#gimme moooooreeee

[ruthlesslistener]

Gimme PK for the character meme!

I had a whole thing written up here and Tumblr reloaded and fucking ate it. I want to die

Alright take two

How I feel about this character

-Used to hate his guts. Like, legit, I rarely ever feel super strongly about characters but seeing what he did the first time made me sick to my stomach. Now though? I love him. After some wiki and lore diving in the game, I began to piece together his story and how he felt about it, and I went from seeing him as a coldhearted, clinical, detatched power-hungry dickhead to someone who genuinely loved their kingdom and loathed what they had to do, but still ended up harming multitudes because their love for it festered into something obsessive and toxic. Now he’s one of my favorites, purely because he fits that niche of ‘if a great person who was driven to desperation does horrible things, does that make them a villain?’ aspect that I love so much when writing. Also, I can bully him as much as I like in writing without feeling bad, so that’s fun. He’s like a fantasy punching bag/philosophical question.

Also, he has draconic ties. I am a weak man. I see a draconic character, and I love them no matter how awful they are. I’m weak for those proud violent majestic ancient lizards okay

All the people I ship romantically with this character

-White Lady! Usually I steer clear of hetero pairings in media because they’re written awfully, but Hollow Knight’s few romantic pairs are all excellently well-written and feel balanced and reciprocate. I know some people think that she was forced to comply with him or hated the vessel plan, but that’s...really not the case? She still speaks fondly of him in the gardens, as if he was still alive and she was merely taking a short trip away from him. And her approach to the vessel plan seems to be ‘it’s regrettable and disturbing, but it has to be done’. Hell, if anything she carries it out more efficiently than he does, keeping herself distant from Ghost and talking about Hollow as if they were a part of a machine that simply stopped working. He’s the dreamer in the relationship, and she keeps him grounded (or rooted, hehe). 

Also, he canonically gave her a half of his soul when they were married to each other, which is cute as fuck. Nothing better than seeing a character who deeply loves his wife

My non-romantic OTP for this character

-I use Homestuck quadrants as a loose outline of how the god’s romance works, because I headcanon them to have a very different way of interacting and forming bonds than humans, so its a tossup between him and Lurien as morails and him and Herrah as kismeises. Proooobably I enjoy blackrom Herrah/Pale King though because she’s more than a match for him, doesn’t seem to trigger his desire to kill his opposition (compared to Radiance, another god), and already had a kid with him. If it wasn’t for the Dreamer plan I bet she could have hammered him out into a better person through their rivalry, which would be fucking awesome to read about (and then Hornet might have actually had parents who stuck around....). Grimm I kind of headcanoned him to have a hatecrush on until he learned what he was doing with the vessels, and then he just fuckin yote that crush out into pure hatred (because Grimm is social and a father and that is his sister who he’s going to starve to death, no matter how horrible she may be now she is still his sister...)

My unpopular opinion about this character

-He was kind. He loved deeply, honestly, faithfully. And it ruined him. Because like...I know some people think that he’s cold and efficient and cruel. But everything that he did for Hallownest points to the actions of someone who loved it and the bugs that resided within. He wanted to be among his citizens, so he died for them. It would have been much easier for him to rise to power if he just enthralled all the bugs under the Radiance’s power (once he destroyed her, ofc), but he granted them free will instead. Godseeker mentioned that him choosing to diminish himself was baffling, and though she is in no means a reliable narrator, I think about the connotations behind that a lot. Because for a being who feeds on worship, a being that is supposedly pure Mind and no heart, staying in that big wyrm form and enthralling the mortals would be the best course of action. But he chose to die instead, so that he may be with them. He chose to destroy his family so that they might live free from the mindlessness of the Radiance’s rule. He loved the Hollow Knight, his supposed mindless sacrificial lamb, enough to gift them the ability to see the world from their sealing and to build them a memorial statue (no small thing for a god, though condescending for a mortal- remember that gods true-die when they are forgotten, and a big honking statue about their sacrifice for the good of the kingdom is a sure way to gather awe and worship). And when Hallownest fell and he sealed himself away in dreams to die- the same as what he did to the Radiance, mind you- we can literally see the guilt and shame in the ruins of the White Palace. It’s his glorious palace, hidden in a mess of spikes and blades. His most heavily-guarded memory is a moment with him and Hollow- one that must be viewed by enduring the harshest punishment. The hidden rooms in the palace are all the things that were deeply close to his heart and saw as secret and shameful; his workshop with the void constructs, a tablet speaking a prophecy of Hallownest lasting forever, an empty cradle tucked directly below his throne. And then he himself, dead or dying on his throne, not a great glorious god but a neglectful mess. That all points to someone who lost everything they cared about and couldn’t handle all the horrible things they had to do to keep it safe, someone who never learned how to healthily handle their emotions and ended up hurting everyone around them in the process.

And that, in my opinion, is much scarier than your boring cardboard cutout villain model. Because the people who hurt you the most aren’t going to be calculating, cruel bastards all the time, they’re people who are kind and lovely and will do whatever it takes to keep their beloved safe, even at the cost of their own life and the lives of everyone around them. Much more interesting to handle, too. There is nothing that puts me off a fic faster than cold detatched asshole Pale King bc like...he did care. Of course he cared. That’s why he killed everybody

(Also he was a conflict-avoidant bastard but I’m not getting into that rn)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

-MORE FLASHBACKS WHERE HE’S ACTUALLY ALIVE!!! MORE FLASHBACKS WHERE HE’S WITH HOLLOW OR THE DREAMERS OR HORNET!!! I want to see how he interacted with others so I’m not just piecing his personality together from his sad lore tablets and Lemm. I’m hoping we get some flashbacks with him in Silksong, since he has the potential to be a pretty...interesting influence on Hornet’s life, seeing how she looks so much like him, but that’s a pretty wild thing to look for. I also wish we saw him as he was when he was a full wyrm, too, bc goddamn I wanna know more about these big scary god-noodles. His corpse was mostly buried back in Kingdom’s Edge, with only the ‘teeth’ really sticking out, and I’m not sure how much faith I have in the coliseum being another wyrm like the Blackwyrm. If Bardoon says they’re much bigger than him, then I def. wanna see a full-grown, alive, full-sized one in canon at some point

Send me a character and I’ll break their ass down 

[bullshxtvixen]

I DONT CARE I READ THE SAMPLE, I WANT MOOOOOREEEE, GIMME MORE OF MY FAVORUITE PURPLE HEADED FUCK

@animewh0re ! IT'S NOT FINISHED YET, YOU CRETIN