thewhitefluffyhat

i like the thought of gms considering the act of being a mother to be especially divine. and i like to tie that in as an explanation for the otherwise unusually-chaste worldbuilding for freaking. Bug World. i think pharloom is the one of the only civilizations to care abt that sort of thing an it's gms' fault.

but my brother is the same age as me. meaning that we are both adults. we have both attended college. we have both had jobs. we can both cook our own food. and even if we couldn't, would that make us less adults? are we less deserving of a title of maturity purely because of what we can or can not do?

my brother is old enough to drink. he's old enough to have a partner. he's old enough to move away from home. he's old enough to join the military. he hasn't done any of these things. but it's for a lack of desire, less than a lack of agency. and if he wanted to do those things, it is my and my family's responsibility to play council to him. but it is not our responsibility to lord our decisions over him because 'we know best'.

it reminds me of that post from a little while ago, where neurotypical adults are allowed to make whatever poor decisions they want, but the second someone clocks that you're neurodivergent, suddenly every decision you make is a product of you 'not thinking straight'. you don't even have the agency to live on your own accord, because there's always someone second guessing for you.

Ew. No. FUCK no. Lace is a fully independent being who just spent a lifetime of hell underneath an overly possessive, controlling parent who only created her so that she could playact at being a mother to someone who was, in essence, a slave to her. That may sound extreme, but consider the plight of the Weavers; they were created to be loyal servants to GMS, and fled because they did not want to spend the rest of their lives in chains. GMS responded to this 'betrayal' by sending slavecatchers after her errant children, and by making the chain an inherent feature of her next round of children, the silk-spun. Making Hornet be Lace's mother figure after GMS's death wouldn't be undoing this evil, it would just be passing over the leash to a new monarch. Sure, Hornet would be leagues better than GMS, but a benevolent master is still one that holds power over their victims, and a parent-child dynamic is inherently one with an immense amount of power over the 'child' in that dynamic. Lace would be dependent on Hornet post Act 3 no matter what, but there's a difference between being dependent on someone who views you as an equal, and being dependent on someone who views you as their child. Lace has suffered the latter for her entire life. She doesn't need that going forward.

I'm not dismissing the fact that motherhood is an important aspect of Silksong's lore- a lot of the themes around Silksong are centered around motherhood and what it means to be the daughter of a parent who'd give everything to see you safe (whether this be for good or for evil). However, Hornet and Lace both face this conundrum as equals; Hornet as the daughter of a mother who deeply loved her and gave her all to see her be her own person, Lace as the daughter of a selfish queen who only wanted to be a mother to exert power over others. GMS loved Lace, sure, but she loved Lace the way that an animal loved its offspring- an instinctual urge, one that only extended as far as Lace's immediate safety. Hornet killing GMS and saving Lace was her cutting Lace free from that abusive web so that she could live as her own person rather than just 'the Pale Monarch's Child', which is something that Lace has been denied and that Hornet is determined to see rectified. Making Hornet be her new mother would not be a solution to this evil. It doesn't matter to me if your take on Lace is that she's an eternal child or an infantilized adult, she deserves to 'grow up' after the abuse she suffered under GMS- something that can't be done if a new mother figure is slotted into her life.

Regarding your tags about the caretaker route post-Act 3, I fail to see how Hornet being Lace's mother is any better than her just...helping Lace normally. You don't have to be motherly to be a caretaker, nor is being a caretaker necessarily a motherly pursuit, and Hornet is not motherly in the slightest. Sure, maybe she saw the flies as less than her equals, but that still doesn't explain the sheer lack of maternal instincts she displays throughout Silksong. She can help Lace learn how to be independent and make her more self-sustainable without taking on a motherly role. A close friendship or sisterly bond would make sense, but forcing Hornet to be her mom feels gross and honestly kind of misogynistic. Not every female character needs to be a mother or act like one, ffs

Also, while interpreting Lace as a child is fine- I still don't see why or how a child would NEED a mother?? You don't need a parent to grow up or process trauma, nor do you need a replacement if the parent that fucked you up is gone. The person that helped me the most with my own parental trauma wasn't an adult, it was my childhood best friend/now partner who went through similar struggles to what I did, when those traumatic events occurred. We were kids at the time, and we were able to figure shit out because we had each other. Kids need good support structures, not parents, and the social expectation for those support structures to BE your parents is one of the biggest problems that abuse victims face. I can see big sister or mentor Hornet just fine, but having Hornet be the mother to Lace is OOC as fuck and just feels like you're trying to shove everything into a nuclear family dynamic because you can't fathom the fact that an alternative would be better for them.

As for Lace, a similar story is true. Many people who love Lace- me included- love her because they can relate to her as an abuse victim, and enjoy Silksong because it's a story where a victim is depicted as heroic for having a hand in murdering their abusive family member. Replacing that abusive family member/claiming that Lace NEEDS that abusive family member to be replaced by someone who will do a better job is just downright insulting, because it indirectly implies that people in similar situations don't have the ability to process and heal their trauma on their own, they NEED a parental figure in their life- which is insulting to many abused people, because even if some few people were lucky enough to move into non-abusive households, most do not. Most have to learn to heal and learn to be independant on their own (if they can even manage that step- that's the hardest part!) and Lace earning that independance is liberating to those people in the audience who had to take that harsh step towards becoming independant alone. Taking that away by making Hornet Lace's mom is demeaning and insulting to that audience, doubly so when factoring in the fact that Lace is canonically disabled and dependant on a caretaker. It tells us that you believe a disabled, abused child is incapable of learning to grow by themselves without the prescence of a mother, and that needing a non-parental caretaker is the worse option because having a better replacement for your abuser is the only way to 'fix' what's wrong with you. There is ZERO reason why Hornet being Lace's caretaker as her friend, sister, or lover would be worse or less impactful than her being her parent, just as there is zero reason why Hornet being in a motherly role would somehow lead to her 'fixing' Lace so she can be independent, but being her carer in any other capacity wouldn't (which is impossible, and I don't see why that's such a problem. Again, it's insulting to disabled, abused people to assume that all they need is a parent who can 'fix' something that can never be treated). It doesn't matter that these are fictional characters, the way they're portrayed is important because those choices have narrative meaning and a very real impact on their audience. You repeating the same points over and over again just makes it seem like you're not even trying to understand the impact that such a reading might have on people, like I keep trying to tell you.

Recently I've finished Act 3 of Silksong and I'm OBSESSED with those two. Because of them I could finnaly manage to draw something and I'm so happy with how it turned out! For sure it's one of my best drawings.

Anyway, get some bug yuri doodles:

some silly idea. I want to draw them interacting more more more wawawawawa