#just. AUGHHH SHAKING RATTLING BITING AT THE BARS.

[ruthlesslistener]

Oh, something else I have to add here as well- another main gripe that I have about the idea that the Pale King is a colonizer (or is supposed to represent the 'white man') is that it ignores the fact that he is the only known outside god, and that the kingdom he rules over (the beetles, pretty overwhelmingly) is comprised of a tribe that is native to Hallownest. Colonism is, by definition, focused around land occupation by filling it with settlers to drive out/kill the native peoples and exploit the land for economic benefit to a foreign benefactor. And that's not what happened!! Instead, he's a foreign power that became the ruler of already-occupied lands, influencing them as a result. Saying he's a colonizer implies that the main occupants were foreign citizans that maliciously took over the land for his benefit- and we KNOW that the beetle tribe is native to Hallownest, because there are a multitide of fossilized carapaces among the kingdom, with a particular density in Kingdom's Edge and the Abyss. So it puts a really really bad taste in my mouth to hear the colonizer take because it implies compliance from the denizens of Hallownest, when the whole POINT is that all of the tragedy that came about was due to the hubris of their god. They aren't compliant in his crimes, and that's what makes the Infection so horrifying. They were innocent.

(Plus I just overall hate the fact that everyone assumes colonization is the worst means of occupation and a mark of True Evil when its really just one of many evils AND is a very real pain many people are still recovering from that shouldn't be thrown around on the internet to make the antagonist of a fantasy show seem even worse, but that's a whole other gripe of mine.)

And like...trying to claim that the beetle tribe were settlers isn't only innacurate, it also ignores the fact that they were likely subjugated to the Radiance's whims before the Pale King came. I'm not saying that PK trundling over was a good thing, but when the whole point of the story is about abuse of power and reclaiming autonomy from figures that have near-total control over your life, its jarring to imply that those abused by that very power are somehow deserving of it when the whole point of the story is that the Radiance's wrath was undeserved. The Infection targeted anyone she saw as a traitor, and grabbed onto unaffiliated kingdoms to obtain more power and gain more leverage (cough mosskin cough). The beetles weren't any more deserving of their fate than the moths. Intertribal war aside, they were NEVER on the level of the gods and do not deserve the full brunt of their punishment, ESPECIALLY since the Pale King ended up abandoning them in the end like the coward he is.

The Pale King is still a conquerer and a warmonger with blood on his hands. But so is the Radiance. And all the people who were conquered by the Pale King deserve the same amount of sympathy

Begging people to realize that equating the very real struggle of indigenous tribes attempting to take back the land that was stolen to them to the canonically genocidal primary antagonist of a game about anthro bugs is not a 'woke' take, its got horribly racist connotations especially paired with the heavy Christian/crusader imagery said moth posesses. Claiming that the Pale King is a colonizer and that the Radiance is trying to take back her lands doesn't just ignore the fact that the game specifically makes both the Pale King and the Radiance out to be equally bad (which is TERRIBLE in the case of an oppressed/oppressor power dynamics), it also places the rightful anger and pain of conquered people in a very grim light. Especially since she infected all but ONE of the native tribes to use as she wished, including those who had personal gripes with the expansion and harassment of the Pale King and the White Lady- aka, the Mosskin. She isn't just enacting revenge on the gods that tried to kill her, she's also targeting and killing innocents. Which, granted, she already was doing by infecting the tribes under the Pale King's rule (who are native people too btw!!! There are fossilized beetles everywhere!!! They are NOT colonists!!!), but the point still stands: she is not just trying to take back what was taken from her, she's destroying everyone in her path in a petty rage and is stealing the free will of the OTHER tribes that are native to the area. Because that's another thing that often gets overlooked: the Moth Tribe wasn't the only one native to Hallownest, nor were they the first. Why then, should they be treated as if they were the only victims of the two gods? Especially since we have no canonical evidence suggesting how their numbers dwindled, meaning that either the Pale King OR the Radiance killed them. We have canonical evidence of Radi being a spiteful bastard who heavily infects any she thinks 'betrayed' her (with Deepnest), and though I personally believe that the Pale King heavily coerced the Moth Tribe to switch sides to him, the fact that the Seer laments her tribe's mistakes has some ill connotations. They aren't the first who came to Hallownest, and they aren't the first to suffer because of the Radiance. This is not a tale about the goddess of a conquered tribe clawing her way back to freedom in a rightous path of vengence. This is a slaughter. This is genocide.

And that's another thing: the Radiance is the PRIMARY ANTAGONIST of Hollow Knight. The only option is to kill her. She is not at all depicted sympathetically by the game- and for very good reason. How the FUCK is equating her anger and bloodshed to the pain of conquered peoples supposed to be a good thing??

Also, there are not-so-subtle hints in-game that the Radiance herself was responsible for the near-complete destruction of the Void civilization, which makes this comparison even worse. The platform you dreamnail to get the abyss shriek are carved like the snail shaman stones and have dreamnail dialogue saying 'our voices will cry out again', which has grim connotations when paired with the knowledge that the void spells are all gained from snail shamans that have undergone great pain. Shamans who are capable of manipulating and understanding void magic, implying that they were the tribe that made up the bulk of the original void civilization, whose small numbers paired with the Radiance's dreamnail dialogue paint a VERY grim picture of what she did to the civilization that came before her. She HERSELF is a genocidal conquerer, and the Knight killing her in either Dream No More or Godhome is INDICATIVE of them ending the abuse that both the Pale King AND the Radiance inflicted on their siblings. Claiming that the Radiance was fighting back against a conquering force ignores the fact that she herself was canonically a conquering force herself that wrought untold pain upon people who did not deserve it- just like the Pale King.

And to top it off: as great as TC are, they're white men. White Christian men. They most certainly did not try to write a narrative about colonism, but if they did...yikes.

TDLR: The take that the Pale King is a colonizer and that the Radiance was the goddess of a native tribe that got eradicated by him isn't just innaccurate, it is also horribly, horribly racist.