Why Hornet isn't Void Script
I recently posted a poll here on YouTube asking
whether or not Hornet was made of Void. And 60% of you said “yes”. So today, I
am going to explain why 60% of you are completely fucking wrong. Now, I don’t
blame anybody for thinking this. In fact, in my Zote video, I flat out said
that Hornet was made of Void. Let this be a reminder that any Hollow Knight
lore video you watch on YouTube is probably going to have missing evidence or a
few flawed conclusions. This shit can get fucking confusing. So please don’t
take anything I say as gospel. That being said, Hornet is 100%, definitely,
irrefutably not made of Void. This issue has caused so much debate that it’s
starting to turn into a meme. So just call me “Pewdiepie” because it’s time for
this meme to die.
Let’s start off with the most obvious
observation that might lead one to think that Hornet is made of Void. She’s
black.
“THAT’S RACIST!”
But this doesn’t actually prove much of
anything. Several characters in Hallownest have black portions of their bodies,
so to just say that they are all made of Void might be a bit drastic. We need
more concrete proof. Another characteristic worth pointing out is that Hornet’s
shell does not have a mouth. This is a feature she shares with the Vessels,
beings we know are composed of Void. But while their shells do share this
design, it isn’t because of a relation to the Void, but a relation to the Pale
King, who is also lacking a mouth. Hornet, the Knight, the Hollow Knight and
the Vessels are all children of the Pale King. Yeah, this guy fucks. But
there’s a lot to unpack here, so I’m just going to start off by explaining why
Hornet is the Pale King’s biological daughter.
In Deepnest, Hornet tells us that Herrah is her
mother. She says:
“We do not choose our mothers, or the circumstance into which we
are born. Despite all the ills of this world, I'm thankful for the life she
granted me.”
The phrase “life she granted me” shows that
Herrah was directly involved with Hornet’s birth. There is more evidence for
this thanks to Midwife, in that her name is literally Midwife. A midwife is
someone who helps a mother through childbirth. So it’s safe to say that Midwife
was Herrah’s actual midwife during Hornet’s birth. It’s a little on the nose
for Team Cherry, but I’m not going to complain. In fact I wish more characters
had names more closely tied to their character arcs.
The White Lady also has dialogue confirming
Hornet’s origins. She says that Hornet has the striking reflection of her
mother. Hornet and Herrah do share the same shape for their heads, showing a
connection, but “striking reflection” might be a bit of a stretch. You gotta
remember that the White Lady is blind. The White Lady also points us to who
Hornet’s father is. She says:
“I never begrudged the Wyrm's dalliance as bargain. In fact, I
feel some affection for the creature birthed.”
The White Lady’s dialogue here is a bit archaic.
She is basically saying she was okay being cucked by the Pale King, and that
she has affection for Hornet despite Hornet not being her own child. The word
“dalliance” here is what proves all of this. A dalliance means “a casual
romantic or sexual relationship”. And I doubt that the Pale King was having a
romantic relationship with Herrah, since he’s like a fucking God and she is
just a common beast. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any Greek mythology, but
let’s just say Zeus wasn’t exactly taking any of the humans out to Olive
Garden.
There is also this line from Midwife that
emphasizes Hornet’s connection to the Pale King. When talking about Hornet, she
says:
“Pale gift to the Nest and the Beast, fair trade for sacrifice
made.”
She calls Hornet “pale”, a word usually tied to
the Pale King, or sometimes just Higher Beings in general. The Pale Ore is used
to forge strong weapons. Also, in a Reddit AMA, Ari Gibson said that the Pale
Ores are related to the Pale Beings. Godseeker refers to the White Lady as
“pale mother”. There is also the delicate flower. It is described as having a
pale glow, but we don’t know if it is tied to the Pale King in any way.
Regardless, this pale attribute Hornet has, along with her visual similarities,
all point to her being the biological child of the Pale King.
I think some of the confusion here is that
Hornet is constantly referred to as a gift. This sort of implies that Hornet
was given to Herrah after she was already created. But I think this is just
saying that the Pale King’s gift is… you know… his dick. Going back to the
White Lady’s line “I never begrudged the Wyrm’s dalliance as bargain.”
The phrasing here implies that it was the dalliance that was bargained, not the
actual child. So in other words, the Pale King was offering sexual activity in
exchange for payment in the form of Herrah’s help.
Unfortunately, whenever one topic of Hollow
Knight lore comes up, it ends up being tied to another topic. In this case,
since we’re talking about Hornet’s birth, it would be worth talking about how
the Vessels were created. So let’s turn our attention to the other side of the
Pale King’s family tree: the family he created with a literal tree.
We know that the Vessels, or at least the
creatures that became the Vessels, were born in the Abyss. We have the Pale
King’s dialogue where he says that the Hollow Knight was “Born of God and
Void”. Hornet calls the Hollow Knight “our birth cursed sibling".
Note that Hornet says “our” here because she shares a relation to the
Vessels through the Pale King. It doesn’t have anything to do with Void. The
lore tablet in the Pale King’s throne room also mentions a cursed progeny, or a
cursed offspring. The Kingsoul charm description says it opens the way to a
birthplace, which is located in the Abyss. Finally we also have the words of
the White Lady. If you talk to her while wearing the Kingsoul she will say:
“If its curiosity wills it, it should seek out that place. That
place where it was born, where it died, where it began...”
She then also calls the Knight her spawn when
talking about Grimm. And then there is also her dialogue where she admits her
shame in participating in a deed and implying that this deed had to do with
propagating herself, or in other words, breeding. From the lore tablet in the
Ancient Basin, it seems pretty obvious that this shameful deed was the creation
of the Vessels.
All of this evidence proves that the Pale King’s
and White Lady’s children were born in the darkness, but the White Lady also
says that the Abyss is where they died. Also, Hornet calls the Knight “ghost”
multiple times throughout the game. This “death” probably occurred when the
Void became a part of the Vessel’s bodies. But how did this happen? There are
several eggs in the Abyss, one of which is completely black with void tentacles
connected to it. Did the Void fuse into the egg before birth? Or did the Void
enter the bodies after they were born? Or maybe after they died. I don’t think
it matters too much how this happened, just that it did happen.
There is evidence to support the idea that Void
is capable of combining with living creatures. We have the royal husk in the
Queen’s Garden. Its Dream Nail dialogue reads:
“Too long spent together. We become as one.”
This bug is found holding the Love Key, which is
used to enter the Tower of Lover, where the Collector is located. I think this
Dream Nail dialogue is saying that this husk gazed into the Collector so long
that the Void within the Collector gazed back into him, resulting in the Void
we see around the husk’s corpse. So what does this tell us other than that Team
Cherry are big fans of Nietzsche? Well the phrase “become as one” hints
at the possibility for living creatures and Void to combine in some way.
Now let’s take a minute to talk about the idea
that the Vessels are the artificial creations of the Pale King. We know that
the Pale King is capable of making such things, given the Kingsmoulds and the
Wingsmoulds. But for the Vessels to be constructs, we have to completely ignore
all of the evidence I just presented, and there is more evidence to counter
this view. Why is there so much regret involved in the creation of the Vessels
if they were just constructs? Why all the mentions of children and progeny? If
the Pale King built these things in his workshop, where did the shells come
from? There isn’t any explanation for how they got made. Also, the Dung
Defender was surprised to see the Knight, proving that he thought only one
Vessel existed, the Hollow Knight. This is just speculation, but judging from
the thousands of shells found in the Abyss, it seems unlikely that the Pale
King would have been able to create all of these Vessels and transport them to
the Abyss without one of the most loyal members of his Pale Court finding out.
Alright, let’s summarize the nature of the
Vessels and why Hornet is most likely not one of them. The Vessels are the
spawn of the Pale King and the White Lady. The eggs they were born from were
placed in the Abyss, resulting in their bodies becoming hollowed out and
replaced by the Void. They consist of an outer shell created by the Pale King
and the White Lady, as well as an inner shade, composed of Void. Hench the
phrase “Born of God and Void”.
So the creation of all of the Pale King’s
offspring involved the act of dirty, possibly kinky, bug sex. The Pale King
didn’t artificially create any of his children, so he doesn’t actually need
Void in order to create a child. So why would Hornet have any Void in her?
There is no need to drop an egg of Hornet into the Abyss, since she was not
going to be used as a Vessel. The fact that she is the only child of the Pale
King not to be placed in the Abyss is what grants her the name “the Gendered
Child”. When the Vessels were consumed by the Void and turned into “ghosts” as
Hornet puts it, they lost their gender.
On top of that, there is strong evidence to
support the idea that Hornet was born in Deepnest, not the Abyss. When talking
to Hornet at the top of the Abyss she says this:
“Ghost. I see you've faced the place of your birth...”
Notice that Hornet says “your birth”, not
“our birth”. And, like I mentioned earlier we have the guy from
“Spirited Away” which implies Hornet was born in Deepnest.
Now let’s jump into one of the most interesting
lines used by both sides of the Hornet is Void debate. Hornet says:
“Though our strength is born of similar source, that part of you,
that crucial emptiness, I do not share.”
So if you were to argue that Hornet is Void, you
would say that the “similar source” is the Void but that the “crucial
emptiness” is being a truly hollow Vessel. We have evidence that creatures
made of Void have the potential to have thoughts and feelings, from both the
Collector and the fact that the Hollow Knight was imperfect. But this line can
also be interpreted where the “similar source” is the power of the Pale
King and the “crucial emptiness” is the Void itself.
The Pale King’s offspring all share the benefit
of his power. Both Hornet and the Knight are referred to as being “pale”,
and the Hollow Knight is described as having a “holy shell”. Hornet is
also one of the few bugs who realizes she is in a dream in Godhome. The only
other bug that can do this is Grimm, a Higher Being. As for the “crucial
emptiness” line, the word “emptiness” is used a couple of
times in the game and are used to refer to the Void itself. The Void Heart is
described as an emptiness by both the game menu and the White Lady. There is
also the Hunter’s Journal entry for the Siblings, which mentions that the Abyss
contains a “pervasive empiness”.
In the next line, Hornet says:
“Funny then, that such darkness gives me hope.”
When Dream Nailed Hornet also says:
“It faced the void, and ascends unscathed... Could it unite such
vast darkness?...”
So Hornet is specifically referring to the Void
when using the word “darkness”, since the Void is what is united in the
Dream No More ending.
The encounter the Knight has with Hornet at the
Temple of the Black Egg also implies that Hornet is not made of Void. She says:
“I won't be joining you in this. That space is built to sustain
your likes. Its bindings would drain me were I to join.”
This line clearly separates Hornet from the
Knight. And this line makes sense when we consider that the Knight contains
Void inside of it, while Hornet does not. Void is the only significant quality
that separates the nature of the two beings.
Alright, so now I’d like to go through some of
the arguments posted in my poll. A lot of people were mentioning the fact that
Hornet gives the Knight soul when she is hit. This doesn’t prove anything. The
Pure Vessel gives off soul despite having Void inside of it. The only beings
that don’t give off soul are the siblings and the Collector. These enemies are
composed entirely of Void. The Vessels have shells, which is a possible
explanation as to why they still give off soul.
The Sealed Sibling achievement seems to imply
that Hornet is a sibling to the Vessels. This is true, but it isn’t the Void
that makes her a sibling, it’s her shared relation to the Pale King. There is
this idea that Hornet has some Void in her, but not as much as the Vessels.
There isn’t any evidence to support this. The Vessels themselves are an outer
organic shell with an inner Void. There is no explanation how Hornet could only
be part inner Void? There is an argument that Hornet is a defective Vessel. The
only defective Vessel we know about is the Hollow Knight, and its defect was
not noticeable at all until later. So we really don’t know how extreme a
defective Vessel can get.
So there you have it. Undeniable proof that Hornet
is not made of Void. But I know that there a few holdouts who still refuse to
believe me. And that’s just fine. You are allowed to believe whatever you want.
While we’re at it, let’s pretend that the Tooth Fairy is real too, or that
Santa Claus exists, or that the Earth is actually round.
hornet is 100% void
ReplyDeletehornet is 100% waifu
ReplyDeletehornet is 100% overdue
ReplyDeletehornet is 100% bodypillow
ReplyDeletehornet is 100% in silksong
ReplyDeletehornet is 100% git gud
ReplyDelete