Cousinofmycousin - MariShard

I CAN'T BE NORMAL ABOUT THOSE NOT-BUGS OKAY

Ao3 fics is not enough, I need to carve them into my brain

Its shaking hand clutched at the fistful of feathers. Wisps of smoky darkness oozed from between its fingers - floating into the air and dripping to stain the ground simultaneously.

Void.

They were all void.

Gone was its holy plumage of shimmering pale light - wings now gleaming only with wicked black emptiness. Every shaft and barb coated in the physical manifestation of its greatest sin.

.

.

Doodle based on snippet from my AU where the Hollow Knight is a fallen angel.

my friends called this "denimdirge"

experimenting shapes

🕷️BlipBugBug🕷️

You know what I always considered a really weird detail about the Pure Vessel's cut Dream Nail Dialog?

"Do not think, do not speak, do not hope, do not..."

"Do not speak"

Why? Why 'speak'? Why that word, specifically?

"Because it references back to the "No mind to think no will to break, no voice to cry suffering" thing, duh.

Well, yes.

But the other two parts of PV's DN dialog directly contradicts two of the requirements the King gave for a "Pure Vessel" -

Hollow CAN think; the dialog itself is proof of that.

And Hollow, by the very fact that they need to tell themselves NOT to hope, suggested that they did have some sort of hope they were attempting not to experience. To hope is to have a will for something, a desire, a wish. A will that the Radiance HAD broken to infect them.

So that just leaves us with "Do not Speak" and "No Voice to Cry Suffering"...

And if Hollow has a mind and a will...

Do they also possess a voice as well?

Why else would the word "Speak" be used as the direct contradiction for "No Voice"? Why else would the Pure Vessel need to remind themselves to not speak?

It makes me wonder if the King was wrong about even that aspect of the Vessel(s).

And the other thing that I find interesting: What is the Pure Vessel refraining themselves from saying? What do they want to say that they aren't allowing themselves to?

Just some food for thought

My personal hc about the Sanctums - both this and Stone one, is that they used to be hospitals. I also think snails' mounds were also some kind of clinics but not nearly as large. With Soul Sanctum, I think it was also some kind of medical university, mostly regarding the uses of the soul (hence the name), which requires to it to be not only a healing item but also a weapon to help fighting off harmful microorganisms.

The Soul Master. Well, firstly, I hc him to be a brother to Sprint Master and Dash Master. During his youth he's been called Jump Master. I also hc No-Eyes to be their sister, called Float Master. Don't think those were their actual names, though. I hc that they were all children of the Stone Sanctum leader, who tended to those coming through the Pilgrim Way - a pretty dangerous place for most Hallownest bugs. No-Eyes inherited it because she was the eldest and most skilled - mentally and physically.

The future Soul Master went to the capital, hoping to achieve even greater things at a Soul Sanctum. Which he did. He quickly became the star student, capturing the attention of the current leader, who later made him his right hand. Since that leader didn't have any heirs - non of their children ever showed interest in medicine, it wasn't too hard for SM to take the place of a leader after their retirement.

I personally hc SM to be not too bad of a person before the Infection. I imagine him to be very ambitious, slightly pomptious and arrogant, but also sincerelly caring towards the patients, of both - higher and lower birth. I hc him, Monomon and Lurien to be in a pretty good relationship with one another.

When the infection had stricken he was in a panic. He even begged the King to help him with researches by supplying the Sanctum with more soul, since the King is a pale being. However the Wyrm forsaw the massacre SM will commit without seeing the reasons and asumed this to happen as a result of him oblidging. Not only he denied the SM's request but strictly forbade him to attempt any research regarding the cure and just perform palliative care to all of the infected. That cause SM to start resenting the King. He asumed the only reason of his refusal was the arrogance and jealousy towards the mortal. This resentment only grew worse when his sister has met her tragic demise because of the infection (points at No-Eyes' backstory). The Lurien, as usual, fully supported the King, which really soured the relationship between him and SM. Also I hc that after the whole vessel plan was fullfilled, despite being in peace about the Infection (not for long as we know) SM felt a little insulted that the King didn't even thought to offer him to becomes a Dreamer, but making a Beast of Deepnest to be one (classical bug racism).

I imagine SM becoming the selfish, hubristic, mad scientist we see him as, during the second wave of the infection. The same wave that caused the King to hide and the Kingdom to fall. No longer does he care about the well-being of his patients, especially those of a lower birth. He only uses them as tools to prolong his and his coleagues' existence. And no longer does he care about the infection. He only considers it as another tool, while we know it was entirely other way around.

Soul Sanctum. What are y'all's thoughts, impressions, and/or headcanons about the place and the bugs within?

hornet!!!

yknow what. re: this ol' post--

I would love to hear your thoughts on Nosk if you ever got the time to erite about it. Your artwork of it was a delight; I loved Ghost being lit up in orange. 10/10 lighting!

First of all - THANK YOU SM FOR THE COMPLIMENTS!! I haven't tried shading like this in. Months, like I said

Second of all

WELCOME TO MY PRESENTATION

(Also thanks for the excuse to draw my Vessel sona)

Don't get me wrong I don't hate Nosk, they're one of my favorite characters in Hollow Knight and media in general. I absolutely adore the concept behind them and the SUSPENSE through those tunnels leading to the big reveal still remains one of my favorite scenes to come back to in HK. The design and concept behind them is very neat and the overall feeling of that first time you enter the arena and see that cutscene is just. Wonderful.

That said, my issues are all about the actual fight. Specifically the attacks.

Nosk has arguably one of the most interesting buildups to a fight in HK, and is in one of the most creepy areas of the game, considering the arena and atmosphere of the fight too, I was expecting this to be a hard boss. I was expecting really difficult and potentially creepy attacks. The OST is one of the most anxiety inducing tracks in the game. Yet the entire fight just amounts to them.. running around? Occasionally jumping onto the ceiling? It feels like a rip off.

Nosk literally only has three attacks and they're all easy to dodge/cheese, if they were just small parts of the fight, it'd be fine, but instead 50% of the fight is just Nosk running across the arena, which is easy to dodge with or without the use of hiding under the platform(still one of the funniest ways to cheese a fight honestly).

Nosk has a bunch of hanging CORPSES in their den, so I thought that maybe they'd have a close up attack where if you got too close it'd trigger them swiping close range, kind of like this:

Extremely low budget explanation but STILL

The attack with screaming and the infection getting everywhere? NICE! Nosk on the ceiling shooting orange juice at you? GREAT! But the fact those are basically the only two good attacks in this fight with THREE really just. It weighs it down for me man.

By this point in the game(I mean I had to Google where Nosk was since I only saw art of them on my first playthrough since they're hidden), plenty of bosses had phases, too. I feel like the fight could've easily been more anxiety inducing if they had a few phases.

For example:

Phase one - same as current fight + close range attack

Phase two - running attack happens less, potential variations of other attacks, speed up things a bit

Phase three - more orange juice, maybe webs(since that's how the other creatures in the background appear to be captured), could potentially do some jumping version of the running attack(like jumping around the arena aggressively making them harder to do damage to without being hit)?

I'm obviously not a game designer, but I do like rambling about things and potential ideas that could happen to make things better.

The Nosk fight on its own isn't even terrible, it's just the fact that it doesn't live up to the buildup of the way to the fight and the cutscene in the beginning, let alone the absolute panic the OST makes me feel.

Oh and don't even get me STARTED on Winged Nosk. HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMETHING LESS TERRIFYING BY ADDING WINGS IM IN GENUINE SHOCK

I know I probably repeated myself a lot and this is very scattered, but I hope that you somehow enjoyed seeing me ramble aggressively about a fight in a silly bug game that I think has issues anyway.

In conclusion Nosk has an amazing concept, design, OST, atmosphere, and some alright attacks, but really could've benefitted from some more attacks/phases.

I wrote more about this fight than I did for my English essay on Thursday so I don't know what that says about me but do with that what you will