#like jiji who seems to be able to work wjth the void

[ruthlesslistener]

I just realized how completely unhinged my post about being excited by racism between tribes in Hallownest sounded. What I meant was that learning there was strife between the mantids and the beetles in the Wanderer's Journal was exciting because it indicates that there were long-held social prejudices based on differences of culture rather than simply a fear of the mantises arising from predation.

Such biases also likely predate the Pale King, as his compliance/working of a treaty with them indicates a level of respect that the actual citizens of the City of Tears seems to lack, especially compounded with the whole Deepnest Deal thing. Most interpretations I've seen interject racism into the bugs of the City of Tears based on the assumption that the Pale King was the cause of it (bc of that stupid 'imperalistic white man' interpretation, which doesn't track with his actual behavior), however it is far more likely that the gods view mortal bugs as a whole as resources to be hoarded, while the bugs themselves nurture their own cultures that somehow manage to persist beyond the petty territory blows of their deities. So its likely that no matter what the Pale King claims or what the Radiance must have done, there is a persistance of culture provided by natural gaps offered by speciation that have remained for millenia in Hallownest