This is such an interesting read. Personally I read so much personality into our little ghost. They’re strange and alien, but they have choices they can make independent of us. We choose to sit with Quirrel, and Marissa, but Ghost is the one who gives us the option in the first place. I hesitate to trust the Pale King’s trust in his own ability to create an empty vessel when out of tens of thousands his one judged a success eventually failed.
The one he judged a success failed because the Empty Vessel was filled with one day's worth of a father's love. The Pale King, in spite of the horrific extent to which he would sacrifice to save the kingdom he created, longed for something more than just one more sacrifice to make. If he had left well enough alone and kept his cold veneer to the bitter end, the Empty Vessel would have succeeded. The King's folly did him in. That folly? To stop sacrificing, even for one moment, and allow himself a tender time with his creation. That faltering of will cost him everything that his cruel design needed to succeed. This was not a creature just doing as it pleased. It was a creature desperate to save the life it had made. *No cost too great.*
@@conormccue2871 the cut scene regarding out little Knight's past suggests otherwise. Despite how 'hollow' they're supposed to be... The Vessel looked back. They didn't stay or help us, but they still looked back. If it was only following what was intended, it likely shouldn't have. But it did.
A point at 41:17 Hornet is waiting for you at the black egg temple and The Hollow Knight leaves the temple, not the ghost/knight, it has the Hollow Knight's nail and is wearing its tattered cloak and is much bigger than you are. With the Absolute Radiance truly defeated, the Hollow Knight no longer needs to be contained and is free.
@@waderomonosky6706 Yes, there's many clues that it's the Hollow Knight approaching hornet : the "chin" of that person is very pointy, their cloak is tattered and they have a long, broken Pure Nail.
I still need to get through the later areas of the game, but I always liked how Lilly isn't necessarily the one that fights, but the spirits that protect her. I think games should be more creative in that way so they can represent more kinds of people in their stories, including those who aren't capable of swinging a sword. I guess it's a detail I'm very peculiar about because of my chronic illness and it really drew me to the game that I might play as someone I could relate to. It almost is more meaningful for me to see in a game that features violence than seeing it in your typical non-violent comfy games.
The travesty of not acknowledging Ender Lilies’s music, sung and hummed by Mili shall not be forgiven. It is by far one of the best soundtracks in all of the games I have ever played and adds so much depth to the story and lily’s character. That aside, great video! Can’t wait for the next one
I can't believe I forgot to actually name Mili but my original plan was to end with Bulbel so there'd a be a Priestess singing (never sure whether it's meant to be Lily or Fretia or both singing?) but it immediately restricted the video both with the main and instrumental version 😭 hopefully more people will find Ender Lilies because of this video though and get to hear it!!
I kinda disagree about the little guy lacking all will in HK, mostly because of ending 1. We know that in the first ending the Knight's eyes shine orange when the radiance was sealed in it, implying that it was going to go the same way HK sealing the radiance did... which sort of implies that there was a will hidden somewhere deep inside the knight. Other than that, amazing video. I loved both HK and Ender Lillies. Now if only they released Silk Song 😭
Yeah, I largely think that the Knight doesn't have will right now, but has the potential for it considering the ending after Absolute Radiance, and given how much the other bugs are interacting with it... It's probably only a matter of time which is so tragic, love breaks them. I thought the orange in the Night's eyes in ending 1 was just the shell being filled up with the plague but you could certainly read it that way!
That thumbnail and Channel name threw me so much into a loop, then remembered its the lady who did the Rose video that i rewatched 5 times. I immediately lock in
Eyyy really glad you liked the Rule of Rose one! (One day when I have time I want to make a CHUNKY video on that because I adore that game), but ye! thanks for watching this one too! 💛
my personal interpretation of little Ghost is that , while they start out hollow at the beginning of the game, their experiences develop and change them (alike to how THK failed to be truly empty because of their relationship with the pale king) - all depending on what the player chooses to do. You can save the grubs, talk with hornet about your life, her life, and her very strong opinions on you, you can meet your mother, you can talk and sit with quirrel, you can give many npc's delicate flowers, you can do every single optional thing in the game, thereby influencing little ghost to be substantially less hollow. which in this way it could be argued that the more hopeful endings are spawned from a more experienced player - you can defeat the radience with THK as your shades, killing you both but ending the cycle. You can defeat the radiance in godhome with everysingle one of your siblings, becoming a higher being yourself and saving the hollow knight from their torment + suffering. These more hopeful endings come with experience, with the most basic ending coming from not playing the game to it's fullest. so, arguably, little ghost isn't COMPLETELY hollow + without a mind, at least that's my interpretation anyway
I absolutely love your video essays and I enjoy the discussion of murderous reverence. That the people who treat the saviour as a holy, sacred being will see them dead, their faith and worship based on that eventual death. There is no escaping, you can't 'win' and survive, you can't against all odds slay the dragon and come out of it alive; your death is the win and you living is sacreligious. You'd feel like a monster for your desire for life and yet you'd do everything to live.
There's something really neat in the idea (as expressed by Team Cherry) that none of the endings are canon and are all equally valid. Because even though we'd traditionally see the sacrifice ending (confusingly and fittingly called "Hollow Knight) as the bad one, but it's also the one with more stakes (though I agree that if there is no mind or will, there is a lot less of a sacrifice). It's also the one where the Void doesn't eradicate the Radiance, which is also interesting in that it leaves neither god at the peak of their influence.
Yeah, even Hornet who is kind of a hands off guide says that there's a harder choice and she'd prefer if you did that but still actively leaves the choice with the Knight, and by extension, the player and I like that! I didn't know Team Cherry considered all of them to be on equal ground but it's very fitting, and also builds into the potential of the Knight to develop that will if they keep digging
I think it is an interesting detail that, in the white palace, there is a room for a baby, implied to be the room that held the Hollow Knight that became the vessel. By the King treating it with a small amount of kindness, he gave the Knight enough personhood to not be a perfect vessel. And then the player controlling the ghost comes along and we give the vessel another kind of personhood in the god trials. Arguably! I definitely need to play Ender Lilies now!
I love the comparison you bring up between Lily (in Ender Lillies) and the child in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas as it’s one of my favourite short stories. Both two characters who operate not just in unfair or cruel worlds but unconventionally unfixable ones too. I haven’t seen any of your other videos before but this was an amazing watch! However, while I can definitely understand your argument that Lily suffers a crueler fate to begin with because she has a mind and chord to begin with I feel that the knight’s fate is equally tragic due to the bug ambiguously not beginning with a mind yet forming one throughout the narrative both through dream-like sequences of the kingdoms past but also through viscerally experiencing its origin through talking with beings like the White Lady and reentering the Abyss and seeing it’s siblings corpses. While it is not explicitly shown that the knight has gained a “mind” in experiencing these memories actions I find it very likely, thus equally tragic, since the Hollow Knight itself was a being born of similar circumstances to the knight yet it has the ability to love its misguided father: a singular trait taken advantage of by the infection, so I find it very likely the same can be said of our very own knight since they share the same origin. The knight chooses to return to the kingdom and even arguably making friends and confronting its past when it did not need to return to the kingdom that created, abandoned and warped its nature it still does. After all why should we trust the words of a Pale King who believed the Hollow Knight to be incorruptible in the first place? The Pale King is an unreliable nature and while he definitely did hollow out the nature of his children to some extent I don’t believe it was fully, I find that the actions of the knight and hollow knight only showcase that whilst their mind/soul might have been subdued that have not been erased: they merely need the experiences to awaken them once again. Sorry for the ramble, I really love fate video, I just thought I would add why I find the knight equally tragic to Lily.
You’ve made me interested in Ender Lilies now. I can’t watch this for a while now because I have to play another metroidvania to prevent myself from being spoiled. I will see you all later, thanks for putting this game on my radar. It’s a fantasy metroidvania, perfect for my tastes.
It's an absolutely gorgeous game in art, music and plot to string together and the controls are pretty precision based like Hollow Knight! I hope you enjoy playing it when you get to it 💛
Ender Lilies is one of the very few games without spoken dialog, which made me cry and feel depressed/deeply sad while playing it. Seeing Lily be practically pure as snow at the beginning, to becoming almost completely corrupted by the end... left me honestly broken. I felt like her mother, but a horrible one that forced my child to go through pointless, undo suffering. All for a cause for which she had no choice in fighting for or not.
I think you got a little bit wrong about the story.(Sorry for the wall of text). Her mother didn't want to have any child of her own. She was reaching a breaking point as she could no longer continue to purify the people who got the blight. So in order to save her mother and the kingdoms, the king ordered the mages and scientists to begin artificially producing 8 clones of her mother, you can see them lying ded later on through out the map. These clones, aka her sisters, were originally used as a sacrificial lambs to begin a ritual so that they would absorb a large chunk of blight from her mother to ease the suffering and share it among the 8 clones. But her mother saw the clones as her own children and purposely made the ritual fail so that her children wouldn't have to suffer like she did. Then everything went out of control and the 8 sisters were taken out of lab leaving her mother behind as the blight was getting worse. However, before escaping the lab, they managed to make the 9th clone, aka, the Lily that you play as. Since the 9th clone was made in a hurry, she remained unconscious for very long time. Then, the rain caring blight spore started to happen and turned everyone into blight beings. The 9th clone woke up and the story begin. As you can see, her mother didn't force her to start any adventure at all as she had no desire to bear any child and wanted to deal with the blight alone. The 9th Lily was cloned artificially by the order of the king as the last ditch effort to deal with the the spread of the blight, which was the kingdom's fault in the first place as they keep messing around with it like experimenting on live subjects.
one of my favorite example/subversion? of this trope is prince lothric from darks souls 3 the prince born specifically to link the fire yet he is cursed beyond believe ,having a frail body and never even swung his sword once at the end he decides to let the fire fades and the age of the flame ends . "Mind you, the mantle of Lord interests me none. The fire linking curse, the legacy of lords, let it all fade into nothing. You’ve done quite enough, now have your rest."
I'm so glad to be seeing someone talk about Ender Lilies, I've seen so many people start the game and just not give it a chance at all because the movement isn't super snappy or it's got a difficulty spike. I was too interested in the story to put the game down, but it seems to me from what I've seen that more people measure the merit of a game based solely on the gameplay and not the story being told. Games are such an interesting medium for storytelling and I feel like it's not treated like as much of a real storytelling medium as books or movies. This video is lovely to see, I love the way you talk about these games.
Excellent video I loved it! It makes me reflect upon why stories about sacrifice of children for the sins of their fathers is seeing a resurgence at the moment....
With all the clip references you use, I can't help but hope for more videos on those stories too, especially Signalis and Slay the Princess. Maybe something on the concept of having to experience every outcome to better know yourself, and find a new end to your story? Or perhaps finding new peace in a doomed narrative. Keep up the great work!
Another banger, and an inspiration as always. That said, Im not too proud to admit that when you said "be a good little lamb, get on the altar" the only thought in my head was "yes ma'am"
This channel is criminally underrated. I've sent this and your Bloodborne video to my gaming chat. I love how both of these games immerse themselves in darkness and find a way to show how to make our own light when there's none to be found.
I like how the idea of the knight making a choice being what dooms the world around it because there's a hopeful version of this as well. The knight can give the God seeker a flower and if it is given the ending is different, with the flower somehow absorbing the God seeker and the knight as well as the void inside of it, using your video as a frame for this we can say the Knight made a choice of giving the flower...choosing to show kindness like the many others showed him as he travelled in Hallownest, and with that he saved them, the void following his will and being absorbed by said kindness. I really like your content, your Bloodborne essay is so amazing and this one is on the same level! Amazing work!
I'm so grateful to this video for existing, and to Honey Bat for making it. It was actually one of the streams on this channel that first convinced me to pick up Ender Lilies, which has become one of my favorite games (along with Hollow Knight). And I couldn't ask for better timing on this video's release. Many thanks!
i love your video essays, you do a really great job of choosing music and clips that are resonant with the mood you're going for and the themes you're covering! your videos aren't just well-written, they're crafted in a way that supports your writing in a way only this medium can. speaking of: as a huge madoka magica fan, i love your subtle inclusions of it and i spent the whole video thinking about the themes you mentioned in relation to that show. if you're ever interested in covering madoka magica in more detail in a future essay, i'd love to see it! regardless of what you decide to cover, i'll totally be there for it. congrats on the release, time to watch this video like 10 more times!
I'd love to do a Madoka video! I need to watch all the wider media around it as I've only seen the 12 part series without the films or anything, though admittedly I have watched the series a fair few times at this point. I've considered writing something before and gone welllll everyone knows about Madoka, it always comes up in discussions of magical girls so there's nothing really I can contribute that won't have already been said a million times but that's also what stopped me doing Hollow Knight for so long. I thought there'd be loads of stuff like this but when I actually looked, it was predominantly lore summary rather than analysis, which is still fascinating but also there's something I can add here! (this also happened with Bloodborne XD)
@@HoneyBat so much of its discussion in magical girl circles is just arguing whether it destroyed the genre or not (it didn't, obv) instead of engaging with its core ideas😭definitely a similar situation to hollow knight where it's so good that you'd expect everyone to have covered it in depth by now. i really like sulmatul's "in defense of sayaka miki" and anime slushie's ep-by-ep discussions though! also imo the only other part of the franchise worth watching is rebellion and maaaaaybe the manga "the different story", there's tons of side material but it's much more generic and less thematically coherent than the 12-ep show. the show is just so immaculately self-contained!
This... is interesting. There's a compliment encapsulated in there that I can barely comprehend, much less express, delirious as I am from a lack of sleep.
A brilliantly made and well thought out video. Well done. These and Ori 2 are my favorite metroidvanias, not just in gameplay, but in the weight of the stories. You've put it more poignantly than most how truely tragic being born to die is, but that's the magic of the stories that really matter. "Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Cuz they were holding onto something... That there's some good in the world... and it's worth fighting for."
It was an honor to be part of the video, I woke up at 2am and played the best Hollow Knight of my life for this and it was worth reinstalling the game for the 8th time
Tuloks new Elden Ring run was exploring themes of motherhood and femininity while he was running around gathering Scadutree fragments and I thought of you when he brought up Bloodborne. Yay parallels!
This got me jumping up and down because I actually found your channel a week ago and just binged all your videos in a day and wasn't expecting anything soon. Thanks for the content ma'am. love ya 🫡
Something about your videos is so comforting, your bloodborne, nier, and cat lady video I rewatch often. Sometimes I fall asleep to your videos after finishing it, idk what it is but your voice and the subject of what you talk about is somehow so comfortable to me.
I discovered your Bloodborne video right when Ender Lillies got handed out as a PS+ game. I've already bought Ender Magnolia in early access on Steam because holy crap, these are gorgeous games.
Didn’t watch yet but got the notif that a new honey bat vid dropped, oh i am so excited!!! Edit: as expected, AMAZING video!! Appreciate your talent in weaving in literary references into these analyses :)
I've been watching your videos on repeat every now and then. They speak to me in very innate way and I truly apprete how beautifully you portray what you want to relay. Life has been a bit tumultuous for me and seeing a new video really lifted my spirits! Especially when I was very much scouring your channel yesterday so this really feels like a special treat. You have my best wishes in whatever you try to do and well thank you for cheering me up!
You didn't need to jumpscare me with Long Quiet like that! If it weren't for the specific part about the MC taking the issues of the world INTO themself, I'd say you probably could've talked about him a bit too.
Coming back to this video later and thank you for making this video. I some how stumbled into ending A in Ender Lilies without realising it and then after that I didn't play much else of the game after that. I started replaying it this week and I realised there is so much of the game that I missed. Your video has helped me to appreciate this beautiful game even more.
Lovely coincidence, I have just finished Ender Lilies and here you are with a video essay. Thank you, dear. Something of note about the improvement via leveling: Lily's improvements are... interesting, as they seem to be based on the Blight as well. From what I understand, after you defeat a story boss, the game advances by a "chapter". This seems to be why spirits you pick up later on start at a higher level (well that and a bit of game balance to not waste your time with new level 1 scrubs...). Now, spirits are also improved by infusing them with blight (or ancient souls for the Umbral Knight) which you have taken from blighted bodies all over, purifying them. So by purifying the bosses and taking on an ostensibly large amount of Blight, your connection to the blighted spirits seems to grow more intense. Or something like that, does that make any sense? There is also the matter of exp for leveling up, which is not called such, it's also Blight. Certain blighted items held dear by their owners can increase the Blight you absorb from enemies you kill (but don't properly purify, I suppose?). It's interesting, this obviously dangerous thing that is transformed into power to help more victims, weaponizing a plague in a sense. Also something about Faden I find interesting. Besides the name being likely German for "thread", he seems to be cradling something which looks rather insectoid to me. This "bundle" is apparently also where he fires his attacks from, "Manipulates Blighted to blast enemies" as it says in the game. Due to his intense cradling of this blighted bundle I can't help but read this as him holding either the Miriel/child hybrid in a cocoon of sorts (we do see a large one in the background, too, from which the monster likely emerged) or maybe even the blighted baby itself. It would be a contrast of a caring lover and/or father compared to the mean-spirited last king of the land, whom you touched upon as well. Implicitly, Faden is also father to the clones, of course and he did in fact care... to a degree. Video essay about parenthood when?
Always love hearing your insights on games like this. I don’t think I ever quite picked up on the idea that the Knight is empty not only because it needs to be a vessel but also the idea that it can’t have will or a soul or thoughts because otherwise they’ll be corrupted. I never really thought of that but it’s such a fascinating concept! And like, the idea that Hornet names it “Ghost” as an acknowledgment of her respect and as almost a gift is so cool! Also I’ve never heard of Ender Lillies until now but yeah I’m completely sold here. Definitely gonna check it out. Btw, I noticed at one point you put a Clip from Slay the Princess, any chance you’ll be making a video on that? It’s probably my favorite game I’ve played this year and I’d definitely be fascinated to hear your thoughts on it.
Thank you so much for this beautiful video, I love your content! When I found you before I binged everything in a day and was devastated there wasn't tons more and now I'm getting new stuff!
I find Fretia fascinating in this context. She was the duty bound sacrifice in this world, someone who would bear the pain of carrying the Blight. Except, she had people who truly cared for her, who wanted to save her from her fate. And that love and care is what turned her sacrifice into the kingdoms downfall. Meanwhile Lily was made to sacrifice herself to save Fretia, but the true ending is only possible because of Eleine, Fretia's childhood friend, and the one person who saw her as Fretia, not the Priestess of the Fount, who delivered the Aegis Curio to the Parish where Lily slept under Fretias wishes to spare her from her own fate.
I've enjoyed your bloodborne essay about a half dozen times. Cat lady a few, ouroboros a couple of times and even your silent hill essay, a series i have zero investment in, i found thoroughly enjoyable... And now you're talking about hollow knight??? Next you'll be talking about Lies of P and I'll have to change my answer when people ask for my favourite UA-cam gaming channel. (Currently you're second only to Jacob Geller but only really through quantity, quality wise I can't separate the two of you
I neeeeeed to play Lies of P, it looks very up my alley hahaha. Also thank you for such a lovely comment! I love Jacob Geller's channel so the comparison is an honour 💛
I'm of a completely different interpretation of Ender Lilies' and what I consider to be an overlooked theme and message of the narrative, and I'm realizing that it's fundamentally incompatible with your analysis and interpretation. It's frustrating because I like hearing different ideas, but I'm really one-tracked on what I think Ender Lilies is communicating that hearing an almost polar opposite take is causing some real dissonance. I wrote an extremely long thing here so... buckle up. I basically forsook sleeping so if it becomes insane babble that's like 20% the reason (the other 80% is genuine insanity, forgive me) The key thing I want to draw attention to first is that, while the White Priestesses were burdened with the role of taking on the Blight for the benefit of others, its heavily emphasized again and again that by and large the Priestesses were seen as people - and as children - before they were seen for their powers. The world (as in the people of the Kingdom) is not telling Lily to sacrifice herself like you suggest in 16:06. The only case when this statement is true is when 'the world' refers to ONLY the Blight itself, and its complete coverage of the world that Lily traverses in the game (Stick a pin in this I bring this up again later). While Lily *definitely* can say 'no', the issue isn't that other people are muzzling her, ignoring her, or forcing her against her will. There literally is nobody left alive to even do that. Her spirit allies are fragments of what used to be the minds of people in the Kingdom, the Blighted are undead being prevented from permanently dying, and the Umbral Knight is a spectral entity whose oath to the White Priestesses prevents him from dying until the White Priestesses either all die out or the Blight is defeated. Lily has awoken to a world where she *cannot* fix or save anything. The Kingdom fell years, if not decades, ago. If she ever was in line to be a Chosen One, she's definitely not one now. The best she can actually do here is the equivalent to cleanup or being an undertaker. Her ability to Purify only serves to free individuals from undeath - which doesn't revive them, but allows them to properly die and know rest. She's essentially missed her 'calling' if you were to view this as one of those types of stories. And yet... Lily defaults to following a path that would lead her to seeking the source of the Blight. Why? Did someone tell her to? Nope. Was there a prophecy she knew about? Amnesiac, remember? Her only contact is the Umbral Knight - and he doesn't want Lily to stay in the Kingdom. So what's the deal? Why can't she say 'no'? The issue is that Lily herself hasn't made a conscious decision to say 'no' OR NOT say 'no'. She is acting out of her own instinctual desire to help others - which is a personality trait/flaw inherited from her mother, Fretia, and a universal trait among all priestesses. The Umbral Knight's primary, personal motivation at the start of the game isn't to lead Lily towards her doom as a sacrificial lamb. That would be his official job as Umbral Knight if things weren't already (un)dead and decayed, but here, from the moment he appears, he pushes Lily to get out of the Blighted lands with her life intact. He actively *discourages* her from the path towards sacrifice, would rather she didn't Purify anything, and treats her as a fragile, vulnerable human being. The Umbral Knight's goal from the beginning is to persuade Lily to say 'no' to dying for the sake of others - especially since it's completely pointless as there appears to be no more lives left to save. Examples of the Umbral Knight seeing Lily as a human being before a White Priestess: 16:17 "You think me the sort of wretch to leave a *child* out in this horrid rain?" Umbral Knight expressing concern for Lily's wellbeing purely because she's a child. 16:31 "It may prove difficult, but *can you* carry on?" Asking if Lily has the strength to keep moving after Purifying someone for the first time - and it immediately making its toll on her body known. (He also frequently suggests stops at benches and other respites. In a meta sense, he's hinting the player to save the game at a rest point, but in-universe he is being mindful of Lily's condition.) 16:36 "It is said that priestesses have hold over their senses, despite the Blight. But this seems *far too much* for anyone to bear..." Expressing unease towards Lily pushing herself to what might already be beyond the limit of a typical priestess. He doesn't like seeing Lily do this to herself, even if he's seen or heard that priestess are strong. 16:50 "As important as Purification is... *A Priestess must also think of herself*" He's trying, oh heavens he's trying so hard to tell Lily to not harm herself. He doesn't want her to die, he wants her to stop, but he knows Lily is determined to do this. It doesn't make it okay, though. And it's not a compassion he extends only to Lily. In 15:29 he says "What a tragic end." to the discovery of a fallen priestess. Iirc he comments on almost all of them, expressing remorse for their lives ending too soon - as opposed to say, lamenting that they didn't fulfill their 'destiny' as pawns. In a delicious twist of irony, the player choosing to *not* trigger the early 'neutral ending' (18:30) is essentially Lily saying 'no' to the Umbral Knight. She exercises her autonomy just as the Umbral Knight has been urging her to do, but does so in the complete opposite of what he hoped for. She instead refuses his wishes and commits herself to a path that will either kill her in the end like the other priestesses (bad ending), or bring closure to the suffering of the Blighted (true ending).
Other priestesses were treated similarly to Lily before she woke up. From Gerrod's flashback, the white priestess in his memory is not 'Our Lily', but another priestess from before. We can see in 17:10 that he feels awful that he, a warrior who uses his strength to shield others from pain, must allow a small child to come to harm for his sake. It violates his morals and sense of what is just, but knowing that him falling to madness would doom so many more, he reluctantly accepts the priestess' offer to sacrifice herself to preserve his mind. But it was not his first choice: he sooner gave up his human right to die, and submitted himself to experiments that turned him into a deathless warrior, before he accepted allowing one small priestess to take his place and suffer. Practically every spirit Lily meets (that still has a semblance of mind left over) does the minimum of aiding her in battle or exploration, if not also communicating with her through their final words: 16:21 "I'm sorry, I've only added to your burdens" - Sir Julius regretting his failure to the White Priestess about to take on the Blight that destroyed him. 15:13 "To protect her... I must..." Guardian Siegrid trying to hold onto her sanity by remembering her duty to care for the White Priestesses (more on her later). The White Priestesses were always people to everyone around them. Faden's idea and then successful creation of clones of Fretia - the White Priestesses that include Our Lily - was not something done out of whimsy, but out of necessity. Fretia was dying: the Blight was too much for only the Priestess of the Font to face alone. And if she passed with no successor like her, then everyone is doomed. Despite the feat of creating clones and then using them to spread out the burden amongst themselves, and even bolster Fretia's ailing strength, nobody - much less Faden - were pleased with this approach. Sacrificing the priestesses was never an act that sat comfortably with others, and nobody excused nor forgave themselves for it. Even so, it was done out of a tragic combination of the people being desperate to survive, and the priestesses being naturally inclined toward offering themselves up - even if people give them the freedom to say 'no' like how the Umbral Knight attempts with Lily. Even the Priestess of the Font, Fretia, expresses self-loathing for having no other option than to count on her children to die for her sake - even if they were willing to. However, sparing them would doom everyone for sure, while letting them die would buy some more time for Faden and other researchers to find a more sustainable and ethical solution to the Blight (which ultimately came from Faden's research and work, but never saw fruition before it was too late). On the note of Faden, 23:12 he probably wouldn't be able to look Lily in the eye. Even if he's forgiven over and over by Lily or other priestesses. It should be noted though, that the spirit that opens the doors for Lily so she can gather the pieces for the Aegis Curio *is* Faden. It's a fragment of his spirit, but I feel this shows that he is absolutely in support of Lily ending this specific nightmare he created - his atonement, if you will. Also, I think something could be said about how we don't even face him as a boss (we fight Miriel instead). We find Faden's corpse in his lab, and obtain his spirit there with not much fanfare or difficulty, almost like he was waiting for someone like Lily to find him so that he could help her. If he wanted to help her *that* much, then perhaps that's how he resisted turning into a feral monster?
Now is a good time to bring up Guardian Siegrid. She wanted to protect Lily, and in fact this was her job. She was tasked to look after all White Priestesses, including Our Lily while she was asleep/comatose. Before the priestess that we control however, Siegrid was the guardian of another one named who was also named Lily (as you know, she's where Our Lily gets her name from). This other Lily was the last priestess that Siegrid had contact with. Siegrid spent a lot of time with her and cared deeply for her. She kept the other Lily company, answered her questions, and effectively raised her despite knowing they will inevitably be torn apart by their duties. The White Priestess that we find in 28:09 was that priestess Siegrid bonded with - that Lily - and unlike other Priestesses, her name was recorded in her personal journal AND Siegrid remembers her by name in her flashback. This is strong evidence that they had a closer bond than what Siegrid had with other priestesses, and since we find Lily dead in the place she should have been safest in - and not even remotely close to where she would have been 'destined' to end up - we can probably guess why Siegrid finally broke. Of course, Our Lily adopting the name as her own is a huge gesture. Our Lily was not brought into a world eager to welcome her, and the Umbral Knight reasonably avoided naming her himself because his personal goal was to convince her to leave him behind - which would prove harder for him if he named her. Our Lily choosing to take the name as her own carries multiple symbolic meanings. First, it honors the Lily whom looked forward to being there when she woke up. In a way, she is mourning a sister she never had a chance to meet, and taking her name is a way to keep her close - just as that Lily wanted. And that in itself is pretty powerful. Second, this is probably the only thing Our Lily receives from someone else that *isn't* Blight, making it one of the few positive things Our Lily has obtained that becomes a part of herself. But there is one thing in particular though that I feel is overlooked: Our Lily would have no use for a name if she intended to not live another day. So by adopting one, it also makes it abundantly clear that Our Lily has every intention to survive the events of the story, and not sacrifice herself senselessly. This is that 'no' that the Umbral Knight wanted all along! Finally, because I feel the White Priestesses as a whole were always seen as actual people AND children before the powers they possess, the question of Our Lily's personhood was never up for debate. If there ever was a doubt that Lily had personhood or the capacity to self-actualize, then the Umbral Knight wouldn't have had such a strong motive to talk to Our Lily into leaving it all behind. Letting the empty vessel throw herself into a meaningless end would have ended his own cycle of undead servitude - as there would be no more living priestesses for him to escort. Meanwhile, convincing the vessel to leave the Kingdom behind would instead curse the Umbral Knight to persist as a spirit bound to the Blighted ruins of the Kingdom for as long as Our Lily lives. Why prolong your own painful misery for something that has no "soul" inside? It wouldn't make sense to, unless there was actually *a person* to save in the first place. To me, Fretia's "You're your own person, Lily" (28:34) is not her bestowing personhood to Lily, but rather affirming the revelation Lily made that ALL Priestesses could be more than what their mother became. If you forgive me being blunt here, then I will say that Fretia is a 'Failure', and that she knows that. She's had plenty of time to re-examine her life while trapped in the pits of effectively hell, and she probably had become heavily critical of herself for never saying 'no'. Can you heal more people per day than your body can sustain? Will you birth an heir or two? Can you stop being Fretia the Human and instead be only Fretia, the Priestess of the Font? Fretia's own personal misery and frustrations with life - the erosion of her physical health, the loss of time for her hobbies, and her own self-worth - are things she could have avoided if she dared to say 'no'. And it is not like she couldn't! She was the only woman with healing powers, and even before the Blight people both needed her and respected her. Putting aside the few that did see her as a means to an end, many people sincerely adored her (and to their own doom, emulated her self-sacrificing nature) yet had no idea that she was in tremendous pain and feeling cripplingly isolated and lonely. Fretia is not blameless when it comes to her unhappiness, and she realizes far, far too late that her natural instincts are actually very harmful to her if left uncontrolled. It is too late for her to fix the mistakes she made, but for the children cloned from her - who inherited the same fatal flaws - still had futures ahead of them, but only if they could identify their flaws and change their ways before it was too late. Our Lily made Fretia proud by realizing that she had the right to say 'no' and then actually saying 'no'. Having the mindfulness to examine her own motives and reflect on them, and then change course to suit a new goal that she defined, is a major sign of maturity and personal development. It demonstrates that Our Lily can not only tell other people around her 'no', but she can even tell herself 'no' and then take a new initiative. That's a lot of growth to see in a child! But above all, it means she has already surpassed her mother and guaranteed that she will not live her life making the same mistakes as Fretia did. No wonder Fretia would be proud of Our Lily for figuring this out almost entirely by herself!
All of this insanely long babbling to conclude with what I believe to be the overlooked message of Ender Lilies: self-sacrifice is a sin disguised as virtue. It infects the minds of others, consumes them whole, and tears through humanity like a true Blight. If everyone is in a hurry to sacrifice themselves without hesitation, then only utter ruin awaits. This is the thing I said to stick a pin in for right at the top: *THIS* is "The World telling Lily she must sacrifice herself". Except its not the world as made up of people, but instead the world corrupted by the Blight that's trying to trick her. It's trying to poison her mind with the same self-destructive martyrdom that will ultimately achieve nothing in the end, and have her throw her life away for naught. But in the true end, Our Lily says 'no'. And instead, she finds a path that leads to bringing closure to the dead and tortured, ending their purgatory by ridding the Blight at its source. She also absolves the sins of the self-sacrificing - including her mother - without making the same mistake that they all made. The Kingdom, its dead, and all the characters we met outside of Our Lily, can finally rest in peace. Our Lily lives on to close this dark chapter in her world's history, and then is free to start another written by her own hand. And the only thing she really did that was different from anyone else, was that she acted a little selfishly, and chose to not give up her life for anything or anyone. What makes this entire interpretation of mine such a headache to reconcile against your take is a few things I've described: Like the interpretation of where Lily is coming from when her journey begins, how other people view her and the other Priestesses, and what the game's message is for me. To me, there is no question such as 'how much is a life worth?', because the setting quickly establishes that there is nothing for Lily to save in sacrificing herself, so regardless of how valuable her life may be, she will be trading it for nothing. Instead, Ender Lilies imo is a story communicating a cautionary tale of self-destructive behavior being confused for virtue. Less an open ended philosophy question, more an Aesop moral - and a damn good one.
With Hollow Knight, i have a lot of thoughts about the Void and What It Is. The themes of darkness, of forgetting, the way that our Vessel can weild the Dream Nail and enter dreams and collect echoes even of forgotten souls not just warrior ones, and the way that the void exists as it is regardless of if anyone knows about it-I am of the personal opinion that the Void is, itself, a higher being and thats part of how the Lord of Shadows is formed. If the Pale King and the Radience are not just light, but life and dreams and logic and physical consciousness and emotion, then the Void is apathy, instinctual consciousness and subconsciousness, it is illogical and death and darkness and the lack of dreams, of nightmares. Void is, in that way, peace and order, not chaos. It unifies, quiets, and collects like a grim reaper. It is an end to suffering, to the pain of remembrance, to an echoing existence. It absorbs light so completely, of course the thoughts and life and emotions of a void being cannot be typically percieved. And it doesnt help that the Vessels are all children meant to be sacrificed before their birth to become vessels. But i wholly believe that the Pale King never understood what he was experimenting with, that the way void beings given a more recognizable form learn is the same as how children learn. They only seem mindless, thoughtless, because they are so alien that the typical bug and higher being of Hollow Knight cannot recognize what theyre looking at properly.
It makes you wonder what the ancient civilization that worshipped the void was like? Did these ancient bugs try to achieve the same level of emptiness as the void, divesting themselves to it or tried to understand it like the pale king?
Listening to this while practicing Absolute Radiance, I’m so close to beating the fifth pantheon I can taste it. I love how much work it takes to get an ending that’s still pretty damn bleak, but none the less well worth effort
You've probably been bothered by this a bunch already, but the last scene for Hollow Knight's "Embrace the Void" ending, it's the Hollow Knight that staggers out of the Black Egg Temple. Not Ghost. I think it changes the ending of your thesis by just a little bit, mostly because it asks the question "what happens after the sacrifice, the pain, after everything is over?" It reminds me to the end of the book series LotR, which you referred at the start of the essay; even after everything, the scars and trauma and horrors of the experience follows the hero home. In this case, it's draped across the last surviving sibling that Hornet has. Also! Love the analysis for Ender Lilies. Such a beautiful game, and such somber themes. Every move to aid the White Priestess only serves to hurt her more.
Thank you for this lovely video, Especially since i was never able to play Hollow Knight... For me the worst possible fate is to have to live as male. Thankfully you get to be Hornet in the sequel. Between this and Hades 2 Its going to be such a treat to get to play these critically claimed games.
I always considered the Embrace the Void ending scene with Hornet was kind of just a "here's what else is going on in the world". Not a scene where the Knight controls THK. Mostly because, THK doesn't help us kill Absolute Radience, The Knight does, as the Shade Lord. Completely on it's own. That's an interesting conclusion.
Great video! I've recently been reading the works of George Battaile and was turned on to Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs. Definitely resonant to the theme of sacrifice, though the sacrifice itself seems to qualify the value.
The music and art is gorgeous in both of these!! Very different styles but they're both incredible games- I'm hoping more people get into Ender Lilies if they see it with Hollow Knight too ^.^
Content Warning: Absence of Silksong is legendary
I yeeeeeeeearn
I haven't even gotten todays daily silksong news yet 😭
Move over, "Evil is the absence of God", true evil is the Absence of Silksong.
Omg I literally JUST rewatched the Bloodborne essay last night and was like “man I hope we get a new essay soon”
Ta da!! Hope you enjoy it haha 💛
@@HoneyBat I very much am!!
I regularly put that one on to fall asleep to, and sometimes just to listen to when I'm chillin
@@dreamfletcher779 that’s precisely why I put it on actually lol
Yeah, that one popped up in my feed again just this morning.
This is such an interesting read. Personally I read so much personality into our little ghost. They’re strange and alien, but they have choices they can make independent of us. We choose to sit with Quirrel, and Marissa, but Ghost is the one who gives us the option in the first place. I hesitate to trust the Pale King’s trust in his own ability to create an empty vessel when out of tens of thousands his one judged a success eventually failed.
That's a really lovely way of looking at it! Having the option presented meaning that's something the Knight would actually do 💛
The one he judged a success failed because the Empty Vessel was filled with one day's worth of a father's love. The Pale King, in spite of the horrific extent to which he would sacrifice to save the kingdom he created, longed for something more than just one more sacrifice to make. If he had left well enough alone and kept his cold veneer to the bitter end, the Empty Vessel would have succeeded.
The King's folly did him in. That folly? To stop sacrificing, even for one moment, and allow himself a tender time with his creation. That faltering of will cost him everything that his cruel design needed to succeed.
This was not a creature just doing as it pleased. It was a creature desperate to save the life it had made. *No cost too great.*
@@conormccue2871 the cut scene regarding out little Knight's past suggests otherwise. Despite how 'hollow' they're supposed to be... The Vessel looked back. They didn't stay or help us, but they still looked back. If it was only following what was intended, it likely shouldn't have. But it did.
A point at 41:17 Hornet is waiting for you at the black egg temple and The Hollow Knight leaves the temple, not the ghost/knight, it has the Hollow Knight's nail and is wearing its tattered cloak and is much bigger than you are. With the Absolute Radiance truly defeated, the Hollow Knight no longer needs to be contained and is free.
I was just about to comment this but duck on my face for not expecting someone else to already have commented it.
@@waderomonosky6706 Yes, there's many clues that it's the Hollow Knight approaching hornet : the "chin" of that person is very pointy, their cloak is tattered and they have a long, broken Pure Nail.
Bug-Sam: Take my Tarsus!
Bug-Frodo: Which one?
I thought a tarsus was the thing the doctor who rode in
/sarcasm
Unless.. you give the GodSeeker a flower. A pale, fragile flower. From near the farthest reaches to the garbage pit you find it locked away in.
I still need to get through the later areas of the game, but I always liked how Lilly isn't necessarily the one that fights, but the spirits that protect her. I think games should be more creative in that way so they can represent more kinds of people in their stories, including those who aren't capable of swinging a sword.
I guess it's a detail I'm very peculiar about because of my chronic illness and it really drew me to the game that I might play as someone I could relate to. It almost is more meaningful for me to see in a game that features violence than seeing it in your typical non-violent comfy games.
The travesty of not acknowledging Ender Lilies’s music, sung and hummed by Mili shall not be forgiven. It is by far one of the best soundtracks in all of the games I have ever played and adds so much depth to the story and lily’s character. That aside, great video! Can’t wait for the next one
I can't believe I forgot to actually name Mili but my original plan was to end with Bulbel so there'd a be a Priestess singing (never sure whether it's meant to be Lily or Fretia or both singing?) but it immediately restricted the video both with the main and instrumental version 😭 hopefully more people will find Ender Lilies because of this video though and get to hear it!!
41:13 as someone whose never played hollow knight: oh, so THATS why people are so excited for silksong.
I kinda disagree about the little guy lacking all will in HK, mostly because of ending 1. We know that in the first ending the Knight's eyes shine orange when the radiance was sealed in it, implying that it was going to go the same way HK sealing the radiance did... which sort of implies that there was a will hidden somewhere deep inside the knight.
Other than that, amazing video. I loved both HK and Ender Lillies. Now if only they released Silk Song 😭
Yeah, I largely think that the Knight doesn't have will right now, but has the potential for it considering the ending after Absolute Radiance, and given how much the other bugs are interacting with it... It's probably only a matter of time which is so tragic, love breaks them. I thought the orange in the Night's eyes in ending 1 was just the shell being filled up with the plague but you could certainly read it that way!
The knight is a perfect vessel according to the white lady though, but it can be said that she is just senile
I love how you specify video essay everytime
Hahahaha, my partner says I should for doing algorithm stuff but also it's about the theeeeeeeeeemes! Love a theme XD
That thumbnail and Channel name threw me so much into a loop, then remembered its the lady who did the Rose video that i rewatched 5 times. I immediately lock in
Eyyy really glad you liked the Rule of Rose one! (One day when I have time I want to make a CHUNKY video on that because I adore that game), but ye! thanks for watching this one too! 💛
my personal interpretation of little Ghost is that , while they start out hollow at the beginning of the game, their experiences develop and change them (alike to how THK failed to be truly empty because of their relationship with the pale king) - all depending on what the player chooses to do.
You can save the grubs, talk with hornet about your life, her life, and her very strong opinions on you, you can meet your mother, you can talk and sit with quirrel, you can give many npc's delicate flowers, you can do every single optional thing in the game, thereby influencing little ghost to be substantially less hollow.
which in this way it could be argued that the more hopeful endings are spawned from a more experienced player - you can defeat the radience with THK as your shades, killing you both but ending the cycle. You can defeat the radiance in godhome with everysingle one of your siblings, becoming a higher being yourself and saving the hollow knight from their torment + suffering.
These more hopeful endings come with experience, with the most basic ending coming from not playing the game to it's fullest.
so, arguably, little ghost isn't COMPLETELY hollow + without a mind, at least that's my interpretation anyway
I absolutely love your video essays and I enjoy the discussion of murderous reverence. That the people who treat the saviour as a holy, sacred being will see them dead, their faith and worship based on that eventual death. There is no escaping, you can't 'win' and survive, you can't against all odds slay the dragon and come out of it alive; your death is the win and you living is sacreligious. You'd feel like a monster for your desire for life and yet you'd do everything to live.
There's something really neat in the idea (as expressed by Team Cherry) that none of the endings are canon and are all equally valid. Because even though we'd traditionally see the sacrifice ending (confusingly and fittingly called "Hollow Knight) as the bad one, but it's also the one with more stakes (though I agree that if there is no mind or will, there is a lot less of a sacrifice).
It's also the one where the Void doesn't eradicate the Radiance, which is also interesting in that it leaves neither god at the peak of their influence.
Yeah, even Hornet who is kind of a hands off guide says that there's a harder choice and she'd prefer if you did that but still actively leaves the choice with the Knight, and by extension, the player and I like that! I didn't know Team Cherry considered all of them to be on equal ground but it's very fitting, and also builds into the potential of the Knight to develop that will if they keep digging
I'm delighted to see someone talking about ender lilies. Such a striking piece.
I think it is an interesting detail that, in the white palace, there is a room for a baby, implied to be the room that held the Hollow Knight that became the vessel. By the King treating it with a small amount of kindness, he gave the Knight enough personhood to not be a perfect vessel. And then the player controlling the ghost comes along and we give the vessel another kind of personhood in the god trials. Arguably!
I definitely need to play Ender Lilies now!
I love the comparison you bring up between Lily (in Ender Lillies) and the child in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas as it’s one of my favourite short stories. Both two characters who operate not just in unfair or cruel worlds but unconventionally unfixable ones too. I haven’t seen any of your other videos before but this was an amazing watch!
However, while I can definitely understand your argument that Lily suffers a crueler fate to begin with because she has a mind and chord to begin with I feel that the knight’s fate is equally tragic due to the bug ambiguously not beginning with a mind yet forming one throughout the narrative both through dream-like sequences of the kingdoms past but also through viscerally experiencing its origin through talking with beings like the White Lady and reentering the Abyss and seeing it’s siblings corpses. While it is not explicitly shown that the knight has gained a “mind” in experiencing these memories actions I find it very likely, thus equally tragic, since the Hollow Knight itself was a being born of similar circumstances to the knight yet it has the ability to love its misguided father: a singular trait taken advantage of by the infection, so I find it very likely the same can be said of our very own knight since they share the same origin. The knight chooses to return to the kingdom and even arguably making friends and confronting its past when it did not need to return to the kingdom that created, abandoned and warped its nature it still does. After all why should we trust the words of a Pale King who believed the Hollow Knight to be incorruptible in the first place? The Pale King is an unreliable nature and while he definitely did hollow out the nature of his children to some extent I don’t believe it was fully, I find that the actions of the knight and hollow knight only showcase that whilst their mind/soul might have been subdued that have not been erased: they merely need the experiences to awaken them once again.
Sorry for the ramble, I really love fate video, I just thought I would add why I find the knight equally tragic to Lily.
Guys, guys wake up, Honeybat new upload!
Bat jumpscare! 🦇
You’ve made me interested in Ender Lilies now. I can’t watch this for a while now because I have to play another metroidvania to prevent myself from being spoiled. I will see you all later, thanks for putting this game on my radar. It’s a fantasy metroidvania, perfect for my tastes.
It's an absolutely gorgeous game in art, music and plot to string together and the controls are pretty precision based like Hollow Knight! I hope you enjoy playing it when you get to it 💛
It's so good! It can be pretty hard but I really encourage getting through it, it's so beautiful and satisfying
Ender Lilies is one of the very few games without spoken dialog, which made me cry and feel depressed/deeply sad while playing it. Seeing Lily be practically pure as snow at the beginning, to becoming almost completely corrupted by the end... left me honestly broken. I felt like her mother, but a horrible one that forced my child to go through pointless, undo suffering. All for a cause for which she had no choice in fighting for or not.
I think you got a little bit wrong about the story.(Sorry for the wall of text).
Her mother didn't want to have any child of her own. She was reaching a breaking point as she could no longer continue to purify the people who got the blight. So in order to save her mother and the kingdoms, the king ordered the mages and scientists to begin artificially producing 8 clones of her mother, you can see them lying ded later on through out the map. These clones, aka her sisters, were originally used as a sacrificial lambs to begin a ritual so that they would absorb a large chunk of blight from her mother to ease the suffering and share it among the 8 clones. But her mother saw the clones as her own children and purposely made the ritual fail so that her children wouldn't have to suffer like she did. Then everything went out of control and the 8 sisters were taken out of lab leaving her mother behind as the blight was getting worse. However, before escaping the lab, they managed to make the 9th clone, aka, the Lily that you play as. Since the 9th clone was made in a hurry, she remained unconscious for very long time. Then, the rain caring blight spore started to happen and turned everyone into blight beings. The 9th clone woke up and the story begin.
As you can see, her mother didn't force her to start any adventure at all as she had no desire to bear any child and wanted to deal with the blight alone. The 9th Lily was cloned artificially by the order of the king as the last ditch effort to deal with the the spread of the blight, which was the kingdom's fault in the first place as they keep messing around with it like experimenting on live subjects.
one of my favorite example/subversion? of this trope is prince lothric from darks souls 3 the prince born specifically to link the fire yet he is cursed beyond believe ,having a frail body and never even swung his sword once at the end he decides to let the fire fades and the age of the flame ends . "Mind you, the mantle of Lord interests me none. The fire linking curse, the legacy of lords, let it all fade into nothing. You’ve done quite enough, now have your rest."
I'm so glad to be seeing someone talk about Ender Lilies, I've seen so many people start the game and just not give it a chance at all because the movement isn't super snappy or it's got a difficulty spike. I was too interested in the story to put the game down, but it seems to me from what I've seen that more people measure the merit of a game based solely on the gameplay and not the story being told. Games are such an interesting medium for storytelling and I feel like it's not treated like as much of a real storytelling medium as books or movies. This video is lovely to see, I love the way you talk about these games.
Excellent video I loved it! It makes me reflect upon why stories about sacrifice of children for the sins of their fathers is seeing a resurgence at the moment....
With all the clip references you use, I can't help but hope for more videos on those stories too, especially Signalis and Slay the Princess. Maybe something on the concept of having to experience every outcome to better know yourself, and find a new end to your story? Or perhaps finding new peace in a doomed narrative. Keep up the great work!
Another banger, and an inspiration as always. That said, Im not too proud to admit that when you said "be a good little lamb, get on the altar" the only thought in my head was "yes ma'am"
This channel is criminally underrated. I've sent this and your Bloodborne video to my gaming chat.
I love how both of these games immerse themselves in darkness and find a way to show how to make our own light when there's none to be found.
I like how the idea of the knight making a choice being what dooms the world around it because there's a hopeful version of this as well.
The knight can give the God seeker a flower and if it is given the ending is different, with the flower somehow absorbing the God seeker and the knight as well as the void inside of it, using your video as a frame for this we can say the Knight made a choice of giving the flower...choosing to show kindness like the many others showed him as he travelled in Hallownest, and with that he saved them, the void following his will and being absorbed by said kindness.
I really like your content, your Bloodborne essay is so amazing and this one is on the same level! Amazing work!
We are so back. The theme of the sacrificial lamb is so interesting, glad you analysed Hollow Knight.
I'm so grateful to this video for existing, and to Honey Bat for making it. It was actually one of the streams on this channel that first convinced me to pick up Ender Lilies, which has become one of my favorite games (along with Hollow Knight). And I couldn't ask for better timing on this video's release. Many thanks!
i love your video essays, you do a really great job of choosing music and clips that are resonant with the mood you're going for and the themes you're covering! your videos aren't just well-written, they're crafted in a way that supports your writing in a way only this medium can. speaking of: as a huge madoka magica fan, i love your subtle inclusions of it and i spent the whole video thinking about the themes you mentioned in relation to that show. if you're ever interested in covering madoka magica in more detail in a future essay, i'd love to see it! regardless of what you decide to cover, i'll totally be there for it. congrats on the release, time to watch this video like 10 more times!
I'd love to do a Madoka video! I need to watch all the wider media around it as I've only seen the 12 part series without the films or anything, though admittedly I have watched the series a fair few times at this point. I've considered writing something before and gone welllll everyone knows about Madoka, it always comes up in discussions of magical girls so there's nothing really I can contribute that won't have already been said a million times but that's also what stopped me doing Hollow Knight for so long. I thought there'd be loads of stuff like this but when I actually looked, it was predominantly lore summary rather than analysis, which is still fascinating but also there's something I can add here! (this also happened with Bloodborne XD)
@@HoneyBat so much of its discussion in magical girl circles is just arguing whether it destroyed the genre or not (it didn't, obv) instead of engaging with its core ideas😭definitely a similar situation to hollow knight where it's so good that you'd expect everyone to have covered it in depth by now. i really like sulmatul's "in defense of sayaka miki" and anime slushie's ep-by-ep discussions though! also imo the only other part of the franchise worth watching is rebellion and maaaaaybe the manga "the different story", there's tons of side material but it's much more generic and less thematically coherent than the 12-ep show. the show is just so immaculately self-contained!
This... is interesting. There's a compliment encapsulated in there that I can barely comprehend, much less express, delirious as I am from a lack of sleep.
Clonal daughters are so in right now.
Ender Lilies, Elden Ring, even my orchids are getting in on the fun!
I cant believe I am a month late seeing this. You are legit one of my favorite video essayists these days!
A brilliantly made and well thought out video. Well done. These and Ori 2 are my favorite metroidvanias, not just in gameplay, but in the weight of the stories. You've put it more poignantly than most how truely tragic being born to die is, but that's the magic of the stories that really matter.
"Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Cuz they were holding onto something... That there's some good in the world... and it's worth fighting for."
It was an honor to be part of the video, I woke up at 2am and played the best Hollow Knight of my life for this and it was worth reinstalling the game for the 8th time
Soooo normal about Hollow knight
It was a massive help, thank you!! Plus enrichment until Silksong comes out XD
Your sleep schedule is so not okay bestie.
What a welcome surprise upload!
Hope you enjoy it!
Always a good day when a video essayist you love posts
25:18 not entirely true, you have one: when sitting on a bench, the Knight will slump forwards as if falling asleep if you sit there for long enough.
HONEY BAT VIDEO HONEY BAT VIDEO HONEY BAT VIDEO
I can't explain in one comment how excited I got after seeing a notification today, love your stuff!!
NEW BAT ESSAY!! I'll have to chew on this one for a bit but it was a delight to watch, ty Bat!
Yaaay HoneyBat posted, my day just got a lot better.
Gonna watch this later after work
I was just watching some of your older stuff what a pleasant surprise!
Bat jumpscare! 🦇 💛
Tuloks new Elden Ring run was exploring themes of motherhood and femininity while he was running around gathering Scadutree fragments and I thought of you when he brought up Bloodborne. Yay parallels!
This got me jumping up and down because I actually found your channel a week ago and just binged all your videos in a day and wasn't expecting anything soon. Thanks for the content ma'am. love ya 🫡
Something about your videos is so comforting, your bloodborne, nier, and cat lady video I rewatch often. Sometimes I fall asleep to your videos after finishing it, idk what it is but your voice and the subject of what you talk about is somehow so comfortable to me.
GOD BLESS
it’s been a rough week and seeing this new upload really made my day! I LOVE hollow knight and I’m so happy you made an essay for it
I love ender lilies!! Im glad you're covering it.
I discovered your Bloodborne video right when Ender Lillies got handed out as a PS+ game. I've already bought Ender Magnolia in early access on Steam because holy crap, these are gorgeous games.
Didn’t watch yet but got the notif that a new honey bat vid dropped, oh i am so excited!!!
Edit: as expected, AMAZING video!! Appreciate your talent in weaving in literary references into these analyses :)
Hope you enjoy it!! (thanks for the comment boost💛)
I've been watching your videos on repeat every now and then. They speak to me in very innate way and I truly apprete how beautifully you portray what you want to relay. Life has been a bit tumultuous for me and seeing a new video really lifted my spirits! Especially when I was very much scouring your channel yesterday so this really feels like a special treat. You have my best wishes in whatever you try to do and well thank you for cheering me up!
Was not expecting a new Honeybat video today but fuck yeah!
This is nuts. I rewatched your bloodborne video within the last couple days as inspiration for a TTRPG I'm running!
That's amazing!! I hope you all have fun and come up with some eldritch brain spaghetti!!
Beautiful video. I really enjoy the alchemical theme running through your work. I also really enjoy the Rule of Rose music sprinkled throughout.
You didn't need to jumpscare me with Long Quiet like that! If it weren't for the specific part about the MC taking the issues of the world INTO themself, I'd say you probably could've talked about him a bit too.
Coming back to this video later and thank you for making this video. I some how stumbled into ending A in Ender Lilies without realising it and then after that I didn't play much else of the game after that. I started replaying it this week and I realised there is so much of the game that I missed. Your video has helped me to appreciate this beautiful game even more.
Lovely coincidence, I have just finished Ender Lilies and here you are with a video essay. Thank you, dear.
Something of note about the improvement via leveling: Lily's improvements are... interesting, as they seem to be based on the Blight as well. From what I understand, after you defeat a story boss, the game advances by a "chapter". This seems to be why spirits you pick up later on start at a higher level (well that and a bit of game balance to not waste your time with new level 1 scrubs...). Now, spirits are also improved by infusing them with blight (or ancient souls for the Umbral Knight) which you have taken from blighted bodies all over, purifying them. So by purifying the bosses and taking on an ostensibly large amount of Blight, your connection to the blighted spirits seems to grow more intense. Or something like that, does that make any sense? There is also the matter of exp for leveling up, which is not called such, it's also Blight. Certain blighted items held dear by their owners can increase the Blight you absorb from enemies you kill (but don't properly purify, I suppose?). It's interesting, this obviously dangerous thing that is transformed into power to help more victims, weaponizing a plague in a sense.
Also something about Faden I find interesting. Besides the name being likely German for "thread", he seems to be cradling something which looks rather insectoid to me. This "bundle" is apparently also where he fires his attacks from, "Manipulates Blighted to blast enemies" as it says in the game. Due to his intense cradling of this blighted bundle I can't help but read this as him holding either the Miriel/child hybrid in a cocoon of sorts (we do see a large one in the background, too, from which the monster likely emerged) or maybe even the blighted baby itself. It would be a contrast of a caring lover and/or father compared to the mean-spirited last king of the land, whom you touched upon as well. Implicitly, Faden is also father to the clones, of course and he did in fact care... to a degree. Video essay about parenthood when?
THANK YOU IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE
every time i get your videos on my recommended im shocked theyre not more popular lol, you make really good analysis
So glad you're still here! Also I ended up picking up Ender Lilies just before this came out >.
I will be watching this later, I wasn't aware a new video had been uploaded, can't wait to see what's your read on this game.
Hell yeah, new Honey Bat video! Have been recommending your channel to anyone listening lately.
not me tearing up immediately at hearing the hollow knight soundtrack - i cried about that game for MONTHS, the poor little guys :
I have been thinking abour how to tachle this topic for Ender Lillies for years now. Thank you for this!
YAY NEW VIDEO!!!! Im here from your Bloodborne video. Im happy you're still posting
Always love hearing your insights on games like this. I don’t think I ever quite picked up on the idea that the Knight is empty not only because it needs to be a vessel but also the idea that it can’t have will or a soul or thoughts because otherwise they’ll be corrupted. I never really thought of that but it’s such a fascinating concept! And like, the idea that Hornet names it “Ghost” as an acknowledgment of her respect and as almost a gift is so cool! Also I’ve never heard of Ender Lillies until now but yeah I’m completely sold here. Definitely gonna check it out. Btw, I noticed at one point you put a Clip from Slay the Princess, any chance you’ll be making a video on that? It’s probably my favorite game I’ve played this year and I’d definitely be fascinated to hear your thoughts on it.
YOU’RE BACK
What a banger! Thank you so much for yet another lovely video essay. Keep it real!
Glad to see another upload, it was a very pleasant surprise, big fan of literally all your other video essays.
Played this while playing Hollow Knight. Really great stuff, never thought about the themes of the rejection of sacrifice in the game before
The Madness Returns soundtrack while talking about Hollow Knight fits soo good.
Im so glad you uploaded, missed you quite a bit. I hope you're doing great.
Thank you so much for this beautiful video, I love your content! When I found you before I binged everything in a day and was devastated there wasn't tons more and now I'm getting new stuff!
Great video for two great games.
WAKE UP ANOTHER HONEYBAT UPLOAD LETS GOOOO
I find Fretia fascinating in this context. She was the duty bound sacrifice in this world, someone who would bear the pain of carrying the Blight. Except, she had people who truly cared for her, who wanted to save her from her fate. And that love and care is what turned her sacrifice into the kingdoms downfall.
Meanwhile Lily was made to sacrifice herself to save Fretia, but the true ending is only possible because of Eleine, Fretia's childhood friend, and the one person who saw her as Fretia, not the Priestess of the Fount, who delivered the Aegis Curio to the Parish where Lily slept under Fretias wishes to spare her from her own fate.
I adore your essays
I've enjoyed your bloodborne essay about a half dozen times. Cat lady a few, ouroboros a couple of times and even your silent hill essay, a series i have zero investment in, i found thoroughly enjoyable... And now you're talking about hollow knight??? Next you'll be talking about Lies of P and I'll have to change my answer when people ask for my favourite UA-cam gaming channel. (Currently you're second only to Jacob Geller but only really through quantity, quality wise I can't separate the two of you
I neeeeeed to play Lies of P, it looks very up my alley hahaha. Also thank you for such a lovely comment! I love Jacob Geller's channel so the comparison is an honour 💛
Always a joy to watch your videos, I love how well you convey these themes of these games. Thank you for the work you put into this one!
I'm of a completely different interpretation of Ender Lilies' and what I consider to be an overlooked theme and message of the narrative, and I'm realizing that it's fundamentally incompatible with your analysis and interpretation. It's frustrating because I like hearing different ideas, but I'm really one-tracked on what I think Ender Lilies is communicating that hearing an almost polar opposite take is causing some real dissonance.
I wrote an extremely long thing here so... buckle up. I basically forsook sleeping so if it becomes insane babble that's like 20% the reason (the other 80% is genuine insanity, forgive me)
The key thing I want to draw attention to first is that, while the White Priestesses were burdened with the role of taking on the Blight for the benefit of others, its heavily emphasized again and again that by and large the Priestesses were seen as people - and as children - before they were seen for their powers. The world (as in the people of the Kingdom) is not telling Lily to sacrifice herself like you suggest in 16:06. The only case when this statement is true is when 'the world' refers to ONLY the Blight itself, and its complete coverage of the world that Lily traverses in the game (Stick a pin in this I bring this up again later).
While Lily *definitely* can say 'no', the issue isn't that other people are muzzling her, ignoring her, or forcing her against her will. There literally is nobody left alive to even do that. Her spirit allies are fragments of what used to be the minds of people in the Kingdom, the Blighted are undead being prevented from permanently dying, and the Umbral Knight is a spectral entity whose oath to the White Priestesses prevents him from dying until the White Priestesses either all die out or the Blight is defeated.
Lily has awoken to a world where she *cannot* fix or save anything. The Kingdom fell years, if not decades, ago. If she ever was in line to be a Chosen One, she's definitely not one now. The best she can actually do here is the equivalent to cleanup or being an undertaker. Her ability to Purify only serves to free individuals from undeath - which doesn't revive them, but allows them to properly die and know rest. She's essentially missed her 'calling' if you were to view this as one of those types of stories.
And yet... Lily defaults to following a path that would lead her to seeking the source of the Blight. Why? Did someone tell her to? Nope. Was there a prophecy she knew about? Amnesiac, remember? Her only contact is the Umbral Knight - and he doesn't want Lily to stay in the Kingdom. So what's the deal? Why can't she say 'no'?
The issue is that Lily herself hasn't made a conscious decision to say 'no' OR NOT say 'no'. She is acting out of her own instinctual desire to help others - which is a personality trait/flaw inherited from her mother, Fretia, and a universal trait among all priestesses.
The Umbral Knight's primary, personal motivation at the start of the game isn't to lead Lily towards her doom as a sacrificial lamb. That would be his official job as Umbral Knight if things weren't already (un)dead and decayed, but here, from the moment he appears, he pushes Lily to get out of the Blighted lands with her life intact. He actively *discourages* her from the path towards sacrifice, would rather she didn't Purify anything, and treats her as a fragile, vulnerable human being. The Umbral Knight's goal from the beginning is to persuade Lily to say 'no' to dying for the sake of others - especially since it's completely pointless as there appears to be no more lives left to save.
Examples of the Umbral Knight seeing Lily as a human being before a White Priestess:
16:17 "You think me the sort of wretch to leave a *child* out in this horrid rain?" Umbral Knight expressing concern for Lily's wellbeing purely because she's a child.
16:31 "It may prove difficult, but *can you* carry on?" Asking if Lily has the strength to keep moving after Purifying someone for the first time - and it immediately making its toll on her body known. (He also frequently suggests stops at benches and other respites. In a meta sense, he's hinting the player to save the game at a rest point, but in-universe he is being mindful of Lily's condition.)
16:36 "It is said that priestesses have hold over their senses, despite the Blight. But this seems *far too much* for anyone to bear..." Expressing unease towards Lily pushing herself to what might already be beyond the limit of a typical priestess. He doesn't like seeing Lily do this to herself, even if he's seen or heard that priestess are strong.
16:50 "As important as Purification is... *A Priestess must also think of herself*" He's trying, oh heavens he's trying so hard to tell Lily to not harm herself. He doesn't want her to die, he wants her to stop, but he knows Lily is determined to do this. It doesn't make it okay, though.
And it's not a compassion he extends only to Lily. In 15:29 he says "What a tragic end." to the discovery of a fallen priestess. Iirc he comments on almost all of them, expressing remorse for their lives ending too soon - as opposed to say, lamenting that they didn't fulfill their 'destiny' as pawns.
In a delicious twist of irony, the player choosing to *not* trigger the early 'neutral ending' (18:30) is essentially Lily saying 'no' to the Umbral Knight. She exercises her autonomy just as the Umbral Knight has been urging her to do, but does so in the complete opposite of what he hoped for. She instead refuses his wishes and commits herself to a path that will either kill her in the end like the other priestesses (bad ending), or bring closure to the suffering of the Blighted (true ending).
Other priestesses were treated similarly to Lily before she woke up. From Gerrod's flashback, the white priestess in his memory is not 'Our Lily', but another priestess from before. We can see in 17:10 that he feels awful that he, a warrior who uses his strength to shield others from pain, must allow a small child to come to harm for his sake. It violates his morals and sense of what is just, but knowing that him falling to madness would doom so many more, he reluctantly accepts the priestess' offer to sacrifice herself to preserve his mind. But it was not his first choice: he sooner gave up his human right to die, and submitted himself to experiments that turned him into a deathless warrior, before he accepted allowing one small priestess to take his place and suffer.
Practically every spirit Lily meets (that still has a semblance of mind left over) does the minimum of aiding her in battle or exploration, if not also communicating with her through their final words:
16:21 "I'm sorry, I've only added to your burdens" - Sir Julius regretting his failure to the White Priestess about to take on the Blight that destroyed him.
15:13 "To protect her... I must..." Guardian Siegrid trying to hold onto her sanity by remembering her duty to care for the White Priestesses (more on her later).
The White Priestesses were always people to everyone around them. Faden's idea and then successful creation of clones of Fretia - the White Priestesses that include Our Lily - was not something done out of whimsy, but out of necessity. Fretia was dying: the Blight was too much for only the Priestess of the Font to face alone. And if she passed with no successor like her, then everyone is doomed. Despite the feat of creating clones and then using them to spread out the burden amongst themselves, and even bolster Fretia's ailing strength, nobody - much less Faden - were pleased with this approach. Sacrificing the priestesses was never an act that sat comfortably with others, and nobody excused nor forgave themselves for it. Even so, it was done out of a tragic combination of the people being desperate to survive, and the priestesses being naturally inclined toward offering themselves up - even if people give them the freedom to say 'no' like how the Umbral Knight attempts with Lily.
Even the Priestess of the Font, Fretia, expresses self-loathing for having no other option than to count on her children to die for her sake - even if they were willing to. However, sparing them would doom everyone for sure, while letting them die would buy some more time for Faden and other researchers to find a more sustainable and ethical solution to the Blight (which ultimately came from Faden's research and work, but never saw fruition before it was too late).
On the note of Faden, 23:12 he probably wouldn't be able to look Lily in the eye. Even if he's forgiven over and over by Lily or other priestesses. It should be noted though, that the spirit that opens the doors for Lily so she can gather the pieces for the Aegis Curio *is* Faden. It's a fragment of his spirit, but I feel this shows that he is absolutely in support of Lily ending this specific nightmare he created - his atonement, if you will.
Also, I think something could be said about how we don't even face him as a boss (we fight Miriel instead). We find Faden's corpse in his lab, and obtain his spirit there with not much fanfare or difficulty, almost like he was waiting for someone like Lily to find him so that he could help her. If he wanted to help her *that* much, then perhaps that's how he resisted turning into a feral monster?
Now is a good time to bring up Guardian Siegrid. She wanted to protect Lily, and in fact this was her job. She was tasked to look after all White Priestesses, including Our Lily while she was asleep/comatose. Before the priestess that we control however, Siegrid was the guardian of another one named who was also named Lily (as you know, she's where Our Lily gets her name from). This other Lily was the last priestess that Siegrid had contact with. Siegrid spent a lot of time with her and cared deeply for her. She kept the other Lily company, answered her questions, and effectively raised her despite knowing they will inevitably be torn apart by their duties.
The White Priestess that we find in 28:09 was that priestess Siegrid bonded with - that Lily - and unlike other Priestesses, her name was recorded in her personal journal AND Siegrid remembers her by name in her flashback. This is strong evidence that they had a closer bond than what Siegrid had with other priestesses, and since we find Lily dead in the place she should have been safest in - and not even remotely close to where she would have been 'destined' to end up - we can probably guess why Siegrid finally broke.
Of course, Our Lily adopting the name as her own is a huge gesture. Our Lily was not brought into a world eager to welcome her, and the Umbral Knight reasonably avoided naming her himself because his personal goal was to convince her to leave him behind - which would prove harder for him if he named her.
Our Lily choosing to take the name as her own carries multiple symbolic meanings. First, it honors the Lily whom looked forward to being there when she woke up. In a way, she is mourning a sister she never had a chance to meet, and taking her name is a way to keep her close - just as that Lily wanted. And that in itself is pretty powerful. Second, this is probably the only thing Our Lily receives from someone else that *isn't* Blight, making it one of the few positive things Our Lily has obtained that becomes a part of herself.
But there is one thing in particular though that I feel is overlooked: Our Lily would have no use for a name if she intended to not live another day. So by adopting one, it also makes it abundantly clear that Our Lily has every intention to survive the events of the story, and not sacrifice herself senselessly. This is that 'no' that the Umbral Knight wanted all along!
Finally, because I feel the White Priestesses as a whole were always seen as actual people AND children before the powers they possess, the question of Our Lily's personhood was never up for debate. If there ever was a doubt that Lily had personhood or the capacity to self-actualize, then the Umbral Knight wouldn't have had such a strong motive to talk to Our Lily into leaving it all behind. Letting the empty vessel throw herself into a meaningless end would have ended his own cycle of undead servitude - as there would be no more living priestesses for him to escort. Meanwhile, convincing the vessel to leave the Kingdom behind would instead curse the Umbral Knight to persist as a spirit bound to the Blighted ruins of the Kingdom for as long as Our Lily lives. Why prolong your own painful misery for something that has no "soul" inside? It wouldn't make sense to, unless there was actually *a person* to save in the first place.
To me, Fretia's "You're your own person, Lily" (28:34) is not her bestowing personhood to Lily, but rather affirming the revelation Lily made that ALL Priestesses could be more than what their mother became. If you forgive me being blunt here, then I will say that Fretia is a 'Failure', and that she knows that. She's had plenty of time to re-examine her life while trapped in the pits of effectively hell, and she probably had become heavily critical of herself for never saying 'no'.
Can you heal more people per day than your body can sustain?
Will you birth an heir or two?
Can you stop being Fretia the Human and instead be only Fretia, the Priestess of the Font?
Fretia's own personal misery and frustrations with life - the erosion of her physical health, the loss of time for her hobbies, and her own self-worth - are things she could have avoided if she dared to say 'no'. And it is not like she couldn't! She was the only woman with healing powers, and even before the Blight people both needed her and respected her. Putting aside the few that did see her as a means to an end, many people sincerely adored her (and to their own doom, emulated her self-sacrificing nature) yet had no idea that she was in tremendous pain and feeling cripplingly isolated and lonely. Fretia is not blameless when it comes to her unhappiness, and she realizes far, far too late that her natural instincts are actually very harmful to her if left uncontrolled.
It is too late for her to fix the mistakes she made, but for the children cloned from her - who inherited the same fatal flaws - still had futures ahead of them, but only if they could identify their flaws and change their ways before it was too late.
Our Lily made Fretia proud by realizing that she had the right to say 'no' and then actually saying 'no'. Having the mindfulness to examine her own motives and reflect on them, and then change course to suit a new goal that she defined, is a major sign of maturity and personal development. It demonstrates that Our Lily can not only tell other people around her 'no', but she can even tell herself 'no' and then take a new initiative. That's a lot of growth to see in a child! But above all, it means she has already surpassed her mother and guaranteed that she will not live her life making the same mistakes as Fretia did. No wonder Fretia would be proud of Our Lily for figuring this out almost entirely by herself!
All of this insanely long babbling to conclude with what I believe to be the overlooked message of Ender Lilies: self-sacrifice is a sin disguised as virtue. It infects the minds of others, consumes them whole, and tears through humanity like a true Blight. If everyone is in a hurry to sacrifice themselves without hesitation, then only utter ruin awaits.
This is the thing I said to stick a pin in for right at the top: *THIS* is "The World telling Lily she must sacrifice herself". Except its not the world as made up of people, but instead the world corrupted by the Blight that's trying to trick her. It's trying to poison her mind with the same self-destructive martyrdom that will ultimately achieve nothing in the end, and have her throw her life away for naught.
But in the true end, Our Lily says 'no'. And instead, she finds a path that leads to bringing closure to the dead and tortured, ending their purgatory by ridding the Blight at its source. She also absolves the sins of the self-sacrificing - including her mother - without making the same mistake that they all made. The Kingdom, its dead, and all the characters we met outside of Our Lily, can finally rest in peace. Our Lily lives on to close this dark chapter in her world's history, and then is free to start another written by her own hand. And the only thing she really did that was different from anyone else, was that she acted a little selfishly, and chose to not give up her life for anything or anyone.
What makes this entire interpretation of mine such a headache to reconcile against your take is a few things I've described: Like the interpretation of where Lily is coming from when her journey begins, how other people view her and the other Priestesses, and what the game's message is for me. To me, there is no question such as 'how much is a life worth?', because the setting quickly establishes that there is nothing for Lily to save in sacrificing herself, so regardless of how valuable her life may be, she will be trading it for nothing. Instead, Ender Lilies imo is a story communicating a cautionary tale of self-destructive behavior being confused for virtue. Less an open ended philosophy question, more an Aesop moral - and a damn good one.
I love watching your videos so much, your voice is so soothing
With Hollow Knight, i have a lot of thoughts about the Void and What It Is. The themes of darkness, of forgetting, the way that our Vessel can weild the Dream Nail and enter dreams and collect echoes even of forgotten souls not just warrior ones, and the way that the void exists as it is regardless of if anyone knows about it-I am of the personal opinion that the Void is, itself, a higher being and thats part of how the Lord of Shadows is formed.
If the Pale King and the Radience are not just light, but life and dreams and logic and physical consciousness and emotion, then the Void is apathy, instinctual consciousness and subconsciousness, it is illogical and death and darkness and the lack of dreams, of nightmares. Void is, in that way, peace and order, not chaos. It unifies, quiets, and collects like a grim reaper. It is an end to suffering, to the pain of remembrance, to an echoing existence.
It absorbs light so completely, of course the thoughts and life and emotions of a void being cannot be typically percieved. And it doesnt help that the Vessels are all children meant to be sacrificed before their birth to become vessels. But i wholly believe that the Pale King never understood what he was experimenting with, that the way void beings given a more recognizable form learn is the same as how children learn. They only seem mindless, thoughtless, because they are so alien that the typical bug and higher being of Hollow Knight cannot recognize what theyre looking at properly.
It makes you wonder what the ancient civilization that worshipped the void was like? Did these ancient bugs try to achieve the same level of emptiness as the void, divesting themselves to it or tried to understand it like the pale king?
I'm glad to see Ender Lillies getting some recognition 😊
This thumbnail took randomly apprearing surprised me so much, like who did I subscribe to
hahaha, whatever draws people into my rambling (also I love your pfp!)
@@HoneyBat Thanks! I randomly saw the image one day and made it my pfp, I could never find the original source for it though.
Your bloodborne video was amazing so I’m really looking forward to watching this one! I’m so glad you’re back!
Yet another honeybat video i cant watch till i play one of the relevant games.
Oh my god she's back with another essay 🙏
I ADORE all of your videos thank you so much for what you do ❤❤❤
Listening to this while practicing Absolute Radiance, I’m so close to beating the fifth pantheon I can taste it. I love how much work it takes to get an ending that’s still pretty damn bleak, but none the less well worth effort
You've probably been bothered by this a bunch already, but the last scene for Hollow Knight's "Embrace the Void" ending, it's the Hollow Knight that staggers out of the Black Egg Temple. Not Ghost.
I think it changes the ending of your thesis by just a little bit, mostly because it asks the question "what happens after the sacrifice, the pain, after everything is over?" It reminds me to the end of the book series LotR, which you referred at the start of the essay; even after everything, the scars and trauma and horrors of the experience follows the hero home. In this case, it's draped across the last surviving sibling that Hornet has.
Also! Love the analysis for Ender Lilies. Such a beautiful game, and such somber themes. Every move to aid the White Priestess only serves to hurt her more.
Can’t wait to finish my shift at work so I can watch!! ✨✨✨
Wake up babe, Honey Bat just uploaded a new video 🙏
Thank you for this lovely video, Especially since i was never able to play Hollow Knight... For me the worst possible fate is to have to live as male. Thankfully you get to be Hornet in the sequel. Between this and Hades 2 Its going to be such a treat to get to play these critically claimed games.
I always considered the Embrace the Void ending scene with Hornet was kind of just a "here's what else is going on in the world". Not a scene where the Knight controls THK. Mostly because, THK doesn't help us kill Absolute Radience, The Knight does, as the Shade Lord. Completely on it's own. That's an interesting conclusion.
Wonderful essay!
Great video! I've recently been reading the works of George Battaile and was turned on to Amnesia: a Machine for Pigs. Definitely resonant to the theme of sacrifice, though the sacrifice itself seems to qualify the value.
Ooh yeah that's a shout!! I saw a Jacob Geller video talking about it and need to get around to actually playing it
I love the Fatal Frame references. I would love to watch a video about them
2:06 yeah... I'd pack my things and rid away to the North Pole
Both of these games have such incredible soundtracks
The music and art is gorgeous in both of these!! Very different styles but they're both incredible games- I'm hoping more people get into Ender Lilies if they see it with Hollow Knight too ^.^
@HoneyBat So happy to see other people appreciate ender lilies
Review came to a screeching halt.
“Thanks, Joel.”
Everything I needed to know.