#colosseum of fools

[simaswatt]

yea i sucked ass in the Colosseum

[sillybugblog]

More Bug guys

rotating them in my head

[aquabotart]

Tiso's last stand!

Hollow Knight fanart to celebrate me finishing the game at last.

(The background was HARD)

[flame-shadow]

some phthalo sketches from yesterday

[fly-sky-high-bug-games]

Victorious! Time to smack that old corpse off the throne, the new Champion is here!

Tump for @midnight197

[grubhumor]

The last thing Tiso heard before he died was the crowd laughing at him. Can anyone hear me. He died with a hoard of viewers cheering and howling with amusement during his last moments. Are you guys listening.

I’ve been thinking about this for so long…

Do you think he still hears them in his dreams

[worms-for-brains]

I love love love editing screencaps and putting my guys in there

[oneangrykneegremlin]

Some doodles for an AU I’ve got on the brain right now. Wonder what’s happening here :)

[tonythr]

Floating platforms in Hollow Knight are weird, lore-wise

Soooo I haven't seen anyone actually talk about this, but those things just keep *bugging* me.

These things.

Why did Team Cherry put these particular platforms in the background?

Ok, there are numerous floating platforms in this game, of course, because the player needs them to traverse big spacey rooms vertically. They're not even an issue lore-wise, because their existence can be explained by them being attached to the fourth wall, which is what the player looks at the Knight through. It's basically a game construct that we are not supposed to think about as a part of the suspension of disbelief.

BUT THOSE THINGS are not attached to any wall! They're just. Floating. There. In the air. Without any support. And THEIR existence can't be explained by the game wanting to provide the player some convenience. The Knight can't interact with them, we never see anyone else use them or even acknowledge them, so they MUST be something that TC put there for lore reasons, as a part of that beautiful thing that we call environmental storytelling... Right?

That or they just put them there without really thinking about the implications that this anomaly creates. But that's a boring and very unlikely explanation, so I'm just going to discuss what that might mean for the game's lore, assuming they're put there intentionally.

So, I have several thoughts on why those platforms might exist as a part of the in-game universe.

First theory. Hallownest is literally frozen in time

Ok, so this is probably the most obvious one. Throughout the game we see some evidence of the Kingdom being literally put on hold with the intention to keep it alive indefinitely.

This is pretty much what is implied in the tablet in the Pale King's workshop - that PK was trying to literally pause Time itself, so that the inevitable Dawn would never Break.

(Quite an interesting theme, actually - the idea of avoiding the inevitable not by trying to actually avoid letting it happen, but by delaying it by an infinite amount of time. It deserves its own post, really)

So, with Time itself being literally frozen, it's pretty safe to assume that this is exactly the reason as to why some parts of the Kingdom are literally stuck in one place, right? I mean, it's pretty much a trope to have floating rocks and buildings in a place that is stuck in some kind of time stasis. I'd say this is a pretty solid assumption, but when we actually look at some of the other parts of Hallownest we see that it's pretty lively for a place that is frozen in time. The rain is pouring, the stalactites are falling, all those machines in the Crystal Peak are still working...

Some of that stuff can actually be explained by either the Radiance's influence or the Knight's movement. The Infection is presented as the inevitable force of change that resurrects everything and moves it towards Light. The air thickens, the bugs arise from the dead, the Infection takes over the Crossroads, the Moss cultists get turned into mush, and so on. Meanwhile, other creatures possessing a Will are also capable of bringing change to this land. The Knight constantly breaks things, forces the ground to crumble beneath its feet, and overall just brings destruction to Hallownest, bringing the world closer to its natural end. It's no wonder that the stalactites start falling conveniently right as the Knight passes underneath them.

BUT there are still many things that can't be explained so easily. Like, if the Kingdom is supposed to be frozen in time, then why is the rain still pouring? Why is the Wyrm's ash still falling at the Kingdom's Edge? Why is the sand still falling from the ceiling? Why do larger things seem to be fixed in place, while smaller things are seemingly unaffected by the Kingdom's stasis?

That and the fact that at no point we see these floating platforms being acknowledged by the game's lore in any way other than those two places makes me think that this theory is probably incorrect, unlike the next one.

Second theory. Those two particular places are just that special.

The only two places where we actually see floating platforms being a part of the background (if I'm not missing any) are located near some of the most mysterious places in the whole game.

First, we have the ones that are located near the Colosseum of Fools. To be honest, even the interactable platforms there just seem useless, as some of them don't even protect us from the Bellflies. They all look like some kind of decoration (alongside with those strange thin pillars with circles on top of each) leading us along the road towards the corpse of a huge beast which the Colosseum is located inside. What even is this creature? Is it a higher being? Is it a Wyrm (don't mossbag me, he's wrong about those things being its claws because we see a third one in the foreground lying aside from the main structure, detached from the body)? Is the Lord Fool its reincarnation? Is it connected to the Ancient Civilization? How are there so many warriors there? Why does it still thrive after everything that happened to Hallownest? There are so many questions about that place left unanswered that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the magic of the Colosseum actually affects time and/or space around it, making it possible for the floating platforms to exist.

Second (and this is the most important one), we have the platforms that are located inside and outside the Hive. As far as I know, this is the only place in the whole game that has this many floating platforms located in the background.

This basically confirms that this is absolutely NOT a coincidence and is a part of the intentional in-game lore. The whole place is floating!

The Hive seems to be in its own kind of stasis, probably due to its isolation. Vespa says that going against nature is a folly, so this anomaly is probably something... natural.

And you know where else floating things are a natural occurrence?

The Dream Realm.

So, the Hive and the Dream Realm are both places that are tied to the Light, which is a kind of force or energy that can alter reality and even create new realities, which are not necessarily bound by the usual laws of space and time. The Hive is not located in the Dream Realm, and it's safe to say that it's not some kind of in-between-the-worlds situation like with the Lifeblood Core, so the stuff that's going on there is less crazy than what we see in the Dream Realm, but it is also the only material place that is connected so heavily to the Light, so it is safe to assume that the anomaly that lets the platforms float is directly connected to that mysterious force.

The only thing that I can't understand is how the Light in those places connects to the Colosseum of Fools. It's not a well-lit area, and even inside the arena the only source of light is just regular fire. Could it be that this mysterious force is not defined by the Light itself, but by something more... incomprehensible?

I wonder what that force even is. The Radiance is definitely not the only source of it, and we know we're gonna see some really shiny stuff in Silksong. I personally hope for more platform lore.

[witch-with-scissors]

Do you remember ~The Big Race~ and the snail riders? The cheering crowd of bugs has a strong Hollow Knight vibe to me. It's more visible in close-up, so let's get a magnifying glass today. 🔍👀

Am I the only one who feels like they could have cheered in The Colosseum of Fools too, or been the audience in Godhome?

[artofamandanp]

Another day another Hollow Knight NPC painting. Tiso might have bitten off more than he could chew for sure, but Hallow nest did him dirty.

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

another hk headcanon of ours, is that this in fact the black wrym, but the battle is not named after it as a being, rather as a place.

The theory is that the death of the black wyrm happened long before Ogrim was around, who we know was involved in this mysterious battle, but its body was being used as a war fortress at the time, and was central to the conflict that took place (probably between Hallownest and intruders coming in from the east.)

[sillybugblog]

more bugs my fool guys

[traveling-vessels-revisited]

Finally finished this, here's Twili at the Colosseum of Fools!

[hollow-knight-fights]

Hollow Knight Fight: Round 3, Wave 2

Submit your propaganda here or in the tags/comments/reblogs!

Like what I'm doing? Comm me or give me a Kofi!

[bluegekk0]

What's the coliseum of fools like in your AU? Is it run by the little fool or is the corpse in the background that was probably the founder still in charge by default despite being dead?

I definitely think it has someone else in charge now. Whether it's the little fool or someone else, it still functions and, with Hallownest slowly returning to life, finds quite a few participants on a regular basis. One idea I really like is rich bugs from the City of Tears sponsoring fights in the colosseum for their own entertainment. In fact, I'm leaning towards there being a partnership like connection between the colosseum and the city. Lurien isn't exactly the type to be on boards with bloodshed as entertainment, but his primary goal is to drag the city out of the criminal infested hole it found itself in post-hibernation and bring it back to its prime; to achieve that, he needs geo that the colosseum can bring. So at the point he's at, he sees it as a necessary evil for the development of the city.

How does the colosseum bring money in the first place? Well, Hallownest at this point in the AU is open to travelers, mostly merchants, but I'm sure there are some warriors looking for a challenge who would flock to the coliseum. And with time, the word would spread, bringing in more and more contestants (and possibly some extra sponsors). More contestant means more money, and more chances for popular warriors who would inevitably draw a bigger crowd.

So in short, it takes the role of an entertainment venue which has a close connection to the City of Tears. It's far more organized now, and more popular than ever. I suppose it feeds into the instinctual desire for blood some carnivorous bugs experience, so it makes sense that it would still be around.