my tablet stopped working before i could get anywhere with this but here they are with some birthday hats for yesterday :)
the universal experience
I think something else to note since my other post about PK is getting attention: is that unless someone knows what they're doing, dreams cannot be controlled.
This is why the Radiance is so damn dangerous: she will find a crack and worm her way in, promising sweet things that the average person can't fight back against. Every single uninfected person with is lucky to not have come under her radar/hasn't been there long enough/has a very strong will and sense of self. Even then, the strongest of wills can break (as evidenced with Holly) and it's only a matter of time before she claims everything.
They can fight back in dreams, but they can't control them. PK is not a dream god, just knows enough about the realms and has enough power to bullshit his way through this whole plan and the moving of the palace. That also means since he's not inherently a dream god and doesn't know everything, the White Palace ends up shifting and twisting into the platforming hell it is now. He doesn't have full control over it, and his emotions will dictate how it ends up being.
The only two beings that we know of that can control dreams in some way is the Radiance and Grimm. Grimm too is definitely the weaker one, being stuck in the nightmare realm and having to do this ritual. I think it's safe to say Radi and him probably got into some sort of feud (that Radi probably started with what we know of both of their personalities) and it lead to the realms separating. Everyone else is subject to their unconscious mind, and both Gods can take advantage if they want to. Grimm doesn't seem to interested in doing so other than harvesting essence, but Radi sure does, as that is a core mechanic of how the infection works.
Now the biggest question is: can a dream be sustained after its host is dead?
If we assume no, then maybe with Grimm's or Radi's intervention it can keep going, but I doubt it would work forever and would be draining on them both. They'd have to have a damn good reason to keep a dream alive.
But also if we assume no, the fuck is going on with the White Palace? Is the king somehow still alive in some form?
Though if the answer is yes, then the White Palace is a graveyard, a lingering fragment in the Dream Realm, and one that will fade with time.
All sorts of fun headcanons can come from just the concept of the dream realms alone. Being a fan of the Yume Nikki games, I think I like the idea of the King not being in full control of his dreams and a lot of the internal guilt and grief and wanting to run away from it all manifesting as a result. And you have to wonder just how it remains there when the King is seemingly dead...
a young quirrel playing with a stick fighting a noble battle :)
two pages of him, in fact
i need to be a little abnormal about hollow knight maybe. like. i dont know. does anyone remember playing it the first time. you talk to every character every single time. you dreamnail all your friends because you're curious. you learn that willow eats bugs and is considering eating you. quirrel disappears and you freak out. you find tiso dead. maybe cloth helped you fight traitor lord. maybe she didnt. how did you feel? it was either she died, right there, or she sat up in dirtmouth bored and waiting for something. what was more worth it? bretta loves you. bretta stops. maybe you fight zote [but weirdly buff] ten times and she thinks youre cool again. cornifer is a friendly face wherever you go and then you can't talk to him again.
i don't know. it was something to me how it was always better in the middle. it was the best when you got to have everyone and before they were all taken from you. and beyond the story left behind in the death of everything, i think that was its own little tragedy. that you just lose them by virtue of letting them continue on their journey.
how many of you played again and refused to talk to quirrel when he waited by the lake? how many didn't let tiso go to the coliseum? how many didn't save cloth until after fighting traitor lord - or just didn't bother to fight traitor lord at all?
like. you get it right. freezing them in time, to keep them all safe, kept forever immortal because you don't want them to die. do you get it
Chibi like Broken Vessel I drew awhile ago for my friend @skys-stupid-blog, they love this silly little guy :3 I’m prob gonna redraw this at some point in my current style :>
Oouuuggghhh I can't sleep, incoherent ramble time:
Why is the Knight/Ghost so tiny in comparison to their siblings? The Hollow Knight is goddamn huge, and even the Broken Vessel is a fair bit taller than Ghost.
But like, Ghost is the same age as the Hollow Knight. Why 'n how are they so different? Like, at first I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the way the Pale King brought up THK. Cultivating THK's power or something, I dunno. But then I gotta wonder, what's up with BV? We don't really know why it's outside the Abyss; whether it's another escapee like Ghost - in which case, it would've grown to that size on its own - or they were let out of the Abyss as a potential candidate for containing the Radiance - in which case, the growth again could've been due to the Pale King giving them protein shakes or whatever. They still have a rounded face, similar to Ghost, so I guess you could say it didn't finish growing up - whether being unable to survive on their own or being killed purposefully for not being hollow.
But also, like, we see other Vessels out and about in Hallownest. Again, never made clear if they escaped on their own or were let out. But they generally seem pretty close to Ghost in terms of size. I think maybe some are slightly bigger? I'd have to look again, it's been a while. So, who knows why they're all the sizes they are.
I guess, the only other thought I had was, if you want to go with "all Vessels can get that big even without PK's help" is that maybe Ghost was dormant or something. We don't know much about what they were up to before the game started. Just that it was somewhere outside Hallownest. Maybe Ghost just took a really long nap, and after waking up, made its way back to Hallownest. Ghost didn't get big, since it wasn't eating or fighting or anything. Just conserving their energy. I rly dunno.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!! 🎄
This drawing is a redraw of last year’s Christmas drawing!!
the dreamers ~