now combine this with a hornet who’s not interested in sex or romance either but has a much better understanding of herself. the fact that hornet is harder to perturb means lace has to try even harder to provoke a reaction from her ‍-​ won’t it be satisfying to see that spider’s mask crack into a flustered mess?

hornet of course misreads this as lace having a big crush on her, and it’s not like hornet has never entertained courtship for another’s sake. (it can tolerable, even enjoyable, so long as the expectations are clear.)

lace, meanwhile, quickly realizes that while she likes teasing hornet, this can’t end in the same kind of brutal rejection she’d given others ‍-​ lace simply can’t feel quite as much malicious glee in crushing hornet’s feelings as she might have done with the bugs she respects less

which is to say: this comedy of errors into a date where both of them think they’re simply doing this for others’ sake

…but the funniest ending is if, once an understanding is finally reached, hornet retains just enough of an appetite for mischief that they continue the romantic gestures purely to fuck with everyone else, leading to perpetual confusion as to what exactly they have going on

one neat game design trick i almost forgot about was RPS dice.

a common tool to make diverse character builds viable to including some kind of rock paper scissors system, and the easy way to do that is to add elements or categories that are just flavors of the same thing. water beats fire beats grass. you mainly want to deal damage, but you have to pick the right color or watch out!

this is cool when you’re just making up a magic system, but if you aren’t inventing the elements? does it really make sense that swords beat axes and axes beat lances?

what’s neat is that, mathematically, breaking it up like this is not necessary; instead of asserting the rules for different categories, it can emerge naturally

imagine the only thing that matters is who gets the most points. what’s the best approach to getting the most points? we’ll elide the specifics and imagine it’s just a single dice roll. you either roll high, or mid or low.

an obvious possibility is a ‘cautious’ build that balances all the tradeoffs. you get 10 points whether you roll well or poorly.

but why not gamble? if we restrict ourselves to that ten point average, we can shift things aside to get a ‘gambler’ build that gets 20 points on a high roll, but has to settle for 5 otherwise.

it’s not that fun to wait around for that critical hit, so these two can meet halfway; a ‘risky’ build might get 15 points come high or mid ‍-​ just don’t low roll or you won’t get any points at all.

now, here’s the question: which build is best? imagine these three characters went head to head and whoever gets the most points wins the round. who wins the most rounds?

the answer, of course, is no one. the consistency of the balanced build outperforms the swinginess of the gambler build which can only win 1/3 of the time. but the risky approach likewise beats the balanced approach 2/3 of the time. gambler vs risky is interesting‍ ‍‍—‍ 1/3 of the time, gambler gets the high roll and wins, which is the only way to beat risky’s high pair ‍-​ but 1/3 of the time, risky rolls low, and even at its lows, gambler still has a higher floor. (note that these probabilities do not add together ‍-​ 1/9 of the time both happen, so the true probability is 5/9 of the time gambler wins)

i think this is very neat. without introducing any mechanic besides high number good and sometimes you’re lucky sometimes you’re not, you can still get the same circular relationship

HOLY SHIT

FINALLY BEAT PANTHEON THREE WITH ALL BINDINGS

fuck collector, fuck grey prince, and fuck sly

but i am da gamer

sly shouldn’t have been that hard but i yesterday i finally got a run past gpz for the first time and i played too cautiously and ate shit

what’s really funny is that once i got the hang of gpz i began to hate galien bc at that point my survival against gpz mostly came down to whether i made it out of the previous fight with enough lifeblood masks to spare

in a chatroom a couple of other people tapped out of doing all bindings runs at p3 because of the collector

but surprisingly, while it was a struggle for a long time, lately i have just been styling on collector with all bindings. cyclone slash goes p hard against them

though i think when i’m at the point of working nail arts into my counter patterns, that’s probably a sign i have played hollow knight for too long

i really enjoyed lacenet fics before the game came out, but the latest wave really hasn’t clicked with me and i hadn’t been able to articulate why

i suppose i find it much harder to be compelled by people’s interpretations of a character now that i am so invested in their source portrayal?

anyway, i should note that i don’t feel right reblogging this take without an asterisk. i don’t like the dynamic being criticized here, but i can see how it would make sense to me as something they would explore safely within the bounds of a kink scenario

there’s so many new lacenet fics and i haven’t read them all, so i’m sure there are fics that approach this dynamic without understanding or boundaries, but the rhetoric of viewing this dynamic as a regression feels close to erasing it as a vehicle for them to cope and indulge, disarmed of the actual harm it would cause

i don’t find it compelling personally, but i felt it worth saying

but yes, the respect n care is what’s compelling about their relationship.

it’s interesting to contrast this with how i once complained about people portraying lace dominating a blushy, sputtering hornet, and this also felt at odds with their characterization, but it’s not much better with the pendulum swinging the other way

i agree with your reasoning, though there’s a few interesting variations on these possibilities

for instance, wl and gr might have operated differently, with white lady only infecting willing or ritually prepared hosts. relatedly, hornet might have been too trusting of greyroot, suspecting they wanted a host but expecting them to have the kindness to ask or just choose someone else. it’s also possible hornet underestimated gr, thinking them sleepy/waning and unable to put up much of a fight.

alternately, it’s possible roots aren’t obligate parasites, but greyroot isn’t exceptional for doing it. so maybe white lady could have done this but she didn’t have to

however while writing this up, something did occur to me: what if white lady herself just didn’t know? it’s possible white lady just emerged in the aftermath of a rite, her progenitor already dead or gone or reabsorbed, without herself knowing what had been done to create her

…but i think it’s less plausible that, in her very long life, white lady wouldn’t have ever discovered what her instincts were urging her to do, the cycle she was apart of. though again, if roots aren’t obligate parasites, perhaps her ability to infest bugs was no more notable to her than a hunter realizing that they can kill their allies instead of just their prey. perhaps in dire moments it’s tempting, but ultimately, why do it?

thought that leads me to a further thought‍ ‍‍—‍ what if this is the difference between a root with pale privileges and one without? maybe white lady being a higher being means she has the luxury of not need to parasitize to survive, but greyroot lives a much more desperate life and can’t survive for long without rites.

though this raises another question: is the rite of rebirth done for a root’s survival, or reproduction, or both?

while checking greyroot’s lore, i discovered pavo had dialogue i’d never seen before:

That cry upon you, sister! Those are the sour sobs of a grey and twisted thing. […] Not your own specimen, surely, but way back, other travellers did sometimes carry similar. Odd types they all were. Offerings they’d call the crying things, and towards the core of Shellwood they would trek.

Never I did see one again, not the buds nor the bugs that brought the gift…

If you’re planning to follow their path, I’ll wish on your safety, but ’tis an ill omen to hear such sad sounds returned after so long.

she’s done this many times before, which makes sense of why she’s says, “Only you are left. None more tread here. None.”

overall interesting to think about, but i don’t feel any closer to a headcanon i’d completely endorse