#bug discourse

-One common read I've seen of the line is that Lace was spun by Grand Mother Silk in such a way that she will forever be a child in both body and mind. And I can see why this read is popular - it vibes quite well with the rest of the game's themes on Lace being created to be unusually and eternally dependent on her mother.

But the Silk Heart text is that Lace was spun mad and frail and pure, not spun immature.

I just think the Caretaker isn't a reliable enough source to base a lore claim as wild as "in addition to the other ways GMS limited Lace, she also did a secret fourth thing to ensure Lace literally can't grow up." It would be one thing if any of GMS, Hornet, or Lace explicitly corroborated the idea, but they don't.

In any case, that's just one read! Other interpretations I enjoy rotating in my head:

-Lace being frozen in childhood was some kind of stasis spell GMS had to actively maintain on her, and now that GMS is gone and/or Hornet can undo it, Lace will start maturing normally. This seems the most far-fetched without direct proof of such magic existing, but it also seems like a potentially fun thing to play with. You could even apply it for Phantom as well, honestly! Could they have been trapped as a child too, in this read? Did they only start maturing after they were discarded?

-Lace was intended to be permanently a child in body and mind, but GMS was unsuccessful in creating such a being, in the same way the Pale King was unable to create a truly mindless vessel. This is another very common read I've seen, and I find it equally, if not more thematically compelling than the first. After all, Lace seems to consider herself "a child, too broken" - not a child but specifically a failure to be a child, in some critical sense.

-The Caretaker, who is notably characterized as a curmudgeon and who has ample reason to dislike Lace due to her attacks on mortal bugs, isn't even trying to imply Lace is truly a child. He's passive-aggressively insulting Lace in the same way Hornet does, calling her mind comparable to a child's to insinuate she is an annoyance and her self-imposed duty is no better than a fool playacting as a knight.

My favorite part of this read is what it could imply about Lace and the Caretaker's relationship. Maybe the feeling was mutual and Lace hated that slippery snail who kept eluding her pin too! I'm very amused by the thought of them giving each other stink eyes from a distance and badmouthing each other to anyone who will listen.

-And lastly, here's my own pet theory: The Caretaker, having no special insight into Lace's creation and going out of his way to avoid her, has mistaken Lace's strange appearance and manic laughter for childishness. But there's actually nothing special about Lace's growth at all - she's just following the normal Pale being life cycle!

As for how that life cycle works - I'm hardly the first to theorize that Pale beings do not naturally mature into their "adult form" unless something actively pushes them to ascend. Absent that, they tend to clock as immortal children because technically, in terms of life stage, they are children. They're the larval form of gods. (getting real bloodborne up in here)

Indeed, compare Hornet's "Gendered Child" title and her mask not being considered fully "resolved" by the Mask Maker, or little Ghost not growing up to the Hollow Knight's height despite the two of them being the same age. Heck, compare Phantom, still nearly identical to Lace's height/proportions despite their Silk being "grey with age."

There are some real life bugs that do similar, after all. Cicadas or dragonflies spend the vast majority of their existence as nymphs, and their brief adulthood is a transformation that’s rather horrifying to consider from the perspective of a sapient being. Other types of arthropods (and salamanders, apparently) may stay in a larval form their entire lives - even reproducing that way! - unless they are placed in an environment that triggers their metamorphosis.

So Hornet taking mates despite technically being in a "child" life stage? Not unrealistic for a bug, if extremely bizarre by human standards.

All of which is to say - perhaps the solution to the mystery of "did Grand Mother Silk intervene to force Lace to stay a child?" is that it isn't a mystery at all. She merely didn't train/raise Lace in the way Hollow was raised, and so Lace's body wasn't likely to mature past her current form.

As for Lace's mind - well, as we see in the case of Hornet, non-ascended Pale beings look like children but their mindsets are actually more comparable to adult bugs. The Caretaker, just like the White Lady with the Knight, is letting his biases cloud his assessment of Lace when he should really know better.