thewhitefluffyhat

The Case For

From Lace's very first line, Silksong's dialog positions her as Hornet's equal and opposite. She is constantly using diminutive nicknames like "little spider" or "spider, dear" and is generally condescending to Hornet. In this context, our protagonist calling Lace "child" comes across as less an accurate descriptor, and more an attempt to marshal a counteroffensive on their battlefield of words.

And it isn't just the dynamic in their dialog that presents Lace and Hornet as peers; the entire rest of the game follows through on that by setting the two up as direct mirrors of each other in details both large and small. Lace is roughly the same height as Hornet - in fact, their hitboxes are literally identical. Lace's theme has elements of Hornet's. Lace being a recurring rival boss has her playing the same role Hornet did in the original Hollow Knight. Even Lace's past acting as a seemingly callous sentinel of a dead land is reminiscent of Hornet's own merciless guardianship of Hallownest.

Indeed, despite all the verbal shade being thrown in both directions, Hornet's underlying dynamic with Lace is that she offers Lace respect. She regards Lace as a genuine threat in Deep Docks, she makes a sincere attempt to reach out to Lace after the battle in the Cradle, and she counters Lace's cynical taunts in the Abyss with frank honesty about her past. But perhaps most tellingly, when Hornet describes Lace to other bugs, she calls her "the white knight" rather than "child." Grand Mother Silk might not see her daughter as a worthy knight, but Hornet absolutely does!

And Lace, meanwhile, proves Hornet's respect for her well-founded. She goes from covertly aiding Hornet at the start to actively rebelling against her mother, and even manages to survive Void possession with Hornet's help - something no other being in the series has done. Both physically and mentally, she is far stronger and more independent than she was created to be.

Perhaps the most prominent symbol of this dynamic is the addition of Lace's pin next to Hornet's needle on the post-SotV title screen. The imagery suggests the two of them continuing to fight side by side as they journey together over the Surface. And I think it's notable, too, that Lace continues to be represented by her weapon. Implying she is not a child or younger sibling in need of defending, but again, a co-equal partner to Hornet, accompanying her wherever the two choose to go. (In a delightful touch, Lace's pin stays even if you change the background!)

The many direct parallels between the two, the mutual rather than one-sided taunting in their dialog, and the last impression the player has of the game being this final title screen - these details all work together to support a read of Hornet and Lace as peers from beginning to end.

But what if, in addition to enemies-to-friends, they were also enemies-to-lovers?

The Case for Romance, Specifically

If Hornet's hidden line to Eva creates the foundation for a read where Hornet desires a child, then Hornet's Hunter's Journal entry on the Conchflies creates the foundation for a read where Hornet desires a mate who can match her immortal lifespan. In both cases, the game never states outright that Hornet actually does want one or the other, but once again, absent evidence to the contrary it's not hard to extrapolate that she might.

And as much as I adore Shakra/Hornet, Shakra unfortunately doesn't fit what Hornet's looking for in this read.

But Lace conspicuously does.

And Lace, for her part, also seems to be quite interested in Hornet! Compare her dialog to Kratt's, for example:

We're all in agreement that Kratt is not interested in Hornet platonic reasons, yes? So, does it not follow that Lace's "Spider, dear" may be similarly romantically charged?

I've seen fans claim it's not, and I find that rather baffling? I've had to learn to decode what is/isn't romantic without having a natural instinct for it, so double standards where a certain behavior from a man to a woman is seen as unambiguously romantic/sexual but the same behavior between two women is somehow not romantic... that kind of thing tends to drive me up a wall.

If it were only Lace using the word "dear," then one could perhaps read it as solely a sarcastic spin on how other bugs like Jubilana or Seamstress use that epithet for Hornet in a motherly sense. But Lace's dialog is also playfully provocative in other ways too - take her "Delicious! I like you already!" for example. Then combine that with the way Lace constantly giggles during her battles, and lines like this from her needolin dialog...

Look, I'll just say it: Lace comes across as a flirty sadomasochist.

And that is the difficult contradiction at the heart of Lace. On the face of it, her dialog is bitterly cynical, it is startlingly self-aware, it is quite romantically, perhaps even sexually charged. Of course there are probably real children who sound like Lace - real children are often both surprisingly articulate and surprisingly weird little goobers. But Lace is a fictional character, and nothing about her speech conveys the innocence, clumsiness, or inexperience of a child to the player. And so one must either reject the lore that Lace is to be taken as a child, or one must attempt to explain why this ""child"" speaks and thinks in such a relentlessly uncomfortable adult manner. She is a character designed to defeat simplistic analysis.

For now, let's continue with the idea that Hornet had resigned herself to loneliness, only for Lace to crash into her life by rescuing her, then tauntingly flirting with her. And also trying to kill her, but that's just Tuesday for both these delightful freaks.

It's a pretty solid meet cute.

Now layer on top of that base the intensely romantic imagery around Lace and Hornet throughout the rest of the game. I won't get into the loaded implications of Lace's flower field possibly being a reference to a famously lesbian anime, or how Silksong's plot follows some amusingly common yuri beats - I already wrote about those at length in a previous essay.

Instead, let's skip ahead to the Everbloom, which in both appearance and usage is very clearly the same Fragile Flower from the original Hollow Knight. In that game, the Knight can gift the Flower to express affection toward several different characters (including their mother). But it's primary purpose, the quest most players will immediately associate the flower with because of the task's memorable frustration, is as a tragic offering to be carefully ferried between a lesbian and her lover's grave.

In Silksong, reading Hornet and Lace as a budding romance invokes this old association to create yet another hopeful inversion of the original game. Once again, the flower is brought to the "grave" of the lesbian love interest, but here, this act provides Hornet with the power to bring Lace back for a miraculous happy ending.

After all, it's not as though Team Cherry shies away from including romances in their games. Both the Grey Mourner and the Green Prince's relationships are defined by tragedy in contrast to the straight couples we see throughout. But in Hollow Knight, the buried lesbian lover of the Grey Mourner is balanced with the happy gay couple of the Nailsmith and Sheo. In Silksong, Hornet and Lace would provide an optimistic counterpoint to the doomed romance of the Clover Princes.

Finally, after spending eons being forced into the role of a dependent child, Lace attains the freedom to embrace adulthood. And part of emphasizing that coming of age is that she and Hornet are implied to become a romance, the type of relationship most heavily associated with adulthood. In this sense, Lace and Hornet being positioned as love interests is not a frivolous or incidental flourish - it's used to reinforce Lace's maturity, and thus, to strengthen the themes of finding new hope and breaking tragic cycles in the game as a whole.

The Case Against

Of course, much of the evidence for the previous two interpretations can be seen as evidence against this one. The two details I've seen most commonly cited against reading Hornet and Lace as romantic or even as equals are 1) the dialog from the Caretaker about Lace having the "look of a child and a mind to match" and 2) the idea that Lace should be seen as Hornet's aunt.

Meanwhile, the counterevidence I personally find most compelling is that Hornet calls Lace a child even in her final line to Lace and in the Hunter's Journal entry for Lost Lace. Both of those places would have been perfect opportunities to have Hornet switch to another form of address to reflect her changing understanding of Lace, just as Shakra's quests end with her finally using Hornet's name.

And yet, Hornet calls Lace a child to the end.

So, yes! From that craftsmanship angle I keep coming back to, these are all valid counterarguments against this read. Adding lore that could cause the player to see one of characters as a child but the other as an adult genuinely isn't something a dev should include if the intent was to make it crystal clear that a relationship between two characters was one of peers, let alone romantic. Similarly, the game sure does like to tease the idea of Grand Mother Silk potentially being Hornet's literal grandmother, and not every player is necessarily going to find and fight the First Sinner to learn the truth of the matter. Making the big reveal that Hornet isn't related to Pharloom's monarch or her knight optional is an odd move if that reveal is meant to be essential to understanding the characters.

That being said, this is a game where the fact that there's an entire third act is also an optional and well-hidden twist! Meanwhile, both Hollow Knight games are filled with examples of seemingly reliable lore sources turning out to be biased and flawed when examined more closely. Encouraging fans to dig deep rather than accepting details at face value, to scratch their heads over a narrative built out of vague and multifaceted puzzle pieces - that's the core appeal of Soulslike-style storytelling!

And so, my guess is that with Lace and Hornet, like with so many other lore questions, Team Cherry aimed to present a dynamic that was intentionally ambiguous so as to foster friendly discussions and fan debate. Thus, details contradictory to this friends/love interests read were included to complicate it - just as with the other two reads - but certainly not meant to preclude it from discussion entirely. Because the discussion is the point. There's meant to be multiple interpretations to provide more toys for everyone to play with.

Intent Meets Internet

…Unfortunately, no piece of fiction exists in a vacuum. It's already an uphill battle to present any type of queerness in popular fiction and not have it misunderstood by mainstream audiences. Case in point: the initial German translation of the Clover Princes mistaking them for literal brothers. And also: the early debate over Phantom's gender, oh my goodness. Another textbook example of how "mildly conflicting, highly ambiguous details on whether something is queer" results in the queer reading nearly being stamped out entirely on authoritative resources like the community wiki.

The sad reality is that when there is even the slightest detail that can be used to read against a queer interpretation... then no matter how minor, that detail will likely be weaponized against both that queer reading and anyone who enjoys it.

Thus, details about Lace and Hornet that were likely intended to stimulate sincere discussion when and where it is welcome, instead are used an excuse to inappropriately badger fan creators who just want to share and celebrate their works. An unasked for "debate" where one side is hostile to alternate viewpoints and the other is exhausted of having to regularly defend their right to exist in a community space is no debate at all. That's just harassment. And where harassment becomes common, it becomes far more difficult to have any kind of good faith discussion.

It's quite the irony, isn't it? I can't imagine that is what Team Cherry intended.

Still, even if Team Cherry were to descend from on high to end the debate by declaring one reading correct, it wouldn't change the game itself and all its messy multiplicity of readings. Once a story collides with an audience, we are free to react to and play with the characters however we see fit. Such is the essence of fandom!

…That all being said, my theorizing about Team Cherry's intent isn't mere guesswork. They have outright stated in an interview that they see their narrative as perhaps "quite subjective" and that they prefer seeing community debates rather than watching a single read be accepted as fact. That they wish to leave space for interpretation wherever they can. So, if following creator intent is important to you… well, there you go.

The most "correct" answer is that there is no correct answer. The only thing I can say for certain is that there will be plenty who disagree with everything I wrote in this essay, from the problems of my divided categorizations (the three part structure didn't leave me room to talk about more niche reads like "sisters with Lace and Hornet as peers" or "Hornet and Lace are both children" which is a sincere shame), to how I presented each reading, to the flagrantly subjective thoughts and questionable humor I scattered throughout.

As Silksong is a work of fiction, it is up to us players to decide which interpretation is the truth for ourselves. After all, we each bring our own unique viewpoints to the game, and get something unique out of it in turn.

Personal Thoughts

Speaking of viewpoints, I did my best, but it may have been a fool's errand for me to attempt to be unbiased when shipping Lace and Hornet is a major reason I started playing Silksong in the first place!

See, what happened is that I found this game right at a point where I was becoming discouraged with my previous main fandom. I consider myself primarily a fanfic writer, and what I write is primarily femslash. But what I was discovering in that other fandom was that… well, it's not very fun to be a femslash writer with very few other fans like that to talk to. (Shoutout to those friends I did find though, I doubt any of you are reading this but you're still the best! <3)

Now, at the time I'd already been casually familiar with the original Hollow Knight from Let's Plays, speedruns, and the like. So my first exposure to Silksong was similar - watching a (very slow) Let's Play that started when game came out. But it was the one-two punch of watching of Silksong's incredible finale and then immediately going to AO3 and finding hundreds of Lacenet fics that knocked me on my butt and convinced me that no, I couldn't just sit on the sidelines anymore. I had to play this game for myself.

I just… I wish I knew better how to convey to non-fic readers what a rare and welcoming and wonderful thing it is to find a community with such a thriving femslash scene. Even on AO3, F/F is one of the least common categories of fanwork, typically hovering at around 6-10% of fan content. Yes, below even Gen (platonic) fic, which is usually around 15-20%. The dearth of femslash is a very consistent pattern in centrumlumina/centreoftheselights's yearly AO3 analyses, and it's a trend I've observed up close myself too.

The reasons for this disproportionate rarity are a confluence of multiple unpleasant factors - and no few essays have been written on the subject - but the point is, the comparatively large ratio it has in this fandom is something special, not to be taken for granted.

Because when you have a fandom where there's a demonstrable appetite for female and nonbinary-centered works, more of those works get created in general.

Actually, you know what? I'm a total nerd about fandom statistics so…

Here's what the Hollow Knight tag on AO3 looked like pre-Silksong:

And here's the breakdown of fics written post-Silksong:

The proportion of F/F works nearly tripled, Other remained stable (which is impressive; I would have expected a drop just based on the sheer fact the fandom is responding to a new game with a binary rather than nonbinary protagonist but evidently not!), and Gen and M/M proportionally shrank a bit. Gen is still the easily dominant category at 35.8% of all fanworks, though the most common relationship to write about was indeed Lacenet at 15.5% of all fanworks produced in this time period. (Purely platonic Lace&Hornet made up 3.9%.) And while tumblr isn't possible to analyze casually, the fact that Lacenet made it into February's Top 100 ship tags suggests a similar trend on here as well.

But wait, just because there is proportionally somewhat less M/M and Gen fic being written, does that mean there are now less new works of those categories to read overall?

Nope! Every category saw a massive surge in total fics. Behold, the effects of a popular sequel:

All in all, these numbers seem like a pretty healthy mix to me. Despite the complaints I've seen about pesky shippers running rampant, the numbers show that Lacenet is going strong but it's certainly not overwhelming the fandom!

As a ship, Lacenet also just appeals to my hyperspecific personal tastes, haha. I'm an incorrigible villain-liker, and enemies-to-friends-to-lovers is my favorite dynamic. Especially if it involves a character that is suicidal but also semi-immortal, that's such a decadent thing to play with for Hurt/Comfort scenarios! And heck, the way Lace is often written to be struggling with being perceived as childish and therefore not taken seriously? Yeah that's something I have to deal with in my own life. She both fascinates me and is #relatable.

I adore Lace and Hornet, and I adore Lacenet. Hence: not just this essay, but this whole Silksong Progress series. You can still see from the (increasingly unfitting) title that this started as just casual liveblog-ish thoughts as I played. But as I went on, it became more and more analytical, an attempt to give myself a crash course on the setting's deep lore and how to theorize about and work within it.

so did I do it? do I get a passing grade on the Silksong lore final exam? :P

Well, pass or fail, this post series has been my way of introducing myself and getting to know other fans in the Hollow Knight community. And if nothing else, that part has been a success!

The Case For

Silksong is filled to the brim with dramatic parallels between Lace and Hornet's siblings, and in this reading, we're running with those parallels to their logical extreme.

Take, for example, Hornet's conversation with Lace after the Cradle battle. What was the unique form of life Hornet had seen others mistake for an empty husk before? The Vessels, of course, which both the Pale King and the White Lady assumed to have neither mind nor will. Going a step further, perhaps Hornet may even be counting herself among those once mistaken, and her attempts to reach out to Lace are in part motivated by guilt over striking down her Vessel siblings during her vigil over Hallownest. Or alternatively, she may have felt guilt over being unable to prevent Hollow from being sealed away and treated as a lifeless cage for the Radiance.

But the important thing is, Hornet sees in Lace a chance to correct her family's past mistreatment of such lifeforms.

Hornet also seems to see the Knight, specifically, in Lace. The way the Sister of the Void ending parallels the shot framing of Hollow Knight's Dream No More ending is particularly evocative. After the Knight took down the Radiance, it left nothing behind but its shattered mask. But when Hornet saves Lace, she ends her new adventure looking over at Lace's still alive, still giggling form.

The dark may have taken the Knight, but it will not take another of Hornet's siblings. Once again, through her relationship with Lace, Hornet is given a chance to do over what she may have regretted about her relationship with another sibling in her past.

Now, while Hollow Knight might as well be titled Crying About Siblings: The Game Series, there is more to sibling relationships than just tragedy! And the way that Hornet and Lace both give each other mocking nicknames and spend much of their conversations alternating between boasting and taunting each other can be interpreted as sisterly bickering. The two are constantly getting on each others' nerves, yet also challenging each other to become stronger through competition. "Best you keep watching," Hornet says to Lace, and Lace does watch and seem to gain motivation from it. Perhaps like a little girl trailing after her big sister. Or like Hornet stalking after the Knight and eventually coming to place her trust and hopes in it.

Finally, just as this theory allows one to accept Lace being a child at face value, it also allows one to think of Grand Mother Silk as Hornet's grandmother in a real sense. Which then comes with the implication of Lace being related to Hornet, and in this read that's a convenient bonus. The two may not literally be sisters, nor is Grand Mother Silk literally Hornet's grandmother through blood, but if the characters choose each other as family, then that's all that really matters.

It all comes together very sweetly, and in many ways it's a read that sails with the wind of the game's parallels and symbolic connections rather than against it. Almost seductively so! If Lace looks and acts like a child, then she should be considered a child. If Grand Mother Silk looks and acts like she's the grandmother of the Weavers, then she should be considered so. If Hornet acts like Lace is one of her Vessel siblings, then the two should be considered siblings.

The Case Against

But a few discrepancies arise when you start treating broad symbolic connections as literal ones. Once again, the Doylist craftsmanship question arises: why didn't Team Cherry just make these relationships literal ones to begin with? Why not make Lace straightforwardly a child and title Grand Mother Silk as instead "Grandmother Silk" or even "Mother Silk"?

On the latter point especially, the game's teasing at a relation between the pale monarch and Hornet seems to exist to facilitate the dramatic twist that they're not related. It's why the First Sinner is such a memorable setpiece, after all. She provides some of the most unambiguous lore in the game - an actual flashback to the creation of the Weavers! - and much of her sparse dialog hits the player over the head with the same idea: the Weavers are not the children of Grand Mother Silk. The seductive, simplistic read is a lie, and one this Weaver was cruelly imprisoned for exposing.

Yet in this "sisters" reading of Hornet and Lace, the fact that Grand Mother Silk deceived the Weavers and coerced them into acting as her daughters… doesn't matter?

And the fact that Grand Mother Silk kidnapped Hornet (which Lace seems to see her wanting Hornet to take Lace's place as her daughter), resulting in Hornet spending most of the game actively aiming to kill her for it should be… brushed aside?

Hornet's Weaver ancestors and Hornet herself did everything in their power to escape a life of being Grand Mother Silk's daughters. So reading Hornet as Lace as sisters is a bit thematically odd, flying in the face of all that.

And then there's the question of what this reading does to Lace's arc. As Hornet's sister, Lace may no longer be trapped under the control of a domineering mother figure. Yet once again she is placed in a position where her life depends on how well she is able to act as a replacement for the family another character has lost. Grand Mother Silk made Lace to replace the Weavers. Hornet saves Lace to soothe her guilt over the Vessels. In either case, Lace is still not allowed to simply live as herself.

Of course, that dynamic can easily be explored and overcome in post-ending fanfic, but as a note to end the standalone game on… it's rather sour, isn't it it? Even in this true secret ending, it's a cycle continued, not a cycle broken. Wouldn't Lace once again find herself jealously lashing out at the ones she sees her caretaker as actually wanting?

Which brings me to…

The siblings Hornet has been grieving aren't actually gone! She still has her family, and her family loves her back. (D'awww, it's so good to see you again, little ghost!)

So, uh, wait a minute… what is the point of Lace, now?

Moreover, Lace has her own sibling too. Phantom may be dead, but their bond with Lace also lingers over this reading.

The Hollow Knight games provide plenty of examples of real siblings, ones that the characters concretely, explicitly treat as their family. This inherently invites contrasts with the more nebulous, ambiguous dynamic Lace and Hornet have. When it's somewhat thematically awkward to treat Hornet and Lace as related, and when they both have other siblings they are more obviously close with, it tends to make what the two have with each other look like something else.

Personal Thoughts

I don't have as much of a kneejerk dislike of this reading the way I do with the mother/child reading, but it's just not my cup of tea. As someone with a real-life sibling, I always find it a bit silly when fictional strangers develop an intense, teary-eyed bond and then suddenly proclaim they're "just like brother and sister!"

Like that's… that's not usually what being a sibling involves but… okay!

It doesn't help that particularly in the case of "just like brothers!" or "just like sisters!", this cliche is commonly invoked to paper over a queer reading of the text. In some infamous historic examples (hello Sailor Uranus and Neptune!), queer characters being rewritten into family members was a very deliberate act of censorship. Which of course becomes extra, extra offputting when the characters are otherwise acting in a very intimate and romantic-coded manner but somehow I am supposed to see that as normal sibling behavior. Um, no thanks.

Lace and Hornet aren't nearly to that extreme, thank goodness!

Still, that's the kind of baggage that I bring to this reading as a queer woman. Whenever I see the claim two characters are "just like sisters," it's both hard for me to take seriously and sometimes makes me wonder if there's an implied "no homo!" penciled in underneath.

The other main factor is that I'm coming at Silksong not just from a perspective of a theorist, but also as a potential fic writer. Which means the big question I find myself asking with this reading is: what new dynamic does "Hornet and Lace as sisters" bring to the fandom table?

Diving into the Hollow Knight fandom this late, I already see oodles of fic and comics that portray the Knight as Hornet's goofy kid sibling. And I'm not surprised by that. Despite that it's technically the older sibling, the Knight's design looks like a smaller, cuter version of Hornet, easily lending itself to this portrayal in visual forms. Meanwhile, as a silent videogame protagonist, the player is already accustomed to seeing the Knight doing silly things for gameplay reasons. All of which, when combined with its lack of dialog, makes it less jarring to imagine the Knight as a cheerful gremlin under that mask.

Lace, by contrast, does not fall into that cute kid sibling role so easily. Compared to the Knight's semi-blank canvas, she's an explicitly angsty and self-serious character, and oh boy does she not shut up about her problems once she gets started. In that sense, her dynamic with Hornet now becomes similar to Hornet and Hollow, with the typical post-ending plot involving Lace needing attention and care to heal from all her trauma.

The Knight already fills the younger sibling role more naturally. Hollow already fills the role of Hornet's angsty sibling, and it's hard to top the sheer tragedy of what it experienced. And therein lies the problem: if I wanted to create art or fic about Hornet's relationship to a sibling, I would probably use one of them instead! Poor Lace was always going to struggle to compete, her main fandom ecological niches as a sister were already colonized, and the Vessels had nine years of head start on her. :')

Furthermore, if I wanted to explore Lace's dynamic as a sister, then that means Hornet is now competing with Phantom. And unlike Hornet, Phantom actually was there to potentially see and affect Lace's past, which allows for far more rich and varied interactions. Want to write about an older sibling being parentified to care for Lace? Phantom. Want to write about two siblings secretly supporting each other in the face of an abusive mother? Phantom. Want to write about two siblings having a complicated, evolving relationship between past and present? Phantom just has more of a timeline to play with!

This isn't a hypothetical, by the way - as much as I enjoy writing and thinking about Hornet and Lace, I'm just as, if not more excited to try my hand at exploring Lace and Phantom.

Ultimately, even if I'm not especially opposed to seeing Hornet and Lace as sisters, I personally find the idea a tad redundant with the many, many other compelling sibling relationships in the Hollow Knight series.