angstaholicluser

[angstaholicluser]

I love Hollow Knight because it has many instances (canon or not) of my favorite character dynamic, "Character A and B both have issues that just so happen to be the solution to each other's problem".

-Nailsmith "I have achieved complete mastery of my craft and no longer know what to do now that my one calling in life is gone" & Sheo "I will explore as many trades as I need to in order to keep me feeling happy and fulfilled but I wish I could share this love of creating with someone else"

-Quirrel "After dedicating most of my life to one single task I have lost who I was as a person and must now re-learn how to be" & The Hollow Knight "My newfound freedom frightens me, for I was never allowed to be my own person before and now need someone to show me how"

-Mato "Living atop the Howling Cliffs is a lonely existence and I yearn to pass my skills down just like my Master once did" & The Knight "hello i am 5 years old and have no legal guardians"

And not to forget Silk Song's upcoming Hornet "I want to FIGHT a bitch" & Lace "I want to FIGHT a bitch"

[angstaholicluser]

Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

[angstaholicluser]

I’m not even joking- has anyone ever done lovecraftian eldritch abominations that, like, go out of their way to avoid bothering humans?

 Because if you want to run with the “we’re like ants to them” metaphor, most people who aren’t total assholes are making, like, an active choice not to stomp on anthills or squash random bugs. They step over or around. And it’s not the bog-standard indifference of the genre, there’s an active thought process of “You’re not bothering me so I won’t bother you.” I want a story about people exploring an eldritch horror-city like Ryleh, and eventually it turns out that all the bizarre psychological torture and warping environs and all that are an elder god’s equivalent of trying to shoo out a fly or a spider without killing it. I want a story about how the empathy of an elder god is just as dangerous as it’s wrath.

[angstaholicluser]

In case anyone is interested, here are the pdfs for the works singnshong mention as having a great influence on orv during their most recent qna, including the article han sooyoung gets her skill name from! there's the books How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read and A Lover's Discourse, as well as the article Anticipatory Plagiarism. reading them really explains a lot about the themes and worldbuilding of orv, and they're (especially pierre bayard's works) pretty easy to get through!

[angstaholicluser]

One of my favorite interpretations of what PK would when forced to face the fact that his Vessel isn't actually pure is him being overcome with a feeling of utter helplessness.

Every single emotion that he's repressed comes back to bite him, with interest.

In that moment, he realizes two things - One, this isn't a thing, a vessel, an It - they're a living being, a child, HIS child, and he was just about to subject them to a fate worse than death.

And two - No matter how much he wants to comfort them, wrap them in his arms and hold them tight and tell them it's going to be okay, he can't.

Their entire world has just come crashing down around them, and it's all his fault.

There he is, higher being, King of Hallownest - and there's not a damn thing he can do to help his own child.

[angstaholicluser]

thinking about hornet and eldest daughters againnnnn. its actually driving me insane. wdym hornet's life has been defined by her service to her parents. wdym hornet is the protector in the shadows. wdym statues are for sons vessels. wdym her inheritance is one of loss and decay. wdym she will fight for it anyways. wdym she despite all the sacrifice cannot take up the mantle of king. wdym always an angel never a god

[angstaholicluser]

Stephanie's facing down some costumed merc or another come to cause trouble in her neck of the woods. He's very confident in himself until she holds up a familiar looking small metal ring, twirling it around her finger and asks "sorry did you need this?" The merc's eyes go wide and he curses, frantically wrestling to remove his grenade belt, whereupon Stephanie conks him on the back of the head and knocks him out cold. "The world laughed at my genius" she mutters to nobody in particular as she slaps the cuffs on, "no one will ever fall for the fake grenade pin gambit they said."

[angstaholicluser]

daughter of 3 queens hornet is so fucking dear to me i still consider it canon. birthed by Queen Herrah of Deepnest, raised by The White Lady, Queen of The Kingdom of Hallownest, trained by Queen Vespa of The Hive. a warrior and a princess loved and trained and raised by women. her fate may have left her giving herself up to tending her father's grave of a kingdom but life she learned to cherish in the steps of great women.

[angstaholicluser]

forced immortality is a fun trope. unappreciated. someone/something wants you to remain so it makes you. it will not let you die

[angstaholicluser]

Theon-at-Winterfell is actually more interesting to me for what it says about Ned than what it says about Theon

[angstaholicluser]

Thinking abt how sayeon knows ryujin so much better than ryujin knows her. Thinking abt how much time they've spent together that ryujin will never remember or even be aware of. Thinking abt "for some reason I thought we were closer than that"

[angstaholicluser]

it's so funny to me that ryujin has the strongest moral compass in all of cell 4. iseul enthusiastically plays along with the corp's propaganda because it's convenient for him, and supportive of the kind of life he wants to live. he's not so different from sayeon, before she realized what happened to jaeil. min is a very good criminal who's pretty high up in crimson society, willing to do whatever samin/sayeon request of him without batting an eye, and sayeon is... sayeon.

meanwhile, ep64 shows us that ryujin's afraid of her gift, and possibly herself, after she killed that corps officer who killed her family. (like jungwoo, and probably in line with the philosophies taught in the concordat, ryujin probably never wanted to hurt others. it's just that she was born an aberrant, and that gives her an incredible capacity for violence if in the moment she happens to lash out.) she's the only one in the whole cell to tell sayeon off for cutting of taeho's hand, even though he's the one ryujin has a grudge against. hell, even if sayeon gives her the opportunity, i wonder if she'll be able to go through with her revenge. she doesn't use her gift at all anymore, and she only gets violent when provoked, not of her own accord. how is she expecting to take down an officer? (or is it a suicide mission on purpose?)

[angstaholicluser]

“lol sayeon gets off to manipulating people”

so close! she’s never had opportunity to make any friends because she lived in constant fear of her sister and was unable to build any fulfilling bond with anyone besides her preschool friend and jaeil, leading her to be extremely unfamiliar with the concept of bonding and overall fundamentals to relationships. When presented with all of those all at once in such a fast span of time in such a high pressure situation, she doesn’t know what to do with them or how to manage any of the emotion that normal person will, so she picks whatever is most familiar to her. of course, she would be happy to gain these bonds— however, as previously stated, she does not know how to manage emotions thus leading her to feel a mix of manic joy, satisfaction, and superiority from these newfound emotions. but OK, to each your own !

[angstaholicluser]

juni who is one of two survivors out of an entire class of aberrants and feels the permanence of her friends' deaths everyday vs. sayeon who is spiraling out of control because her power causes everything to feel impermanent

[angstaholicluser]

I like how the series is setting up and displaying Sayeon and her enjoying of the violence in part because she likes showing her hard work and in the conscript law enforcement or law enforcement in general that work is violence but also in how it ties into her family history trauma from violence seen and felt with Sayeon herself having and trying to avoid a “bad seed” mindset by being lawful but becoming more violent as a result

[angstaholicluser]

said this on twitter but the reason that sayeon expects blind obedience from cell 4 (besides the fact that she's their leader™️) is because that was how she was raised by samin.

[angstaholicluser]

juni chang is so ffffucking dire. Oh no one ever breaks into the HQ, there are better means of suicide that I have on my mind for normal reasons, my job is to keep people in. Inside the suicide HQ yeah. The one that killed all my friends. Yeah the one I railed against and decided I owed nothing to because it had given me nothing, that HQ. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to go torture some misdemeanour drug offenders