similar was starting to come around in Hallownest, albiet kinda by force. See, Unn and WL are both sort of icons of primary and secondary succession, with Unn colonizing the bare rock left behind by the recession of the void sea and turning at least some chunk of Hallownest's caverns into fertile land, then WL moving in from Kingdom's Edge to bring in larger flora that wouldn't have been able to survive without Unn's influence

Example diagram below:

In the case of primary vs secondary succession applied to Unn and WL, though, it's less of a symbiosis and more that the Age of Moss is coming to an end, where they aren't eliminated from Hallownest, but their age as the dominant flora has come to an end. The main reason why I think this is the case is bc despite Unn and the Mosskin being kinda ':/' about WL moving in, they don't seem to be too greatly affected by her, and lesser moss-based insects are capable of thriving in the Queen's Gardens. It's not at all like PK and Radi, who are two gods of light that are incapable of sharing ecological niches without destroying each other; Unn and WL merely represent two different stages of making Hallownest habitable after the recession of the Void Sea, while PK and Radi are two wild animals fighting over territory by comparison. Hell, you can even see a clear schism between the beetle tribe (PK's lot) and the moth tribe (Radi's), while the unintelligent Mosskin seem to have no problems moving into the Queen's Gardens

So: it's less of an alliance, and more that WL is Unn's successor, bringing in a new age after Unn's has started to dwindle. I don't think that they like each other, and that there is some form of mistrust/resource competition, but it seems to have been accepted as the natural order of things by Unn, since Greenpath and the Queen's Gardens blend together almost seamlessly.

As for Hallownest's fall, I don't think that Unn would be able to do anything even if she cared. The scant information we have about her seems to indicate that she's fading, and has been doing so for some time. Radi is also canonically an aggressively territorial god that has brutally punished all who turned against her with gruesome, gory deaths, so it would be in Unn's better interests to lie low and spare her Mosskin by taking a stance of neutrality, previous relations be damned. Radi wouldn't honour it, of course, she's too desperate to give a damn, but keeping off her bad side would spare more lives than taking the chance of siding with the Pale Gods

[nefariouscryptid]

1) I really like 70s-80s fashion, although all I wear are hoodies, sweats, and boots.

2) while I got burnt out drawing it, I obviously really like horror, especially psychological horror or just generally really creepy things.

3) I apparently have a form of heterochromia but in the end I’m not too sure

@bishoggoth @carbonatedfantasy @gordon-dilfman @cloudy-dayys @funtimeperformer @jaysioux

Do it or don’t idc

I was tagged by @etherithical to say 3 facts about myself and then tag the last 7 people in my notifications so,,, here goes nothing

1. I can play the clarinet (not the greatest but I can lmao)

2. I really like musicals! My favorite is Hadestown but I recently started listening to Jekyll and Hyde.

3. I really like fnaf, but I’ve only played a couple of the games haha. As far as I remember I haven’t beaten any of them, either. Not very good at horror games.

As for tagging: @cory-exe @a-living-ghost13 @golden-fazbear-green @fatflumi @caroleitze @klownies @lilith-alice-cadutoangelo You don’t have to though lol

[ruthlesslistener]

Thinking about it, aren't most of the higher beings we know somewhat cowardly and selfish? Not out of a pointless cruelty, but rather because they have no choice but to be due to the fact that their life energy is the worship and adoration of mortal bugs. The Nightmare Heart chains Grimm Child into becoming a worthy vessel that must then groom their own child into being the same thing as well as ensnaring any mortal bug they may find worthy of serving The NH, a fate The Knight is able to avoid. The Void itself wasn't even a living God when the Radiance was at her prime, it was just an endless sea of black that Void Resistant bugs prayed to and yet she made it her enemy when it couldn't have done anything to antagonise her or her people. I think that The White Lady is also more selfish than people would like to admit she is as is her nature of being a Higher Being, self-preservation must be kept in mind in a world where God's can starve like mortals. As for Unn, she's not selfish or a coward...but she is an example of what happens to a God if they get swallowed up by competition. She likely compromised and bargained to keep what little she already had and yet lost it all to a Goddess who in her own rage, forced another Goddess into the very fate she was trying to avoid. The Pale King is definitely a coward, but people are very caught up with pointing fingers at him that they forget that the other God's aren't any better than he is.

Is a lion a tyrant for slaying the sons of his enemy? Is a starving crocodile a demon for eating her own children in a hungry year when none would survive? Would a wasp be considered a monster for laying her eggs under the skin of an unsuspecting caterpillar, to use the poor creature as food for her brood when they inevitably hatch and eat it alive? Would a quokka be considered a coward when she drops her joey on the ground to be devoured by a predator, while she makes a quick escape?

The answer to all of these from a human's perspective would likely be 'yes', but from the perspectives of the animals themselves, they're all a hard 'no'. We're naturally inclined to be horrified at such behaviors, because we are taught to view such things as terrible and monstrous, but to them, it's simply a matter of life, a way to survive. Just because it doesn't fit our survival strategy or socially-taught sense of morality doesn't mean that it is wrong, or that they themselves are monstrous for simply living their life. That is just the reality of their existence, one that we cannot- and should not- damn them for. So to determine whether or not such an alien being is needlessly acting like an asshole, one needs to set such behaviors as the baseline, and thus examine them critically from that perspective.

Of course, the gods are sapient beings in Hollow Knight, and thus deserve some semblance of responsibility that a purely biological perspective of things won't impose on them, but even then, the gods are beings that defy morality simply because they're too damn alien and different for us to comfortably compare them to mortal bugs. Their life cycles, ecological/religious niches, and expanse of self is simply too different for us to condemn them. While I cannot in good conscious defend the Pale King, White Lady, or the Radiance for what they've done, I can at least try to understand their perspective and motivations for their actions, and thus determine what was needlessly cruel vs something that might just be run-of-the-mill for their nature as a Higher Being. For example, while I condemn the Radiance's whole deal with making an enemy of the void and slaughtering its worshipers (which, btw, is a theory with some merit, I can explain if you want me to go into higher detail), I don't necessarily blame her personally for that sort of reaction. She saw a threat, and responded in kind. It's just that on her scale of being, trying to drive out a danger to her nest includes wholescale genocide as a result. This more biological-based perspective also the reason why I personally don't consider the whole deal with the Nightmare Heart to be cruel, as Grimm himself seems to treat his followers with respect. Brumm himself tells Ghost that he wouldn't resent them for continuing the Ritual as long as they didn't regret it, and Divine is allowed to stay behind for as long as she desires, so she has freedom. Likewise, the Grimmsteeds don't seem to be distressed by their job traveling through the Nightmare Realm- really only Brumm got tired of lingering for so long, which would make sense for a mortal facing the breadth of immortality. It's really just that Grimm's lifecycle is kind of brutal that gives people pause, but there's plenty of cases in nature that are worse, so I find it difficult to consider it needlessly cruel. He's not selfish or cowardly. It's just how the Nightmare King reproduces, nothing more.

(I also find it difficult to consider Radiance as a coward. Selfish? Yeah, for sure, she should have left the mortals alone. A coward? Hellll nah.)

As for the Pale King, reason why he is considered a selfish coward is because his persistence with sticking to the vessel plan was needless. PK himself proved to be a bug of science and technology, which means that he really should have ditched the vessel plan after the first three clutches yielded nothing but impurities, as it would have become clear that the chances of creating a perfectly pure vessel were far too low to merit all the death and misery of his children. The fact that he continued to do so, and was so resistant to all the facts pointing otherwise- that's what makes him a cruel asshole. Because even if infanticide is a normal wyrm behavior in times of stress, his guilt relating to those events + the sheer amount of times he killed his own children instead of taking the risk and trying something different was what branded him as needlessly cruel, even by his own species's standards. It was his overly controlling nature and his inability to confront his problems directly/try different methods that caused the terrible deaths of millions of bugs, which cannot be explained away from a biological behavioral perspective. And I'm not even getting into the whole deal with the White Lady and her passive complacency- I don't expect her to be overly active or motherly, since she's a fucking tree, but the fact that she knew what they were doing was wrong and still continued the vessel plan with PK/did absolutely nothing in the face of the fall is damning enough.

So tdlr: none of the gods are innocent, they're all flawed beings, but it's important to judge them on their scale rather than our own. And even then, both the Radiance and the Pale King were terrible, greedy assholes who caused needless suffering, even if a good portion of it seems to have been accidental.

[ruthlesslistener]

I've got a Hollow Knight theory that I think you'll be interested in! The White Lady talks about her personal shame in damming her own children and how she is willing to make up for that by preventing herself from having more of them as well as helping Ghost via giving them her half of the Kingsoul charm. Though people are aware of the fact that the King regretted his choices, but don't talk about the actions he had taken before his death. I personally think that The Pale King had a vision of the future and saw Ghost take down the Radiance and from there made his final plan. He would take the White Palace, completely change it's architecture to test Ghost, hide his true thoughts and feelings and protect his half of the charm. But that's not all I think he did, I think that in the creation of the Kingsoul the King literally gave up his soul to make it just to help Ghost regain their memories and unite with the void again. The Pale King knows that this won't magically erase what he did to his children, something that can be picked up from the lore tablet in the throne room, but he'll be damned if he doesn't help his Hollow out after what he burdened them with.

HEY OP YOU FUCKING NAILED SOMETHING THAT I'VE BEEN STRUGGLING TO PUT INTO WORDS FOR LITERAL MONTHS

Yes yes YES I do believe that the Pale King saw a future where Ghost rose as the Lord of Shades to take down the Radiance, and I think that's why he allowed them to come into the White Palace to take his half of the kingsoul in the first place. We know for a fact that he's capable of moving his corpse and resealing the palace, so that implies that them being able to reach him at all was something that he purposefully allowed- hell, he probably even structured the layout of the White Palace and the Path of Pain so that Ghost could understand his perspective of the Vessel Plan, as well as test if they were strong enough to get to it. He doesn't apologize for what he's done, because that would be useless, and he does make them fight for it, but everything that we find in the White Palace gives us insight into his side of things, as well as what we need to ascend beyond his plan and take down the Radiance by our own means. The challenge of the White Palace isn't just to prove that Ghost is capable of taking down the Radiance, it's also for them to win an explanation of the circumstances and to earn their right to do what they wish to determine the fate of Hallownest. The Vessel Plan was the Pale King's attempt to keep the kingdom of Hallownest under his + the White Lady's rule, but when he proved himself incapable of being the god the kingdom needed, he passed his throne off to Ghost. That could also be why Hornet was granted the knowledge of the King's Brand- the Pale King might have sensed that something was going terribly wrong before the Infection returned again, and came up with a backup plan based on a new burst of futuresight that would allow one of the escaped vessels to take Hallownest in his stead, rather than falling back under the Radiance's power.

Something that also struck me was the fact that PK's speech is the closest thing that we get to a narrator in the story, and that the Seer idly mentions that she wonders if the Dreamers or 'that old king' was watching over Little Ghost while they were collecting enough essence to power up the Dream Nail. It really does feel like we're watching Ghost's journey through the Pale King's eyes, and that the White Palace was his way of testing if his wayward child was strong enough to take on the tragedy that he left behind.

[ruthlesslistener]

For your consideration, the Pale King goes feral and challenges the Radiance to fight him in the Dream Realm.

[cracks knuckles] oh BOY do I have a lot of feelings about this scenario, because believe me when I say that I've thought about it quite a bit.

Rambles beneath the cut:

Honestly, the fact that the Pale King never quite killed the Radiance directly feels pathetic and cowardly to me, but from a logical perspective...it kind of makes a lot of sense? And one thing about PK is that he seems to have attempted to be the very pinnacle of rationality and civil means of dealing with problems, so him coming into power by persuading the moths to forget their old god makes a lot more sense than attacking said god head-on, risking terrible injury or death in the process. Likewise, it would make sense for him to deal with said angry moth returning by sealing her in a deathtrap without directly confronting her, because now he has even more to lose- a kingdom cannot run without its king, after all, and he had remade himself to be a king specifically. Without Hallownest, he would not have a reason to live, and without him, Hallownest would not remain in his image. Why risk trying to stab someone armed when you can poison them instead, and save yourself a good deal of trouble? It simply makes more sense to not put himself in danger. Not only that, but he's naturally not one for direct confrontation in the first place- we can infer this from the environmental cues picked up on his character, as well as comparing him to the Radiance herself. In a way, the Pale King and the Radiance are as opposite of each other as fire and ice. Where the Radiance conquers directly, through emotion and a desire to hold a power united, the Pale King persuades bugs with the promise of freedom, slithering quietly into their minds so that he can take control. Where the Radiance throws herself into battle against a mere shadow, the Pale King retreats, preferring to disarm and dissuade his opponent through hostile architecture instead of wasting his soul or his blood in a one-on-one fight. Him choosing to carefully step around the issue rather than fighting her directly not only saves his tail, it also is in line with how he is normally.

Which means to get him to fight her, we need to break him. And not only that, we need to hurt him badly enough for him to not care about throwing himself into a fight that he might not win, a fight that might devastate everything around him in the process, because something else to consider is the fact that the Radiance and the Pale King are both gods of light. Them fighting one-on-one would be like trying to fight a wildfire threatening a city by starting another wildfire- one might snuff the other out, sure, but at the cost of many lives and the downside of great, uncontrollable destruction. So the trigger to get him to fight her would really have to be something that he would put above Hallownest, or at least piss him off/scare him enough to think that the risk is worth it. He has to be reduced down to nothing more than a hissing, terrified creature with 'fight' as his only option, one where even the risk of challenging her head-on is less frighting to him than the thought of him losing everything. I'd say the vessel plan was a near thing in canon, but even that required logic and careful planning, so it needs to be even more dire than a situation that calls for throwing a bunch of children to a horrible death or fate.

So, what would flip the trigger? It's hard to say, for the Pale King is a god of Mind, which means he's pretty much logic personified. But if I had to take a wild shot at what would do it, I'd say that anything that can switch the magnitude of grief and regret he feels over the loss of his kingdom and his family to pure rage would be enough to do him in. It would be the equivalent of detonating two nukes in Hallownest when they fight, and trying to predict the winner would likely be futile (you wouldn't win, in a war between two suns), but it would be deeply entertaining regardless.

[ruthlesslistener]

Hot take: The Hollow Knight was not nearly as attached to their siblings as everyone portrays them to be.

My reason for thinking this is that when presented with the option to help Ghost out or remain in the void, they actively chose to leave it and Ghost behind. When it came to the objective of being the Perfect Vessel, they were pretty much their until PK instilled the possibility of being his heir and child. Hell, it's likely that they summoned Ghost to Hallownest to just be their replacement. I think that Hollow/Pure only cared about their father until Ghost reunited the void.

Mmm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with this one. Primarily because the Hollow Knight leaving their sibling to the Abyss is something that's not really out of line for a child desperate for their father's attention, but also because of how they stab themselves during their fight with Ghost, and how the music changes to let us know that they're still in there. It's not necessarily a desire to escape their pain that's driving them, because their death frees the Radiance, it seems to be them violently trying to keep themselves from causing harm to their sibling/help them kill them so that they won't raise their blade against them again. I also believe one of the developers mentioned that the rush to get to the top of the Abyss was sort of a competition on who got to be the Hollow Knight? Which you should take with a grain of salt, but if the vessels knew what the Pale King's plan was (which was not unlikely tbh), then Hollow 'choosing' to be the Pure Vessel likely means that they knew the implications of that title, how they were the only hope for the kingdom. Sure, them leaving Ghost behind was kinda cruel, but they are a child of the Pale King, and we know from Hornet culling the weak vessels that she doesn't view that sort of thing as an act of cruelty as much as it is one of pity. Hollow likely acted on a similar idea, where they thought that their sibling dying in the Abyss would be kinder than trying to help them and let the carnage continue. Because if they helped them, then the Pale King would know that they were only pretending to be empty, and even more siblings and people would die. Tdlr: shit's complicated, the Pale King's lineage tends to go more for tough love than our squishy ape brains like, and sibling jealousy is a very real thing that shouldn't be factored out here. I do think that Hollow was the closest to PK out of everyone they met, but I severely doubt that they only cared about their father when they really didn't have any choice in the matter + he most certainly loved them as his child. I just think that their love seems a little more brutal than what human affection appears because they're the child of a massive burrowing dragon, a plant, and the unending void instead of something inclined to tenderness like us.