text; un: TheHollowKnight

[instilled]

A query:
What makes you you?
How are you yourself?

Please only respond if you wish.

Comments

[instilled]

Value.

[ Hallownest's safety. Father's will, and his sacrifice. The struggle of its siblings, left to rot in the depths while it was brought into the light. It had valued all of those things. Wanted to protect, to be worthy, to honour them.

It had never heard its Mother speak the words, but it knew them as intimately as if She had come to the Temple of the Black Egg and whispered them through the seal.

Tarnished by an idea instilled. ]

There are more things that make a person than it could ever have considered.

bold of you to assume i think

[instilled]

[ Each and ever answer the Hollow Knight received was fascinating. Some were terrifying, some were confusing, but they were all deeply interesting. This response was no different, and the Hollow Knight read it voraciously, even if it couldn't fully understand some of what was being said.

The last line, however, made it know it had to say one thing in particular before it could address anything else. ]

Please forgive any misleading connotations.
This Vessel is the last thing on this planet that could give you a satisfactory answer to the question posed.
However, there are many interesting answers already present.
If you struggle, perhaps they can give you some measure of security.

[tigerpoet]

They've given good answers. I'm not sure that any of them resonate for me, but I hope that they help you.

[instilled]

They are [ terrifying, enlightening ] interesting.
It had no idea that being a person was so innate yet so difficult to define.
Even by your own answer, it seems that it is a combination of many things, and that combination can be flawed, but that flaw can be a part of the whole anyway.

[tigerpoet]

People are inherently flawed, and we are generally not very good about knowing ourselves.

The question of 'what makes you you' is one that philosophers have been trying to answer for thousands of years. I doubt they will stop asking the question any time soon.

[instilled]

It is good that there are so many individuals.
Even if it is hard to know why and how one is one.
Perhaps it is not a thing that can be easily defined.
And a pale light is all that is needed to show it, rather than bright light to obscure it.

[ Had Father known that? Had just having a small piece of Him still remaining in their make up made every Vessel non-viable?

Difficult to consider, difficult to ponder. ]

[tekhartha]

[The delay is to be expected, with the enormity of the Hollow Knight's last confession still fresh in both of their hearts; he waits, patient and hopeful, for its answer, and finds himself almost relieved to receive it.]

Those are worldly things; the Soul is without form, unconstrained and trascendental in its very essence. I cannot truly define it for it defies definition, much less pinpoint it, yet it moves within all of us nonetheless. It is who we are.

If it is not too much for me to ask... who is "us"?

[tigerpoet]

I think that's true. Despite our flaws, and all the questions we may never answer, people are wonderful creatures.

[That, at least, he had never been in doubt on.]

[justsomeshrimp]

That's very true.
To account for them all would be impossible, I think.
People's journey to self discovery is never-ending because of it.

[audiomancer]

Oh? Are you a concept of sorts? I've met a lot of entities lately who've been an embodiment of something, and don't consider themselves a complete person. It's an interesting perspective.

Do you have a purpose? I'm sure you have some reason you exist.

[ At least as far as he's seen, there's always some goal or responsibility in mind — even from those who don't know if they have creators. ]

Mostly correct! Although, things rarely happen to me that I don't want. How can I put it?

... I happen to things more than things happen to me. It's another benefit of my talents that those sorts of matters are made convenient, you see.

[rubberpirate]

Where you born like that? cuz i wasn't! I turned to rubber after eating a fruit

[passio]

[ a daunting concept—dextera would consider it so. for him, desire had overtaken everything else. it had overtaken reason and kindness and mere, neutral thought, and coming back from that had been hard. he feels like the hollow knight would probably be better at it. ]

I knew what I didn’t want first. In running away, I was lucky enough to find what I did want, instead.

The path I took was complex. I don’t know if I would recommend what I did to anyone else. But the results have saved me, and many others.

[instilled]

No cost too great.
A hard sacrifice.
But important choices were never easy ones.
The person you have become seems to be worth your journey.

[instilled]

And they were always meant to be people.
How can it be so hard for them?
It is what they are.

[instilled]

Purpose.
This vessel was chosen among multitudes to seal the blinding light that plagued the dreams of Hallownest.
I am the Hollow Knight.

[ The only 'I' it could ever be, because its Father had looked directly at it and told it expressly that that was what it was. You are the Hollow Knight. ]

The Radiance was a force.
Are you one also?

[instilled]

Yes.
It hatched from its egg like that.
Crafted by the Wyrm.

[instilled]

[ It is who we are.

When Hornet was close, the Hollow Knight could feel the part of her that was their shared Father. The Void withing its sibling was the encompassing part of their unity, but it could feel the parts of their Mother and Father together within it, too. Neither were the sole part that made those new beings.

Maybe there was something to what Zenyatta said. ]

It is true, in Hallownest at least, that Soul is an intrinsic part of a bug.
Very few can manipulate it, but it is within all, but for the beings of pure Void.

[ Even itself and its sibling wouldn't exude Soul when they were stripped down to their Shades. ]

The 'us' of whom were spoken were the multitudes of Vessels created by our Father.
The Knight is one such.
This Vessel is another.
There were many more.
Mother was a fertile being.

[instilled]

Yes.
To keep people as people, it is worth one being never becoming a person.
This is true.

[tigerpoet]

That's really not what I meant...

[instilled]

Apologies.
It spoke its own conclusion rather than listen to yours.

[tigerpoet]

It's alright. Just, I don't see how not considering yourself a person would affect someone else being a person. And this is such a difficult question that I don't think not having an answer to it affects your personhood at all.

[instilled]

There is a reason.
Not having an answer does not change a person's being.
It has learned this.
An unexpected result.

[tigerpoet]

We don't have the answers to a lot of things.

[tekhartha]

[Hallownest... it has the sound of somewhere one would find the kind of curious insectile creature the Hollow Knight represented. Somewhere dark and quiet, he thinks, cosy, and it pleases him to think of it and its siblings curled safely in a den, though he is sure it is far from the reality of home for it.

There is another question to ask, too, about the "Void", but it holds onto it for a few moments in favour of something more important: kinship.]

As was mine. Thousands of my kind were produced in the factory in which I was created, a great many of them built to precisely the same plans as me.

My model is not unique. But I am more than the circumstances of my birth and the purpose for which I was designed.

What is the Void?

[justsomeshrimp]

[There's a lot to unpack and respond to there. Lobco feels a couple steps back need to be taken before they can be tackled.]

In your opinion, Hollow Knight, what makes a person a person to begin with?