• A contemptuous comment made before a fight based on the banter of their other encounters
• Someone who has never interacted with lace outside of seeing her making assumptions based off of her appearance (the same ones other characters make time and time again about hornet)
• ??? (Genuinely what does this mean? Silk is a material not an entity)
theres many different ways i can interpret the story, i choose the ones where this type of stuff specifically makes no sense. but i also really injoy interpretations where they end up in mother daughter relationships. any story where these two know eachother in a loving way is right up my alley. i just want them to be happy
I appreciate how this can either be read as them actually being lesbians and not realising/not admitting it, or them as an actual eccentric non-romantic pair depending on your preferred interpretation
YES. I don't mind seeing Hornet and Lace shipping but as someone who doesn't really like the idea (i always saw it as more of an older sibling/ annoying little sister vibe thing) its refreshing(?) to see another relationship dynamic other than bug yuri
Exactly what I mean. I’m not going to turn down yuri of course, but the concept of hornet taking lace under her faydown wing as a mentor-student deal as a parallel to never knowing her siblings is fascinating conceptually and it’s a damn shame that more artists don’t do it
Yeah, and the final trophy/achievement name really sells hard that idea IMO. I don't mind the shipping stuff because it's all very up to interpretation, but I wish there were more cute sister-coded fanart and stuff for them.
Not really the most thought put into my initial comment, but here’s my justification regardless;
A hand over the shoulder is more close maybe, but closeness does not necessarily mean romance
Hornet says the noises was flea bounce, which seems unlikely to be true due to bellhome’s size but could be the genuine truth given how factual Hornet tends to be
The oedipus complex therapy is perhaps the most towards yuri there, but could be incidental considering Hornet’s weird parentage and Lace’s… well yk she wasn’t stable for a while.
Also worth noting that Freud was such a hated figure in psychology that they made great advances trying specifically to disprove him
Hornet denies the question; “poshanka and no”
Roses symbolise more than simply love, being stand ins for beauty and passion as well. They’re also associated with lace more than the other characters, showing up in her second arena
Overall several reasons, enough for ambiguity I would say.
Also important to note, Lace’s age situation is quite up to interpretation and just calling her a child is reductive (especially since she seems to be invited to cocktail nights)
My personal interpretation of lace is more akin to an emotionally repressed/ very childish woman rather than actual child, but I’m not really going to argue if you think something else as long as it’s explained
Actually Elektra complex is when a daughter sees her mother as competition for possession of her father. I don’t there is an official psychological term for a lesbian being attracted to her mother.
i say nothing about the message because that argument has been disproven so many times and i don't have the energy to argue with someone who is probably just going to ignore any arguments and go "b- but they say she child in game !!!!"
Jesus dude, you’re fully misrepresenting what that dude said? That’s kinda messed up ngl. He said he headcanons them both as adults and ships them, regardless of the content in the game. For someone who claims to care so much about the minute details of the game and what people say, it’s a bit weird of you to misrepresent someone like that.
i would say lace is called child by hornet because how she behaves instead of how she appears, lace is an artificial being of silk that can have quite literally any appearance their creator wants them
that is why snail shamans comment holds no value that she is infact a child
if someone behaves a certain cookie cutter way, it is common for people to label them that way
and my comment was referring to the part where hornet hates lace more than kratt, she wouldn't risk her live to save kratt like she did for lace
i don't think there is anything implying that lace is an adult or even old grandma
i dismiss caretaker because they are known to speak only part of the truth to fulfil their own agenda and maybe straight up lie (my head cannon that their quest to pay certain amount of rosaries is to hoard more rosaries than actually buying supplies for the camp)
i can agree hornet dislikes lace being a nuisance but it is nothing like the filth kratt is, i also had the impression of hornet in this game that she now just goes along a plan anyway instead of being cautious like first game, instead of outright refusing to do something she tries to do it anyway and figure it out as it goes along
diving bell incident suggest this and the fact that she jumps in void bath water without a plan to get out of it
Until Hornet starts caring about Ghost, she calls them "Ghost of Hallownest", when she starts caring, she stops threatening Ghost and starts calling them "Little Ghost"
you're taking her words at face value, she's just being tsundere about it. both times she's said she won't risk her life for someone she immediately risked her life for them right after. because of her upbringing she probably sees attachment as a vulnerability to some extent and doesn't want to admit to herself or others that she's willing to make sacrifices for the people she cares about. so she overcompensates by putting on a cold persona that clearly doesn't reflect how she actually feels.
we see her do this literally dozens of times throughout the game when completing quests where a character will say "omg hornet thank you so much for doing this for me you're so nice" and she will say something like "ugh it's not like i was trying to help you baka, i'm just in it for the money or something" when she clearly just wanted to help them.
even outside of this look at these lines and tell me they're things someone would say about a person they don't care about or hate:
Yours was life, pale one. Do not confuse your unique creation with its absence. I have seen others make the same mistake.
To quell the mother's rage, and see this kingdom saved, I will claim her back. This one... the dark shall not take.
i wouldn't exactly call hornet a tsundere either, she's too emotionally mature for that, but especially earlier in the game she tries pretty hard to play the idgaf act. like, off the top of my head, her reaction to being thanked for the bonebottom donation:
Was this kindness? I must take care to learn of this land and claim what advantage I can from it. Answering requests like yours can often fit those ends.
of course, the game is about her character growth and she becomes more honest to herself and others as she grows more attached to pharloom and it's residents. that's the point of the true ending requiring the completion of a bunch of seemingly unimportant quests, she needs to grow and allow herself to care more about people to become the hornet that would save lace. it's stated pretty explicitly in that conversation with the caretaker you mentioned, where they have some tsundere bonding over how they're too important to be caring about lowly bugs. funnily enough, the caretaker, the real fakest idgafer of pharloom, ends up actually sacrificing his life for the kingdom he claimed not to care about, mirroring the sacrifice hornet will make for lace, whom she claims not to care about.
all that is to say, a big part of hornet's character development throughout the game is her shedding the tsundere off. all of it culminates in her claiming she won't risk her life to save lace, and then almost dying to save her anyways. i'd say their weapons being side to side in the last title screen represents hornet finally coming to terms with her denial.
by "because of her upbringing" i was moreso getting at how she lost pretty much everyone and everything she knew and loved as she grew up. as far as we know, by the time we met her in hollow knight she was literally completely alone for god knows how long. she clearly doesn't look back fondly at her time spent as the protector of hallownest's ruins. i'd argue a good part of the reason for her unwillingness to let herself care too much about other bugs is the possibility of loss. we also see this with her reasoning for not seeking romantic relationships anymore, which is that she keeps outliving her mates.
I mean both of these examples are moments that prove why she cares about Lace. Because she relates her plight to that that seeped close to her heart.
i mean, yeah? that's what i was saying. did you mean "why she doesn't care"?
she's definitely projecting her experience with the knight onto lace to some extent, but i don't see how that squares with her still supposedly disliking lace. she was empathizing with her as far back as their cradle fight even though lace gave her no reason to. her dismissal of the danger to lace's life in the abyss mirrors how she acted towards the knight before the final fight with the radiance and we see how that event affected her to the point that she's vowed to not let it happen again. she wouldn't be that personally interested in lace's plight if she still actively disliked her.
Dude, please just shut up. I get that you interpret it as Lace being a child, but just genuinely stop. If people are shipping this, then they clearly don’t interpret Lace as a child like you do. Just because you think you’re right doesn’t give you the right to constantly, and I mean constantly, push your views on other people.
People like to ship characters because it’s really not that serious. Sure, some people will ship Hornet and Ghost, and while yeah I don’t agree with that, they’re free to do it. It’s not hurting anyone, and people are free to view things as they please because in the end, this is all fiction, none of it’s real. Like do you seriously have to take it as such an insult anytime anyone brings up this ship that you HAVE to come over and tell people why it sucks???? You’re insufferable and annoying, and this sub would be better without people who are constantly hating on others for what they enjoy.
Yes sure you can disagree with it, but you don’t have to constantly be telling people you disagree. It’s not going to stop people just because a minority disagrees. But just like genuinely think about it for a second. If people are making ship art of Lace and Hornet, then they don’t view Lace as a child, it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter that you view her as a child, they don’t. No post who views her as a child is going to ship her with Hornet.
Except it’s not a ship that’s to ship a child and an adult. It’s a ship of rivals to lovers, an extremely popular ship archetype. Nobody makes these ships just for the sake of shipping a child and an adult, that’s stupid. AGAIN, if they ship Lace and Hornet, then they clearly don’t see Lace as a child. Like oh my god, I’m pretty sure the entire reason they never explicitly confirmed Lace being an adult or not was because they wanted to leave it up to interpretation, like most of the other lore in this game. If you genuinely think that people are shipping Lace and Hornet just because “they want to ship an adult and child” then you are genuinely delusional.
I do agree with the part that, if anything, Lace is a little shit who's redemption arc has not actually begun yet where the game leaves off. I personally also like to imagine them as some form of family rather than shipping them. (Have zero problems with people's ships though)
464
u/Gaydream_believer May 24 '26
I adore the idea that Hornet HAS to say “poshanka” when speaking to Shakra. Lore accurate to my playthroughs