#devourerofjourneys

favorite thing about them

i just think the most about characters and factions who existed on hallownest's fringes, and the radiance is the ultimate example of that. and she's just a character who we see very little of, and not for no reason! so you have to piece together a lot of shreds of information to get an idea of the kind of person she was...

like for one i think the fact the moths are peaceful as a rule is something that would make sense if it reflected on her? ive seen people refer to her as a war god and that's like. okay then explain to me why a war god would create people who aren't known for carrying weapons...and i spoke about it in the seer ask, but her being associated with death and funerals and ghosts is also something that makes sense to me. basically i think it's interesting that she's a character who exists almost entirely by implication, who you have to go to a decent amount of effort to figure out anything about her

least favorite thing about them

no one in the world has ever been normal about her (SAD)

trying to figure out how to put this...are you really gonna tell me there's nothing at all fishy about the pale king coming to hallownest, sealing the radiance away so he could rule without equal (this is stated explicitly in a dev note...), having the goal of ruling over the entirety of hallownest unopposed, and having bad relationships with every single other faction that didn't bow to hallownest rule...? like there's nothing weird going on there at all? the mantis tribe's treaty explicitly stated that it was something they agreed to to protect their village from hallownest expansion. like are you telling me he's not a colonizer and imperialist,

idk it gives me a weird bad vibe. like very genuinely the impression i had after doing dream no more (& again, i played hk totally blind save for knowing ghost & hornet were siblings) was like. "huh? so the radiance and the moths got subjugated by some dude But Actually taking revenge for that is so much worse and we have to put her down now you guys:((((((("

and i literally thought that was unfair and i was probably misunderstanding, which i note to say i really am not approaching this in bad faith and this isn't a square reading i'm trying to force into a round hole. the reason i stopped doubting it was because i spoke to multiple friends who saw the same thing without my input =/

it makes it so i just can't dislike her. and it's pretty disappointing how fan reaction to her is primarily to either demonize her and attribute bad things to her that we either don't have evidence for or we have evidence that contradicts it, or they bring in real world struggle in a way i find wildly disrespectful & fetishistic. we are in a nightmare world basically

favorite line

she isn't really a character with dialogue, so instead i'll talk about a piece of the seer's dialogue which gives me Thoughts about the radiance. even though i already talked about it in the seer ask. which is months ago at this point so whatever i guess

What a terrible fate they've visited upon you.

To cast you away into this space between body and soul.

Will you accept their judgement and fade slowly away?

Or will you take the weapon before you, and cut your way out of this sad, forgotten dream?

i just think it's so interesting! it's difficult for me to think the seer isn't drawing a parallel between ghost's situation and what happened to the radiance...this is not the first time ghost has been judged unworthy of life; if they were a good child, they would have died all that time ago, another body lining the abyss

the dreamers have condemned them to the same fate. there's no way to escape the dream; without the seer's aid, all they can do is, as she puts it, fade slowly away. and what for? yet another sacrifice extracted from them for the sake of this dead kingdom. by this point it isn't possible to do anything the dreamers fear - they need the dreamnail for that. they are condemned because they are inconvenient

and, well, the radiance was also put in that position...a lot of the game is about death and accepting that things will end, and the core arrogance of hallownest is repeatedly framed as the pale king declaring it would last forever. it's what vespa says the bees will have no part in, and there's ozymandius signs all over the damn place. so at least personally i find it significant that the radiance is repeatedly associated with the dead and the remembrance of the dead, her sacred place being a graveyard and her last follower being its groundskeeper, and she's also the one who pk needed to get rid of in order to make his eternal kingdom possible.

but accepting that things end is not the same as lying down and dying just because someone wants you out of the way for their own gain...which is exactly what the pale king wanted for both of them

brOTP

for a literal "bro" i actually see grimm as her brother who she's on fairly good terms with. idk, just never thought there was any particular reason for them to be at odds, and my own read of grimm's actions and the ritual was that he's enacting some kind of belated vengeance against hallownest for what happened to the radiance. by his nature, he could never have arrived "on time", but desecrating a corpse is well within his abilities.

nOTP

all of them. my god

random headcanon

the whole "erasing her memory" thing was referred to as a seal in a developer's note. it's even referred to as a prior attempt before the hollow knight plan - "Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel."

i really can't think of her as not being a death god; it's just the impression i get from both her explicit connection to dreams, and how the dreaming and the dead are so tightly linked. the dream nail shows you both, after all, and the ghosts you fight are dream warriors. also, a place important to the moths, and presumably to her as well, is a literal graveyard. and that adds another dimension - it is specifically important to her that the dead be remembered and honored.

she has no physical form, which is funny because every other god we know of does. the pale king, the white lady, unn, grimm, even the lifeblood creature...grimm and unn both have some connection to dreams as well, so it isn't like that precludes you from possessing a physical form.

so...well...i keep thinking about that first seal, and that attempt to erase her memory. did it involve killing her? is there a corpse somewhere, long forgotten in an unmarked grave? to one such as her, what greater insult could there be?

unpopular opinion

man. i have so many.

first is that i think it's honestly kinda gross to say that the pale king and the radiance were equally at fault for what happened - one of them's a fuckin colonizer who goes around trying to absorb every group in the area into his kingdom, and the other is the god of one of those groups. they are not on equal terms here...

i also think it's gross to make her worse for the purpose of making whoever your fave is - often grimm or the pale king - Better. like she needs to be the worst most evil sister so grimm can get some pathos, she needs to be the most violent beast so the pale king can get some pathos, etc.

i could go on but i would literally never stop.

song i associate with them

toothsmile by bent knee is such a radiance song to me...

favorite picture of them

favorite thing about them

i like the sounds she makes. it's very elderly woman of her

i just think her whole deal is so interesting. her loyalties remain to the radiance, that much is clear, but what did she hope for? she's so passive; once the dreamnail is awoken, she throws her hands up and says her part in this is done. what did she want to happen?

she's such a major part of the game - without the dream nail, not a single ending is possible, but we know very little about her. i just think she's interesting!

least favorite thing about them

mostly i wish there were more moth characters. and more (speaking!) characters in general from factions that co-existed with hallownest. thinking all the time about what a missed opportunity it is that there isn't a single speaking mantis character

actually in general the traitor mantises are kind of funny in how clearly they're like. "this is when team cherry ran out of money". like with how traitor lord's original boss fight was as underwhelming as it was, as well as the fact they just all have the same dream nail dialogue as traitor lord. but this is an ask. about the seer

favorite line

well...i've been practicing speedrunning TE lately, so that requires skipping A LOT of seer dialogue LOL

but yes, i've been kind of going over her lines recently and something that strikes me is just how much she talks about the radiance. she's constantly talking about the forgotten calling out, begging to be remembered. in particular what she says to ghost when they get the dreamnail is very interesting to me:

What a terrible fate they've visited upon you.

To cast you away into this space between body and soul.

Will you accept their judgement and fade slowly away?

Or will you take the weapon before you, and cut your way out of this sad, forgotten dream?

i've not been able to read these lines and not think she's directly paralleling what the dreamers did to ghost, with what the pale king did to the radiance. will you accept their judgement and fade slowly away? or will you cut your way out of this sad, forgotten dream?

brOTP

she has no friends unfortunately

i generally interpret "brotp" to mean a peer of some sort, but if we're counting any close platonic relationships, i think thistlewind is her parent and i keep thinking about her having all these complicated feelings about their ghost lingering...

i have a lot lot lot of random headcanons, like i actually think the seer is around the traitors' daughter's age? even though the traitors' daughter died in her 20s, and the seer lived much longer. and one of those is that the seer left and wandered the wastes for part of her life, and when she returned she expected, maybe hoped, that thistlewind's ghost would rebuke her for not having tended to their grave. but they didn't, because they aren't really here, and their ghost has barely noticed that she was gone. yet they linger because otherwise she would be alone...except paradoxically they serve to simply make her feel even more alone

and in general seer spends all her time around ghosts and it's kind of messed with her head a lot

OTP

her and godseeker. Not gonna explain this one

random headcanon

i honestly think she's bending the truth about the whole wielder thing, mostly because. well, it isn't mentioned anywhere else, and while that's par for the course for the moth tribe it ends up feeling really out of place? doesn't help that i generally don't care for Chosen One stuff, and ghost being a figure in a moth tribe prophecy just doesn't make any sense to me

also i know doylistically that hollow knight doesn't have any character tell you that much because it would interfere with the vaguer story-telling style they're going for, but when it comes to characters who know a fair amount but tell you little of it, the watsonian impression i often end up with is that they're keeping something from you, for whatever reason. in the seer's case, did she worry you otherwise wouldn't want anything to do with the dream nail...? that would fit with why she doesn't see fit to tell you anything until you gather more essence than you actually have to - clearly you're determined to do this all on your own, so that knowledge can't do any harm now

i also say this because it's a dream nail, and nails are referred to as a traditional weapon of hallownest, as well as something the moth tribe rarely used. so i wonder if the seer made it, somehow...or she found something and carved it into the correct shape. she can upgrade the thing, after all; not like you get the dreamgate or awoken dream nail til you go see her, even if you have enough essence

she can't get the essence herself; she's too old, and while she points out the whispering roots, she knows it isn't enough. she knows what you have to do to get the amount you need: find a room in greenpath and kill birds for 60 hours

okay but yeah, while i think she's being kind of dishonest about the wielder thing, i don't think she's malicious; she mostly just wants to see it awoken. to finally be something capable of doing...whatever it might do. that was all she wanted

honestly the impression i get of the seer is a fairly beat-down person. like she's friendly and funny but she really doesn't hope for anything at all. she doesn't even try to make anything happen, she just makes sure the means to reach the radiance existed in the world and left you to do with it what you would

this goes back to the "the seer not saying much" thing. like of course she doesn't tell you to go use this nail on the hollow knight because that would spoil the game! but also it gives me the impression that she just. isn't even trying to influence events at all, and the way she lays down and dies at 2400 essence certainly adds to that impression

unpopular opinion

she's not popular in the first place, so im not sure if there are really any popular opinions about her!

hmmmm. so one thing i see a lot when people describe her is that she defected from the radiance, or that her loyalties were once with the radiance and are now with hallownest. i actually don't think that's consistent with her dialogue; as i said in the dialogue question above, she makes references to the radiance A LOT and is the only character to say her name, which i know a lot of hk characters never have their names spoken at all but it feels relevant for a character whose whole thing is that memory of her was forcefully suppressed

the seer also makes digs at both the pale king and the dreamers for their role in that; the most positive thing she can say about them is that she's too numb to care anymore. all of that in mind, i don't think it's quite accurate to say that her loyalties lie with anyone but the radiance

...which then makes you wonder, because she gives you exactly what you need to kill her. and i always saw that as like...

well, the radiance is a death god, at least in my perception of her. her sacred place is a graveyard, and the one area so special to the moths that they sealed it off (and which is, incidentally, the only part of the resting grounds which doesn't have any hallownest seals) is a glade full of ghosts, etc etc. it's pretty clear that caring for the dead is incredibly important to her, and as a result, i've always her actions as those of a wronged ghost unable to move on

that's also been my personal interpretation of the infection; it results in fixation and obsession on something that mattered to you in life, kind of like how people tend to portray ghosts...? a lingering will...because there's a massive dream corpse in the minds of the populace so of course the whole thing is gonna start to rot

so the seer would then be her final devotee preparing a funeral she wasn't permitted to have

song i associate with them

n/a

favorite picture of them

n/a, so take this WIP i probably won't finish bc i can't find the color palette i was using for it