#is actually a viable thing to hope for but.... i'd be SO DAMN GOOD AT IT

[slippery-minghus]

dunno if i'm gonna rally the spoons and nerve to apply to some new jobs (i suppose we'll see how this week's vibe goes) but i updated my resume and i'm feeling pretty good about it 💪

[slylock-syl]

Hey Syllll! Long time, no chat! I just wanted to get this off my chest before i go ham trying to figure out what i wanna commission from you soon.

I have been reading Undersource for years now, and i think we've both come a long way since then! God, that feels weird to say, i'm not even old enough to drink yet lmao. But! I am old enough to spend my money responsibly now, which is nuts given that my responsible spending is now aimed at getting art of my blorbos LOL.

You've grown as an artist so much since i first started reading- i think that was around... the pirate arc? Not sure! But i do remember the early days of me having discord, during the EKD server category era. But anyways, i know the way you drew our favorite skeletons was different back then, and it's all gotten so much smoother in that time. You're also (at least seemingly) taking way better care of yourself! You've set boundaries, you've set more time for yourself and not the blog, and you're still happily chugging along, after all these years. Not to mention you're working on this side story now, which i'm fairly certain you've been looking forward to for a while.

How's that sleeping though? Do you still have the sleep cycle of an austalian? Can't say i'm any better, im slowly becoming nocturnal again lol. Some things NEVER change.

Anyways. All this to say: im really proud to have been part of this little community for so long. To see the comic and its artist come so far. Even if im not a diehard fan anymore, im glad i can still take a little time every weekend to realize "OH, U/S shoulda updated!" and run over here. Thanks for giving me a good starting point of community on this god damned hellsite.

(Here's to sleepy 5 am "you're great" asks LMAO)

sjksdhLKSDJFHG THIS IS SUCH A SWEET MESSAGE OMG-

Hi Azzy! :D I'm glad you still like my work even after all this time! Thank you for sticking around! :D

I have been taking better care of myself these days! I'm (only sometimes begrudgingly XD) going on daily walks (Pikmin Bloom is really helping with that, I love Pikmin they're so cute), and made some new friends! When I first started this blog I was convinced I had to constantly/frequently produce content, and I time went on I slowly realized that wasn't really viable, so I slowly trimmed down the workloads for better manageability, I'd say it's helped a lot! Even if it may not look like it sometimes XD

There was a point before I adjusted my work schedule where I figured out that I may have been riding a creative burnout for a long while, as when I looked back it felt like my work had begun to visually stagnate. I think at the time I was cramming working on the comic update across only 3 or 4 days (Wednesday/Thursday to Saturday mornings, sometimes down to the wire), with several hours of just constant work (plus any distractions and 3 daily asks) because I was procrastinating so badly X'D I'm still recovering from the visual stagnation, but I'm definitely trying to experiment where I can! I may not be the best at it but I hope I'm improving at least ksjdghLSDGH My current schedule is MUCH more spaced out and much more manageable, spanning Sunday to Friday and broken down into stages for each day, and Saturdays are my designated day off~

As for the side story, it's one I've had around for quite a while and have been excited to finally show off! There were a few people who were interested in it when it was first teased, though I've no idea if they're still around, if they are I hope they're enjoying the story so far as well! 💜

Oddly enough my sleep schedule is no longer on Cthulhu Standard Time SKSDJGHDLG We had a TON of construction going on in the house the past few months and it was way too awkward to sleep with a bunch of strangers either being in or near my room, as well as making a LOT of noise sjkdhgLKSDJG There was a brief section of time where I'd actually go to bed at a "normal" time and get up at like, 9 or 10 am X'D Though it's slowly sneaking it's way into afternoons to 3 or 4 AM after I feed the kitties, kinda like my old college schedule XD

Thank you again for liking my work and sticking around! I really appreciate it!! :D

I may not be anywhere near whatever my "peak" was a few years ago, but I'm still happy to keep going for those who still come around! 💜

[lumenflowered]

[A video is attached. Janine—a young woman with spiky purple hair and a long scarf on over what sure looks like ninja attire—appears to have just shut the door behind Maria into some sort of break room.

"So! Good to finally meet you, champ," Janine says cheerfully, practically bouncing on her feet as she makes for a comfy-looking couch and launches herself backwards into it, the camera following her there. "You beat Dad, so. I knew I probably wasn't winning, but damn if it wasn't fun to try!"

"I can see the resemblance," Maria comments, looking around the break room and eventually choosing to just remain standing, very awkwardly, near the door.

"Aw, really? That's really sweet, thank you. But anyway!" Janine beams at her. "What brings you here? Are you just the sort of overachiever who wants to get all sixteen of the viable badges, or... something else? My guess is something else. Though you do have overachiever energy."

Maria blinks, clearly confused. "Thank you? I... think?"

"Eh, it can be a compliment, could be not, I mean it as a compliment so you're welcome. Seriously, though, what are you doing here?" Janine pauses. The smile drops from her face. "It's Rocket, isn't it."

"As in the team? I... had intended to ask you that."

"Wait what."

"How much has Lance told you?"

"Pretty much just that he did get defeated but for personal reasons you're not taking over for him at the Indigo League quite yet. Also a quick physical description of you so we'd actually know when you turned up. Which... understated a few things, but never mind that." Janine sits up, arms crossed over her chest. "What's going on?"

"After being driven out of Johto, Team Rocket seems to have plans of some variety here in Kanto instead," Maria clarifies. "They seem far more afraid of me than they are of Lance—"

"Wait, were you the one who crashed Ho-oh into the Johto Radio Tower???"

"—and as such the plan is for the rest of the League to monitor Johto while I search them out and deal with them here in Kanto." Maria pauses, brow furrowing. "Also, no. Ho-oh crashed themself into the Johto Radio Tower; I was merely taking advantage of their offer of a way into the building."

"What the fuck, you're way too cool to be the new champ," Janine mutters. "Anyway. Uh. Got it! Fully understood. Honestly it wouldn't be the first time that Rocket has managed to listen in on League communications, so I get why Lance didn't want to say much, but also what do you want from me here?"

"I'd like to know," Maria says, "if you have seen anything particularly suspicious in or near Fuchsia City recently. Anything directly related to Rocket would be ideal, but anything... out of the ordinary would work."

"Hmm. Hmmmmm." Janine steeples her hands thoughtfully, shifting to an even more ridiculous sitting position on the couch if she does. "See, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I've seen Rocket's work before, and I've got a hunch about where they will be if they're anywhere near here. Give me a couple days, I'll let you know. Or I'll have one of the girls let you know."

"...One of your gym trainers is a boy?"

"Oh, Barry? Yeah, he's bigender. He delights in being one of the boys and one of the girls. Not the point though, I'll get on that after the gym closes tonight. In the meantime... stay close, give me a call if you find something first, and I hope you enjoy Fuchsia City!"

"Thank you," Maria says. "There is one other thing, more of a... personal matter."

"Oooooooh? Do tell?"

"I... believe there may have been a challenger here... close to a month ago?"

"Okay...? I'm gonna need something slightly more specific, I get a lot of challengers. It's mostly people who are here for the Safari Zone and figured they might as well try for a badge while they're in the area, but hey."

"Dee. The name she would be going by is likely Dee."

Janine's brow furrows. "About a month ago... yeah, I think I remember her. Actually, I thought she was you at first—Lance's original description of you wasn't as specific as it should've been, he didn't even mention that you're an edgelord."

"...A what."

"Uh, you like dark clothes and... don't worry about it, actually. What about her?"

"I..." Maria hesitates. "She... did Lance mention that I was a Faller?"

"Like Surge, yeah. But also it's pretty... you're not subtle. I like you a lot but you're not. What about it?"

"I believe that she may be too," Maria says. "That she may be from the same place I am, and... may even be someone I knew once."

"Oh shit? That's a good thing, right?"

"...I don't know."

"What, is she your ex or... yeesh. For real? That's rough." Janine pauses. "Also, you can totally sit down if you want. Like. There are plenty of seats."

There are, indeed, plenty of seats. Maria equally awkwardly takes one.

"Perhaps I am wrong," Maria says. "I hope that I am wrong. But any information on her that you are willing to share may help."

"Okay. Well. Um..." Janine's brow furrows. "Let me think on that one too, actually, it's been a long month."

The video ends.]

[fonulyn]

what sort if things do you want to talk abt with people/what would make you feel better?

I mean, in an actual utopia? :'D I'd love it if people were excited for what I'm working on. if they'd ask about the fics in progress, kick my butt when I can't get shit done, and push me into doing more. maybe even give feedback already during the process! i know it's too much to ask for, especially when so rarely even finished fics get excitement or feedback, but it's what a Dream World would look like lol.

ideally I'd love it if I had some friends who I could actually brainstorm with and talk about the stuff I'm stuck on or trying to otherwise flesh out. my dog does listen but rarely has any suggestions I can take :'D I know I got spoiled because earlier (like …two years ago lol) I had someone who was always excited to talk about the ideas and brainstorm with me, and who kicked my ass into gear if I was dragging my feet, and I got used to it and now that i'm supposed to just figure everything out alone I have zero motivation to actually do it. the kind of instant feedback I got then was the best motivator ever. now? eh.

and I'd love it if my feeble attempts at trying to talk about wips wasn't just brushed off. if i post on tumblr about something it's most of the time ignored. i've tried to talk to multiple people, and in return i get either the "you'll figure it out eventually" or a complete topic change immediately. no follow-up questions, no excitement, no nothing.

and I'd love it if people didn't go "oh I can help brainstorm that!" and then not even bother to read it. go "I'm gonna comment on that soon!" and never do it. empty promises do nothing but get hopes up and end up in crushing disappointment.

I know people are busy, people have their lives and shit happens but like. it's easy to not make promises you can't (or have no intention to) keep, imo.

and idk in the Olden Days I had multiple people to chat general fandom with, and it in turn sparked fic ideas, and excitement, but now that doesn't really exist either.

just to be clear I'm not expecting anyone to be at my beck and call 24/7 all the time :'D god no :'D but it's so friggin' disheartening when I get a new idea, am all excited about it, and then deflate when I know I don't really have anyone to hype me up about it. so then i won't do it. or then i write like two sentences a day maximum and never get shit done. and every damn day i'm getting closer to just quitting for good. i really really don't wanna abandon my to-write-list and leave shit unfinished but it's starting to look like the only viable option left.

idek. I'm tired. i know it's just a pipe dream and i'll just keep struggling until i fade away from fandom and no one notices lol but yeah.

(it is really nice to just chat about anything with people too, tho, so a shoutout to those who did reach out and who i've been occasionally chatting with :3 it is appreciated!)

[qeliche]

Hmmm. So anti-abortion ppl etc on other sites have been pissing me off a little and I'm thinking to make a lil protest keychain thing after a surgery I have coming up. (Haven't gotten a date yet).

In case tags don't work, it's mildly.... gore-ish I guess? Talks abt using things my body made in an art piece. So cw gore.

I always thought what If I had to get an abortion someday (I don't want human babies/children to raise) and couldn't because of stuff like those idiots are doing in the States took hold up here (we've got an anti-abortion politician as a minister on the cabinet in ON but thankfully not in a position to do anything with those views/promises, but he's pretty new to the cabinet).

It just gets me really mad so I'm thinking if I ever had to get one, I'd probably put the thing in a keychain or something after finding a way to preserve it by either drying it or putting it in a glass vial.

Well hopefully a similar surgery (aka no human babies) is on the bills, so I'll make something from that and stuffing it in an urn or a fetus shaped glass/cavity should get the point across, no?

Those 'protestors' (especially the ones outside clinics - even up here in Canada, British Columbia had to pass privacy laws outside clinics back in 1995) are ok doing harassment and shock value - I'm not ok w harassment but I can definitely do shock value. I've never gotten harassed outside a clinic but I've definitely been called a murderer/murder celebrator by so called "pro-life" ppl. It does get me very irritated a little I suppose, because if anyone actually took them seriously, those would be serious charges and *that* would make me right pissed. And I got called violent because I wouldn't mind if ppl used their unwanted fetuses as protest material to show exactly how little they can do to stop anyone and would happily do it myself. Don't really get that one. I understand ppl can destroy things but I don't think that's what the person was going for as they seemed quite disturbed with me potentially destroying/getting protest craft made with my own things from my own body (and supporting others doing the same).

It's a damn fetus. An unwanted fetus is literally nothing more than a tumor - there's no aware brain in there to perceive anything yet, much less be alive. A parasite in your body has more life in it than a fetus that's not viable outside the womb. And they call it murder/want to call it murder. Preposterous. (Yeah I know it's just to control ppl).

Well tough shit cuz I'm gonna get protest craft made with something my body grew and they can't stop me no matter how disturbed by it they are.

I've come up with a scribble for the keychain (maybe I'll make it something else but it'll definitely be decoration) and it's sides/bottom-front and I just hope it's not too long (the longer one would be for the back):

These discards represent the fetuses, embryos and everything involved prior to those stages, where the fetuses etc will never become babies/be born simply because the would-be bearers do not want them to, achieved by any means - Good Fucking Riddance.

Abortion/Birth Control Accessibility NOW For Everyone As Applicable - Emergency or Just Because.

An unwanted fetus that can't even survive outside the womb has as much life as a tumor and deserves to be yeeted like one.

If not letting fetuses etc be developed & born is murder, here lies a very happily committed slaughter.

-----

But this is a 3AM thing so maybe I'll rework it.

Because I see a lot of ppl defending necessary, life-saving, unwanted abortion access but not nearly enough who defend abortion access simply because you don't want a baby. At least not on the other sites lol. And I love putting it in a way that'll piss off the pro-life ppl.

And birth control isn't in the spotlight yet - in USA they're doing stuff like making it cost too much cuz you have to pay out of pocket, still, and haven't gone all in on attacking it yet.

Not down for harassment, but I can definitely do shock value.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

So. Obviously I knew a lot of the specifics here, being possibly Quill's oldest friend and having been through her with a lot of this.

But I have some things of my own I want to add, as someone who experienced similar things and carried on writing during some times where it was pretty damn difficult to write mostly by replacing "inspiration" with "well-tempered spite."

For me, I didn't use LJ until it was basically dead, thanks to my extremely limited access to the internet until I was an adult and LJ was already dying. And I'd never really been a big part of fandom culture, because that wasn't how I engaged with media back then (and it still kind of...isn't, honestly).

Where I got threaded comments and conversations on my OCs was actually Fictionpress. And where I got to play with my characters was FB Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger back when those were still viable and I had a different social circle than I do now.

And sure, a lot of that wasn't always great writing, and I knew less about writing then than I do now, and I didn't have any intention to publish those things the way I do now.

But just getting to talk to people about my characters and stories helped so much with writing them and getting ideas. People would leave comments about what they hoped to see, and I would go, "Oooh, new idea!" People would leave comments about their favorite thing about the characters and I could talk back to them.

It's a lot like any kind of executive dysfunction: sometimes, it's a lot easier to produce things, even things you wanted to produce anyway, if you know someone else is also invested in the product.

It's hard to feel like anyone's invested in me writing or me not writing. Except for me.

Plus, it's just fun to do things communally sometimes. It's fun writing knowing you have an audience. That you have people to talk to about it.

And at it seems so much harder at the same time to find anyone to play with. I'd love to do silly, fun RPs with OCs the way I used to. Throw silly scenarios that have nothing to do with the OC "canon" lore back and forth for fun. It's great for idea generation, and it's lots of fun.

But finding anyone to do any of those things with? God, it's so hard.

I still talk about writing craft on this blog all the time. Because I love it. And I know a lot of other writers want to talk about it, too. But I have found a lot of writing discords that are actively hostile to discussing writing processes and craft and shut it down with, "Well, it doesn't matter because every writer and process is unique and it's all good."

Okay, but...do you not find it interesting? I find it interesting.

My blog posts aren't a conversation. But I think the way I think and talk deeply about writing is inspiring to other people for the same reason I find it exciting and inspiring: thinking about writing sparks thinking about new things to try, new things to write.

I need a little writing group of 10-15 people or so. But it's so hard. So hard to find that and keep it alive. Every time I've tried, I've failed miserably. Either people don't want to chat about their blorbos and plots excitedly, or they don't want to share their writing, or it dissolves into nothing but sprints, or the server/community just dies entirely.

I know a lot of people are hungry for the kind of creative community. And I think a lot of us would be doing better with one.

But I wonder if a lot of us aren't too shy or scared to keep trying. Or they don't know how anymore.

But my social media always turns into me talking about my writing and editing while I'm doing those things, and it would be nice to have a community to put it in again.

The Years When I Wrote Stuff

So it’s the wake of the year 2022 and as of two months from now it will be two years since I spent a significant amount of time writing anything. I watched The Glass Onion last night and I want to write a mystery so badly that my stomach hurts, but also I want to go home and time travel is not an option. Feel free to skip the introspection but I miss Livejournal, and I thought other people also waiting for a dead year to be buried who have also tried to make stuff during the last eternity might find this a little cathartic.

Keep reading

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.