#bludermaus

Surprise gift for https://bsky.app/profile/gmettleart.bsky.social

Ana Banana and Batty are together! Wow, big belly bat and big butt bat together! Wow, what shall they doOOooOoo?~

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I absolutely love how The Radiance's and Lost Lace's boss fights are so direct opposites to each other in every way possible

- Visually speaking: The Radiance is a pale being in a bright place fighting a being of darkness, The Knight;

Lost Lace is a being of darkness surrounded by it facing a being of light (Hornet being half-wyrm and all)

- Mechanically speaking: The Radiance is a very slow enemy and is very stationary, only moving now and then by teleporting, using heavy-hitting spells to fight... Just like the Knight is slow moving even with all of their upgrades and uses heavy-hitting spells to fight back;

Lace and Hornet are both extremely agile combatants who use spells/skills that hit hard but are also quick, constantly moving all over

- Soundtrack: The Radiance's really shows how scary she is and how the Knight might feel by being imposing and bombastic. It's the only OST from the original game where the whole orchestra joins in with multiple instruments participating;

Lost Lace is more sad and emotional with its OST, with fewer instruments and with a melody like a duet... Kinda like a certain OST from the end of Bloodborne... If you know you know! It feels less like a massive imposing being looming over, and more like a fight against someone that you wish didn't have to be fought.

- Thematically: As the Radiance's fight progresses, the Void starts crawling up taking over the bottom of the arena. Then, towards the end, it keeps climbing higher and higher with the Knight trying to grasp The Radiance... You ASCEND, if you will! But... After the fight the Knight and its siblings can finally rest by... Going DOWN back into the void;

Lost Lace's fight, as it progresses, has Void start slipping in trying to consume everyone in... And we can assume the added liquid weight means that everyone is slowly going DOWN as the fight goes on. But when the fight is over... Hornet and Lace have to go UP

We also have the detail that the main objective in the first game is to kill the Radiance, while in Silksong we want to save Lace (and both are a success).

There's also the funny thing that in both fights the protagonist had the help of the Void in a way. The Knight has its siblings and The Hollow Knight hold the Radiance so it could spam attack her and drag her DOWN... While in Silksong Hornet has her half-siblings band together to keep her and Lace safe... And slowly drag them UP

I wasn't expecting to play Silksong and find underlying themes of parenthood (or motherhood since 90% of the bugs in the game are ladies)... Or at least caretaker figures of all sorts

You have the failure caretakers such as Mother Silk and the whole Pharloom government (a government should care for their citizens, ergo caretaker figure) not only not taking care of their citizens, but actively and maliciously exploiting them

But you also have that motherly side to Silk. As horrible as a ruler she was, in the end she did love Lace. Heck, all the troubles in Act 3 are because she doesn't want Lace to die alongside her, she wants her girl to live, no matter if artificial lifeform or not!

Then you have good caretakers, such as the Three Queens of Hallownest. They're also complicated for, while they did rob Hornet of a childhood, they had only good intentions for her. They wanted her to bring a world better than the one they lived in. Then you have the Pale King, who's not even in Hornet's thoughts besides - as far as I know - a journal entry calling a fool those who try to play with the forces of the Void... It's unclear if Hornet doesn't think of him because of his failed plans to save Hallownest or if it's because he played a part on her mother not being a part of her life for too long (and from what we saw in Silksong, she'd have been a great mother, justice for Herrah!)

You can include Shakra's mentor in there as good caretaker sort, for all the good things Shakra says of her, even calling her a mother to her.

Then you have folks who rise up to become caretakers:

Hornet, who rises up - at first, pragmatically only - to be care for all the common bugs of Pharloom;

Shakra, who once looked down upon the pilgrims, now rising up to defend Bellhart;

Can't forget Fleamaster taking care of all those Lil fuzzy doggos!

And cute little Sherma, who once was a character I thought was gonna die because Team Cherry hates us, who rose to the task of being the caretaker of all the Songclave survivors and any pilgrims who made their way up there

Art trade with the amazing https://bsky.app/profile/expandingcreatures.bsky.social

It was very very fun to draw a dragon whose focus was more on being nasty, with the blisters and all that~

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The newest episode of Very Important People on Dropout was so unhinged - and the character so amazingly designed - that my body got taken by a fey mood and I made this in like 2-3 hours

Uhmm… enjoy, I guess! 💃💃💃✨✨✨

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I recorded these because my friend was not believing me when I said Kerfur was being weird while screensharing on Discord.... WHAT DO YOU MEAN KERFUR DOES THIS??? MY ROBOT WIFE IS MY ONE SAFETY IN THIS WHOLE PLACE!!!

Commission for https://bsky.app/profile/finshifter.bsky.social This is one big fella who knows they look absolutely amazing at that size~

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