URGH. Emmerich Holyblade and I just went to The Ceremony to receive our RPG Job Titles, and he OBVIOUSLY got Chosen Hero Sword Saint. So now he's gonna set out to kill the Demon Lord of Darkness.
Me? I just got Dark Mage. Honestly, it's pretty rare, but the job opportunities are also limited. You either get into covert assassination or dungeon raiding.
God, just because we're the only two kids in The Village, Emmerich Holyblade automatically assumes this makes us friends. He doesn't even realize I hate him and his stupid smug swordsman ass.
URGGHHHH he just asked me to join his Grand Hero's Party. fuck. I can't just say no if the Grand Holy King himself is gonna payroll us to do this shit. Whatever man. Let's rock till the Demon Lord of Darkness is dead, and then I can retire and never see Emmerich Holyblade again.
Help me. I've been trying to quit the Grand Hero's Party but Emmerich keeps introducing me as his childhood friend to all the new fucking party members. I hate them all.
The tank Ferron Shieldson gives me bro fists hard enough to bruise. Sister Savantha Healier has tripped over her habit ten times in the past hour.
Elfdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress keeps dragging deer carcasses to camp. I'm so tired of venison.
I've been trying to have the Grand Hero's Party kick me out, but instead of undervaluing my Super Secret Invisible Debuff Technique (which looks like I'm just standing there) Emmerich Holyblade figured out it stacks with his Five Phoenix Absolution to hit the damage cap.
Outside of combat, I've done a lot of very invisible low-tier work nobody really needs, such as managing all of our finances and inventory, yet they keep fucking including me and praising my efforts when they're having a drink at the tavern.
Emmerich Holyblade spilled some beer on my shadowy cloak when he slung an arm around my shoulder. His breath stinks.
I'm so tired of camping, honestly. Random Farmers and Shit keep inviting us to stay with them for the night, but their beds suck and I hate the food.
Our reputation really soared when we stopped one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West from destroying Capital City of the Holy Church Kingdom Nation.
Emmerich Holyblade insists my 70% Paralysis Debuff clutched the entire encounter despite dealing the Super Cool Omega Finisher, so everyone's asking me for autographs.
Shouldn't he know I hate social interaction if he claims to be my "childhood friend"?? LEAVE ME ALONE.
At least Princess Dowed Verily only has eyes for Emmerich Holyblade and his stupidly sculpted biceps. Weird he insists on ignoring her advances, though. Dude, you could be King. What the hell.
Emmerich Holyblade truly is the worst. Princess Dowed Verily tried to have me exiled before the whole court, saying I'm just a leech on the Grand Hero's Party besmirching my "childhood friend"'s good name and status, but Emmerich Holyblade fucking defended me!!!
He said I'm invaluable to this party both as part of our battle plans, our day-to-day tasks, and as his "dearest companion". GROSS!!!
Doesn't he realize this was the PERFECT chance for me to disappear to another country???
Why did I think this Demon Lord of Darkness-slaying shit was a good idea in the first place?? Surely Emmerich Holyblade's boundless enthusiasm to be a do-gooder can't be an infectious disease??
Another day, another trial. We journeyed to the Yggdrasil Holy Nature Origin Forest because it's said the Elves of the Yggrasil Holy Nature Origin Worldtree have the sacred sword Swordexcaliburn, the only weapon capable of permanently killing the Demon Lord of Darkness for good.
Except Elfsdame Woodsworth might be the Holy Nature Origin Princess, or something. I wasn't really paying attention to her dramatic backstory.
After we killed the Holy Nature Origin King (who was really one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West in disguise), Elfsdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress just kinda gave us the sword.
It's sunset right now, and I climbed a tree to just overlook the forest in peace, ALONE, except Emmerich Holyblade "knew I'd do something like this", so now he's HERE. HE ALWAYS DOES THIS!!!!
Blergh. Now we're watching the sun set over the whole Holy Kingdom Church Nation. It's pretty, but that dumbass Emmerich Holyblade isn't even looking at it. Idiot.
By the way, we beat up the other two Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West, because we don't really have the time to show all this onscreen, you know? Nobody really cares about them anyways.
We've reached the Demon Lord of Darkness's Dark Demonic Castle Keep now, and we're striking tomorrow.
It's my last chance to quit if I don't want to beef it tomorrow (I do not trust Ferron Shieldson to shield me), but Emmerich Holyblade said he can't do it without me. HE, singular?? So everybody else can do it without me??
And to make matters worse, he said he'd tell me something after we beat the Demon Lord of Darkness. Why the hell tell me you're gonna tell me something??? Just tell me in the first place so I can ditch.
And besides, as if anyone could actually kill the goddamn Chosen Hero Sword Saint. At the very least, he's gonna survive tomorrow. Doesn't he realize how stupidly contrived his powerset is?? Dude, as IF.
I told him that, and he ran off. I'm never going to understand him.
One more day, and I'm leaving forever. Grand Holy King better pay up good, or I'm covert assassinating his ass.
Inside the Dark Demon Castle Keep, we had to fight through so many waves of enemies, like Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin, who worships the Demon Lord of Darkness instead of the Goddess of Good Stuff.
But mainly I was just standing in the back. Debuffing is a crazy magic drain, so I did get super tired, but the most exciting thing I was involved with was when Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin threw her weapon at me in a last ditch attempt to take at least one of us down, but Emmerich Holyblade intercepted it. With his body.
Sister Savantha Healier just healed him after, though, so it's fine. I might've been mincemeat had that hit my squishy self. I'm a proud backliner, okay. But it was still pretty stupid and unnecessary, considering we have Phoenix Blessing Revival Potion Stones.
Demon Lord of Darkness up ahead... Just one more boss and we're doooooone.
Anyways, the Demon Lord of Darkness wasn't even that cool. The orchestra was great though. I gotta see if the piano player survived the Dark Demon Castle Keep's collapse.
Everybody weakened the Demon Lord of Darkness with their own strikes, so Emmerich Holyblade could finish him off properly with the holy sword Swordexcaliburn.
Before he did, he looked at me with these fucking... star-filled eyes and bright smile, which made everybody else also look at me, which made the Demon Lord of Darkness laugh, so I just nodded at Emmerich Holyblade to go kill the fucking Demon Lord of Darkness already.
God, that took so long. I'm taking a vacation. I'm disappearing into a forest without any elves in it and never talking to another person ever again.
At least now I get to know whatever Emmerich Holyblade wants to tell me. It better be good, because it's the last thing he'll ever tell me.
JUNE. JUNE WHEN I GET YOU!!!! aurgh i love these. thank you so much. how did you know i kept imagining emmerich as blonde. AND THE PIANO PLAYER IN THE BACK RHRGH
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One Piece ch 1176 SPOILERS
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I was about to become upset with Dorry and Brogy's resurrection, because, honestly, them going out like that was so fitting and badass. But then, seeing the pure joy from the guys on our side when they realised "oh, wait, we CAN kill them" was SO FUNNY
Oh, no~
We HAVE TO kill them~
As i get older, I realise I like seeing other people get excited about their fandoms more than the actual piece of media itself. In this current age of streaming, I have little to no interest in starting new shows or media, no matter how much people tell me it's great.
But seeing people go feral with gifsets, lore analysis, and so on. That's just fascinating to me. I love fandoms.
We check the power cord, for from the Omnissiah we draw strength and wisdom!
We confirm that the blessed power switch is in the on position, for only when our minds are opened do we receive Your gifts!
We reboot the sacred cogitator, for Thy wisdom demands we rededicate ourselves to the guidance of the Omnissiah!
We bow our heads, striking our foreheads with our palms, for we are unworthy of your divine wisdom!
We clear the cache, for true sight demands an unhindered mind!
We enter the terminal input modes and perform the rites of reconfiguration upon the wayward Graphical Data Manager, for your servants must be returned to the path!
We strike our foreheads once more, for thy rebuke is stern!
We reset the Administrator Authority, for the authority has been given unto us through divine will!
We curse the Adept who made this machine, for the Omnissiah abhors incompetence!
We boot in safe mode, for we are safe in thy mechanical embrace!
We configure a new boot disk, for through the revelations of the Omnissiah are we guided to perfection!
We reboot the system once more, for we must allow thy revelations to work in our minds!
We re-install the sacred operating system, for thy revelations can only improve upon the imperfect machine!
We undertake the rituals of compilation, pacing about and muttering swear words of devotion, burning sacred tobacco incense, breathing in its relaxing fume, for thy works are many and take some time to complete!
We offer our minds in prayer as we boot up the cogitator, for clearly the cogitator needs divine intervention for its continued proper function!
At long last, we offer praises unto thee upon the completion of the rites of troubleshooting, singing “Omnissiah-dammit, that took for-fucking-ever!”
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There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.
At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.
Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.
Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.
The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.
At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.
Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐,
貞志篤終誓穹蒼,
欽所感想妄淫荒,
心憂增慕懷慘傷。
In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.
Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng
The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."
Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心,
荒淫妄想感所欽,
蒼穹誓終篤志貞,
唐虞聖德懷智仁。
The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.
It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén
And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."
That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!
At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:
詩圖璇玑,始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."
Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖,璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."
Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.
For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.
Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).
Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:
- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.
- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.
- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions
- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.
So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision
And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".
Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.
My gf got me the cutest Sailor Moon blanket a little while ago and I treasure it during cold months, can wrap myself up like a dorky lil blanket burrito <3
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"tutu! I'm here! come here my love!"
"come here! come here, my love!"
"good morning!"
"my love, I just came in, my soul"
"I love you, I love you, my love! my love tutu!"
"my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love tutu I love you!"
"why are you so dirty, what were you doing? huh? what's that on your face? what's this! why did you dirty yourself my love!"
"my love, I apologize we came in late, we were at the hospital."
"tutu! I love you!!"
Something I really really like about the story in Silksong & that merits a ginormous essay
ACT 3 story/lore SPOILERS
...is how much how much Grand Mother Silk is explicitly written to be an Evil Counterpart to the Pale King.
Interesting how you effectively end up with Queen Marika from Elden Ring, cause it's just Demiurge archetype played straight instead of tweaked this time. Or by the same token, "Pale Kind but Evil" might simply be the logical consequence of trying to make a Contrasting Sequel Antagonist to the Radiance.
Down to how both games open with a poem that personifies the Kingdom but effectively talks about the ruler.
Both are revered rulers of hightech Kingdoms, very "order-aligned" alignment wise, (The King being a associated with civilization & described as "bringing order", & in Pharloom things are so ordered its hammered down with the clockworks, bells and orchestra metaphors. )
Hallownest had its flaws & imperfections, like some inequality (like any advanced society), it was mostly a place of wonders & plenty before it fell, & he seems to have had a high approval rating. Consider who hates him (a prideful tough guy like Xero, and an arrogant gasbag like Soul Master) & who likes him (Lurien, who was beloved by his staff, & Ogrim, the walking parody of chivalry & honor)
Meanwhile we're told rather quickly how much Pharloom is an absolute hellhole - you have to pay to breathe, characters like Seamstress & Chapel Maid experienced persecution, ppl are locked up for "indolence", the workers are made to work non-stop & constantly pledge their fealty etc. As per the hunter's journals many workers were exploited etc.
The greatest contrast is the infrastructure - one of the first thing we're told about the King is that he built & designed everything himself, & he is repeatedly characterized through his creation - in the White Palace you only find his corpse & he doesn't get lines, but we're told everything about him through environmental storytelling.
In Hallownest there's individually designed ornate benches everywhere; In Pharloom they're very samey & you have to pay for them. He built fancy public transport; Pharloom has it but convenience is considered a "sin" for the pilgrims.
It's like if you took all of Hallownest's slight flaws & magnified them a hundred fold, you would get Pharloom.
He revered & treasured individuality (to the point that it was an explicit part of his iconography with the subtly different statues - his gift of civilization, thought & individuality being contrasted with the reversion to base instincts & false unity brought on by the Radiance) that shit's not allowed in Pharloom.
But if the infection turns you into a mindless beast, then the Haunting kind of makes you a robotic worker drone (Forge Daughter mentions everyone's gone crazy but they still work)
The comparison is subtly shown in act 2 (how Hornet deduces the Kingdom is run by a higher being - great reverence? Wondrous tech? Mystical plague?), how Pharloom is also called "eternal", but then made very obvious later on when ppl start referring to the Great Mother as "Pale Monarch"/ "Pale Beast". She's the same "flavor" of God.
Another parallel is shown when you find the First Sinner, which shows the creation of the weavers/ is implied to have been the very first weaver ever - The Grand Mother didn't make them from scratch like Unn & the Radiance are said to have done (maybe this is easier for higher beings of the "dream" variety), but uplifted lesser spider creatures, similar to how the Pale King is thought to have imbued pre-existing creatures with intellect. ("She called us daughters. She called us divine. She lied")
(hence why Lace is referred to as "a child spun pure", without using other components. as per her journal entry she "took a lot of silk to sustain" meaning that the Grand Mother could have pulled the plug on her at any time. )
Their respective relationships with Lace and the Pure Vessel are ultimately the real kicker, in the way that they are inverse mirrors of each other (the comparison is pretty directly invoked when you kill her in the path to the 1st/bad ending, & you can tell Hornet is so viscerally reminded that she, otherwise very harsh & pragmatic, tells a sadistic enemy that her life "counted")
Both Lace and the Pure Vessel are artificially created constructs which the ruler fashioned to serve their own ends, though to be "empty shells". (Lace being literally empty inside since she's made of only thread)
Obviously their personalities & appearances are mirrors - one is tall & stoic, the other tiny & hysterical, but both agile fighters that look vaguely 'knightly'.
But the Pale King hated doing what he did, the guilt crushed him, & ultimately he loved the Pure Vessel, eldritch void tendrils & all, even when he believed they couldn't love him back. In turn the Pure Vessel seems to have been pretty attached to him & tried their hardest to be what would be needed/ wanted, resigning themself to their fate ("Do not hope")
Lace, meanwhile, was deliberately made weak in mind & body so she would never betray the Grand Mother, as a replacement goldfish for the weavers, and as a result she pretty much hates herself & is full of spite & pettyness, directly attributing this to the Great Mother.
In the bad ending she gets killed fighting for her; In the "trap" ending however she betrays her after all. (but it comes off as partially motivated by wanting to spite her & partially a kind of sibling jealousy towards the weavers. )
She took relish in the idea of "watching it all come down" after all she's been through, in contrast to how the Pure Vessel still trying to protect Hallownest/resist the Radiance to the last even to the point of attempt to end themself and/or helping the protagonist as a Shade. Basically they're on the opposite sides of the D&D alignment chart. (which is not to say poor Lace couldn't grow past her Chaotic Evil ways if given some TLC; She makes for a very tragic villain.)
& this is when we see an interesting twist, that, even when the Grand Mother gets thrown into the void & (as she'd see it) betrayed again, she ends up chosing to protect Lace.
Which is like peak writing & a level of realistic complexity because... She was a shit parent when it counted. She's like that person that says they will catch a grenade for you but won't do the dishes. But a lot of shit parents are like that. They will abuse you & make you hate yourself but would still do the stereotypic parental sacrifices. I'm sure that if I needed money or to be protected from a bullet my father would help me out even though I've "spurned" him but also he abused me & treated me like a possession so yeah, this is not at all unrealistic. (nor would I consider it a redeeming feature - but it sure adds dimensionality.) Like this is something a lesser writer wouldn't have included.
A lesser writer would have made her a flatter villain & do one last act to show she doesn't care, instead the last thing she does in the "good" ending is help Hornet & Lace escape. Even when Lace explicitly says she wants her to suffer & thrash & deny her power (Oh Lace, I understand you. The urge to do self-destructive shit to spite a parent who acts as your savior despite always treating you like crap, making you feel gross emotions. They can treat you like a pet/toy, but still be very upset at the prospect their pet/toy being broken. )
It's like how in Evangelion, Misato has all these conflicted feelings because her shit father pulled a heroic sacrifice. It doesn't mean he was "good all along" it means frustrating people will do things that make you feel conflicting emotions. You'd like bad people to only do "bad" things so they don't confuse your heart but its not so neat.
No wonder Lace's reaction at the end is one last bitter laugh at how ridiculous it all is.
Even so there's something poignant & beautiful/artistic about how the last thing we see the antagonist do is help Hornet save Lace in a kind of sacrificial act - a strikingly human act from an eldritch monstrosity drawn in that super abstract art style. A beast she might be, but protecting one's offspring (in the barest sense of physical survival) is a very beastly instinct. (might also be contrasted with the Pale King appearing only in statue form in the flashback, because- He made the opposite choice, one that might befit stone rather than flesh. Duty over instinct. )
I also like how it's ambiguous what cut her loose in the end - Lace's own attack, or her trying to get to her. (I strongly assume that Hornet adopts Lace after the act 3 ending)
An excellent example of how complicated artsy evocative stuff ambiguous enough to make you think will always beat the simplistic preachy moralistic shit en vogue today. (Something the OG game was also a great example of)
The contrast to the Pale KIng is really driven home when Hornet makes her first trip to the Abyss & asks something like, "would you let all your kingdom be destroyed by the void to save just her?" - really underlining the Grand Mother is effectively making the opposite choice as the Pale King. (who sacrificed his beloved kid for his Kingdom / threw his offspring into the void)
And yet the guy who sacrificed his kid for his kingdom is the one who gets undone by not quite being asshole enough/ lost because the kid loved him (whether you believe the White Lady's theory that he "tarnished" the Vessel by treating them kindly, *he* believed it, & one way or another he crumbled under his regret), whereas the Lady who threw her kingdom to the wolves for her kid loses out because she gets a very classic straightforward "mistreatment induced betrayal" from said kid.
The Duality. The Layers. The Yin & Yang.
Something something about how your offspring tends to take on the values you live, not what you tell them to do. Honor & duty to a fault begat honor & duty to a fault, & cruelty & beastlyness begat cruelty & beastliness. (although in the respective good endings, both Lace & the Vessel a chance to maybe move past that after never having a chance or a choice. )
Whereas Hornet's actions leading up to & during act 3 really establish how much she IS the daughter of Mr. No Cost to Great, Funding Public Works, Affinity For Radial Blades, Will Use Any Source Of Power At Her Disposal. She gathers her own set of four willing sacrifices to bring down a mystical plague, for Pete's sake (certainly as symbolic in significance as how she claws her own way out of the Abyss, symbolically connecting her to two certain someones.)
(Herrah, too, is a friggin Once Scene wonder in her one flashback appearance, too, by being the opposite of a "possessive" parent: "Fuck expectations, be who you want to be"
I also love how, in keeping with the 1st game, the King doesn't get speaking lines so as to keep him mysterious, but he is again just represented by his palace & his constructs.
The Hunter's journal entry on the wingmould is certainly rather harsh - Hornet considers it pretty crude (a hell of a diss from one craftsperson to another), & him a fool for meddling with the void. But he was, of course, super duper wrong in an important way that blew up in his face. ( It's really interesting how we can contrast this with the Knight's & the Hunter's thoughts on same thing in the previous game) - I'd also conclude from this that these were the first ones he made & that the Kingsmoulds were later. In a way it's wise of Hornet to see the blundering first attempts were characteristic of him. His is very much a prometheus story - he's not the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Though I'm sure ppl will point at that & fail to note how it isn't at all that one-sided, as the White Lady seems to be speaking for both of them in her segment. She says "we" & she isn't royal-we-ing, as she doesn't do that in first game & refers in general terms to "our family" etc- she reveals not only that they had further contingencies, (one that's now used to fix what might be considered Hornet's own mess) - but she's all like "you must hate us" & Hornet actually answers that she doesn't and that she understands them, even more so now that she's older. (because without power, you cannot do anything - including create a better world.) - which she seems to take as the common denominator from all 4 parental figures, that they sought strength to make a better world & wanted her to be strong as well. (again draw the contrast with how the Grand Mother wanted Lace to be weak so she couldn't possibly surpass/betray her. Or go, "Haha dad I am better than you at constructs & daring utilitarian plans now now")
Which is both in tune with the civilization vs wilderness/base instinct theme in the OG HK game & how the note it ended on was very much "yeah civilization is imperfect & flawed & nothing last forever, but it's still worth the attempt" but also doing this yin & yang duality mirror to it. Pharloom looks super ordererd/regimented but there's something very "beastly" at the core.
Act 3 itself is a bit "promethean" where Hornet had a big-time void-related fuckup of her own before she could find a better solution, so her comments have to be seen in that light. With the other figures she is reflecting on what she learned from them, so... "From Dad I learned to be a bloody fool" given the state of Pharloom at the time.
Whereas in the bad ending she tries to pull a reverse uno card on the Great Mother & steal her power, & gets reverse Uno Carded herself, & in the neutral one she pulls a mutual kill (...or did she? Ominous noises ensue... ) - either way it's very promethean. Using even the forces that want your destruction & having them explode in her face.
And even in the 3rd act timeline, she does still end up stealing some of the Great Mother's Power from her severed arm (without the rest of her attached) - despite coming from a very pharloom-based source, that's the one attack that's labelled as Pale Nails. (rather Hallownests' traditional weapon. The Great mother uses pins. Hornet fashioning it into something very much her own, strikingly resembling the Pure Vessel's dagger attacks)
There is also one of those statues of him as a spiky obstacle to jump over (here's a visual metaphor to dissect), as usual with a design that looks different from all the others (way too many eyes) - Perhaps Hornet owned one with this design at some point.
That's also an interesting look at what's behind the White Lady impassive mask (or simply what she's like with someone she wouldn't be as pokerfaced with), though it's hinted in the OG game, too. I want to see fanart of Hornet in the white robe she wears in that flashback. When Ghost returns from the Abyss & she speculates, one of her first guesses is hate. Plus, we might possibly have something like a creation myth for the setting, with how the flower is called the "first light" & generally described as giving off light similar to the fancy deities.
Something that's really recontextualized is why Herrah wrecked the failed tramway (You can see why she would mistrust a Pale Being bearing Novel Contraptions, to say the least. she probably heard the word "Eternal Kingdom" and flipped.) but also why she eventually came to ally with the Pale King against the Radiance (& that was an involved alliance - She helped designed the seal of binding, did so much trade it replaced Hallownests's dominant form of writing etc.).
Although it's unclear if Herrah herself would have remembered Pharloom or if there's many generations between the escape & her.
Her group also fled/deserted their own creator god & after getting whacked with extreme retaliation ("she overlooked down here, lets rebuild..." lore tablet in weavernest Atla, the "flee as far as you can to evade her gaze" relic), soo... like... I think she'd support the moths' right to ditch their creator, just sayin.
It annoys me when this gets treated as the King threspassing on the Radiance's turf because the moths weren't things she owns, they're people & they just... switched sides. Maybe cause the King was giving out nice shit to those who join him.
Like ppl will make up these headcannons about how he supplanted their culture or persecuted them when none of the random moth ghosts we see mentions anything like that, indeed they seem to have been one of the oldest/first groups to join Hallownest & kept much of their culture of holding rituals for the dead etc, they just. Switched Religions. That happens sometims. Ancient Rome going from pagan to christian or Iran going from zoroastrian to muslim while still remaining a continuous culture? Or how Helios fell out of popularity & Apollo took over attributes of the sun god?
While we're told that Hallownest was looking to expand (& Hornet tells the green prince imlies that it is to some extent typical behavior for Pale Beings to show up & start taking over stuff, with the Grand Mother's MO being more typical - It would certainly be a viable interpretation to say that the Pale King simply preferred the carrot over the stick, I'd definitely count him as more 'neutral' than 'good'), no one seems to have been forcibly conquerred - groups who wanted to keep their independence like the mosskin, the mantises & the Bees did that just fine & were just dealt with diplomatically. (though still effectively in his sphere of influence)
Even Seer, who thinks her ancestors done goofed by switching sides & is ostensibly trying to do penance to appease the Radiance, doesn't blame the King but the past moths. (& we're told they had a grand prophecy about the "wielder" who would fix the situation...)
That said let it be known that I don't wanna flatten the Radiance either, she has some tragic aspects (she's effectively losing herself in a rage over how people don't love her anymore, not an unrelatable motivation) & reducing her to simplistic good/bad questions misses that she's supposed to be/represent a sort of inevitable force of nature.
Midwife's line about "how far the most intelligent species has fallen" also makes a lot more sense when you consider the "high status" the First Children used to have back in Pharloom, to the point that the high ups in the hierarchy immediately obey Hornet. They were actually a high tech civilization once.
There's an interesting story there, between the Pale King & Herrah, one who renounced civilization & someone who wanted to build/establish it eventually coming together against a common foe over their shared willingness to use everything in their grasp to their advantage.
There was a somewhat ironic earlier post of mine where I noted the parallels between the Pure Vesel and Lace but wrote something like, "there's no path of pain for Grand Mother".
But there is. There IS, that's the big twist of act 3. & it was the best possible way to keep her from being a flat villain.
But what there really isn't, what is actually the big indictment, is that there is that there isn't an Ogrim or a Lurien.
The closest thing is Widow, & Widow got humiliating punishment to ensure she doesn't turn traitor like the other weavers. Window is what Moss Prophet and Seer are to the Radiance. Ogrim got a fancy charm/badge. First Sinner also tells you all you need to know. "She lied".
EDIT: Another very obvious contrast point I forgot in OG post that seems super duper deliberate: The immortality experiments.
The Pale King wanted to shut Soul Master's shit right down. Soul Master is very salty about it.
Whereas the aristocrats of Pharloom got free reign to prolong themselves forever & possibly create immortal slaves.