i know im 9 years late to the party, so anything i have to say about hollow knight has probably already been said, but like...
can i just talk about the complete inversion of the classic 'dark vs. light' imagery in this game? bc 'dark vs light' is one of the most pervasive and fundamental tropes in existence. it's rooted in human instinct from back when we were still just prey animals: dark is danger, light is safety. dark bad, light good.
and while i have seen plenty of media subvert the 'dark is bad' trope (and i always appreciate it!) ive never seen any piece of media so thoriughly flip the dynamic on its head. ive never seen a piece of media depict light as something terryifying and evil. ive never seen a true, good old-fashioned 'forces of light vs forces of darkness' story in which the forces of darkness are the good guys.
even tho i practically live and breathe for that kind of subversion, the expectation of dark being evil is so ingrained in me that for most of my hollow knight playthrough i struggled to understand what was happening or how i should be feeling about it. when the knight's spells would become upgraded to more powerful 'dark' versions, i was worried that it was doing something wrong-- that in the quest for greater power, it was giving in to some kind of nameless evil. when the kingsoul became the void heart, i worried it had been irreversibly tainted. the fact that the void heart cant be unequipped especially felt like 'oh no, ive made a mistake there is no coming back from'.
yet... throughout the whole game, there had been whispers. whispers of the danger of dreams, of the threat of searing light... never elaborated on or explained, just single instances of infected bugs thinking things like 'it's so bright...' and ive never seen anything like that before. i genuinely didnt even comprehend that the use of light imagery was meant to seem ominous. i just sort of assumed this 'light' was going to be explained later as some kind of secondary threat, a complication of some kind that would be dealt with after the real Big Bad was defeated so i didnt think too much of it.
and then i saw the dream no more ending, and when i tell you my jaw was on the fucking floor the entire time.
from the moment the knight drew its sword at the god damned sun, to the moment the radiance appeared in her full glory and her title card burned itself into my eyeballs... THAT was the moment i Understood: oh. This is The Light. This IS the Big Bad. and we, the darkness, are the good guy. because of course, the darkness would be the only hope against the wicked light!
in hindsight maybe it's obvious but at that moment it was such a profound revelation to me, this huge sense of 'oh, of course!
and better yet, it wasnt romanticised in any way. they didnt try to make the darkness into something more 'palatable', so that we the player could easily accept it as a force for good. no, the dark was still every bit as terrifying as it should be: still monstrous, eldritch, made out of lashing tentacles and and peering eyes and the echoes of unvoiced suffering. and THAT is going to be hallownest's salvation.
how fucking cool is that?
the way the sky gets darker as the fight progresses, as if the sun is setting. the way the shades rise up from the abyss, and you instantly understand they're here to help you. the way the radiance goes from all out assault to fleeing from the encroaching dark, the way the hollow knight's shade rips her face open and the knight's shade explodes out of its shell in a mess of writhing tentacles and the void itself holds her down while you manually beat the shit out of her? and the fact that this is presented unequivocally as triumph. this is the age old victory of good over evil, and it looks like a black hole devouring the sun.
how fucking cool is that?
in short, this whole sequence was fucking life changing to me. this game has fundamentally altered my brain chemistry, thank you for your attention.
