Cousinofmycousin - MariShard

Bratsch, Valais | marcoshnyder

The Pale King and The Radiance have so many parallels oh my God-

You don't get it the more I think about it the more these two are literally the same goddamn character in different circumstances and I'm about to list the reasons I know this.

1. Light

Ok let's get the obvious out of the way. Both the Pale King and The Radiance are described as "a light" by the seer, which already implies a connection. (Terms like The Old Light for Radiance and Beacon for Pale King allude to this as well) This could be a physical thing, but it also alludes to the type of power these two hold: both of them are capable of affecting bugs' consciousness.

The Pale King gave them sentience and The Radiance made the Infection. It's unknown whether the Moth Tribe had sentience before the Pale King but considering they were able to harness Essence for themselves it seems likely. Either way the Radiance probably gave them some kind of consciousness before the Pale King showed up.

2. "No Cost Too Great"

Ok so PK may have been the one to say the famous line but it 100% applies to The Radiance as well. Her one motivation is to be remembered, presumably out of self-preservation. To accomplish this she entered bugs' dreams and placed them under a hivemind. Not something we'd call ethical, but hey, neither is killing thousands of your own children to find one with no mind and seal it in a temple.

If we interpret Pale King's intentions as wanting to preserve his kingdom as opposed to keeping more bugs from being infected then he also falls into a similar mentality.

Hollow Knight's biggest theme in general is "all things must come to an end eventually", and The Radiance and the Pale King both cause suffering trying to counter that. One wanting to preserve her memory, the other his kingdom.

3. Overanalyzing their designs

The fuckin horn thingies

Both of these headpieces look like crowns for obvious reasons, but The Radiance's "crown" is a lot smaller, alluding to her status as a fallen deity. (This doesn't mean anything in-universe since thanks to the statue in Crystal Peaks we know she always looked like this, but it's an interesting design choice)

If you wanna look deeper the colors between their eyes and face are inverted

PK gives bugs a mind. Radiance takes it away. They have the same goal and the same power but do the exact opposite. So while PK has a lighter face and darker eyes Radi has a darker face and lighter eyes. This is something they share with the bugs whose minds they've altered; conscious bugs have dark eyes while infected bugs have orange pupils.

I know these details were probably not that deep upon conception but on the off chance they were I wanted to bring them up because they cool.

Anyway in conclusion we have

Similar mind powers

Similar symbolism

Similar desires

Similar "ends justify the means" mentality

We don't get much in the way of actual characterization since we only get like 4 lines out of each of them but their motives and actions seem too similar to not notice.

tumblr, i am ever-so curious: how would you all expect hollow to eat soup? through their void tendrils? through a mouth? their eyes? some combination of those?

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.

remnants of where we have been

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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

gay bugs!!!!! :]] with a maskless quirrel

we have: void kissy, poke, soup tasting, Soft Bug Arm, and whisker/feeler pokes :] appreciating one another as creatures <33

A Kingdom's Edge poem. This area is my favorite. It's somber but peaceful if you don't include the demons called Primal Aspids. I made a drawing of my favorite character and area too. I just love this place so much and I can't explain why. Thanks for reading ♥

hello nosk hollow knight community, i give you these I love them so much that i wanted to make stupid jokes about them

experimenting shapes