#tbh all religion is slavery of a sort grimm just seems like the chillest one

[ruthlesslistener]

I'm honestly curious: Where do people get the idea that Grimm is a good person/god? Is there something I missed in terms of lore on him or something? I mean, the Nightmare Heart he serves only thinks about enslaving others, so he's kiinda complicit in that? And depending on how you interpret the thing about Grimmchild taking over his role, you could argue that such a process might consume the Grimmchild's personality, too. Just to be clear: I love Grimm, some interpretations just confuse me.

Through contextual clues, mostly, since we don't have as much concrete lore on the Troupe as we wish. One of the major elements of Hollow Knight is a role subversion, of sorts, with who is the 'good' guy and who is the 'bad'. The antagonists of the game are the Radiance and the Pale King- beings that would be coded as the 'good' guys in any other game, because we as a society have an unfortunate tendency to view white/pale god-figures and rulers as being good by default. But in Hollow Knight, it's their conviction that they are the one true god/that their way is the only means of stopping the apocalypse that causes so much pain and suffering.

The Radiance is the best example of this, imo. She's the cause of so much agony in-game, but when you encounter her she's gorgeous. Beautiful and breathtaking, really- she looks like an angel. And to an extent, she was; she apparently ruled over the Moth Tribe peacefully, before everything went to shit, but at the expense of everyone's freedom. And when it was taken away, her petty anger killed millions of people, and we, a being of void (a being of darkness and death, the evil scary dangerous thing in practically every other piece of media), have to kill her. The angelic god-being is not the savior here; she is a monster. And the 'good' guys/protagonists are the Vessels/Shade Lord, terrifying mute void monsters who are, at their core, children who just want to rest. In the majority of media, this would be swapped.

('Good' and 'bad' are in quotation marks because they are concepts that don't really apply in Hollow Knight; everyone is, thankfully, morally grey. But anyways, moving back to Grimm.)

Another thing with Radiance is that she and Grimm are antiparallels. They both ruled over the Dream Realm in the past, which then split in two because their philosophies with what to do with it were different; dream vs nightmare. The Radiance came back to Hallownest demanding that everyone serve her or die; Grimm shows up to Hallownest to feed his child and meet his end, demanding things only from the summoner. The Radiance, for all her beauty and whispers of comfort, ruled a kingdom where people were treated like children- and what is a child but a slave of their parents, really- content as long as they complied; Brumm is not only allowed to feel his discomfort with the Nightmare Heart, he is also allowed to leave Grimm’s troupe, and when he does, he is gifted a charm that protects the bearer from harm, he’s not torn apart by the wrath of his shirked god. The Radiance is beauty and sweet dreams, ruling over the entirety of her kingdom and the lands beyond with an iron fist; Grimm, however, only has the troupe, with no territory to call his own. So if we keep in mind the whole role subversion thing, as well as this antiparallel, then it stands to reason that the devil-figure here is the kind one, since we already know the angel-figure is fucking horrifying to deal with. He’s essentially the vulture/bats/corvids of gods; he’s absolutely terrifying from the outsider pov, this nightmare god that eats the flames of dying kingdoms, but in reality he’s a chill dude who’s just cleaning up after them and is essential for the godly ecosystem. He’s just here to do his job and leave 

As for the whole thing with the Nightmare Heart enslaving people; is that not what all gods do? We know in Hollow Knight lore that the gods survive through worship and memory; they require dedicated followers to thrive and persist through time. The Radiance certainly didn’t give people a choice about worshipping her, and the Pale King-for all his blathering about free mind and will- damned those of his kingdom that turned away from his influence. By comparison, the Nightmare Heart’s following seems relatively tame, as it’s almost more of a fae trick than anything; you can dance and sing and live forever, as long as you remain bound to it, and the proximity to its power wipes away who you were previously, because it takes your name. Brumm does mention feeling chained to the ritual, but Brumm, as so many others in this game, is an unreliable narrator; he is mortal, he is made to die, and this dance through so many millenia tires him. Even when he is talking about breaking the ritual, he mentions that he doesn’t really care if you don’t go through with it, and when he thinks of it, he thinks to free Grimm of the endless cycle of death and rebirth; he sees a natural process as something he is chained to, because he has been stretched thin through many more years than he really should. And, like I mentioned previously, Brumm really isn’t a slave; when he breaks the ritual, Grimm lets him. He is not torn apart in a fit of rage, like those infected who rejected the Radiance, he is not stripped of his mind, like those who turned away from the Pale King, he’s stripped of his memories of the Troupe (another common theme in fae stories) and left in the safest town in Hallownest, with his accordion and a charm that protects him as best as it can. And when he speaks of that charm, he speaks of a sort of longing and nostalgia gazing upon it, which implies that his time in the Troupe was not necessarily a bad one, he was just really, really exhausted from completing the ritual so many damn times- which is valid of him. It makes me tired just thinking of living that long, let alone watching one of my friends die over and over. Like, don’t get me wrong, I still think that being in close proximity to Grimm is overall dangerous for your health- he is a god, after all, or the vessel of a god,and he is extremely magically powerful- but he doesn’t seem to do it on purpose or out of spite, like with Radiance and PK. It’s just a side effect of his natural existence. 

Tdlr: The Ritual is part of Grimm’s natural lifecycle, the members of the Troupe are not so much enslaved as they are caught up with a powerful fae god whose magic has extreme side effects, Grimm himself is really only here to party and clean up after the messes of other gods, and we can infer from comparisons drawn between the Radiance, the Pale King, and the Lord of Shades that the guy who seems like he’d be pure fucking evil in any other piece of media is really just here to feed his kid and perish, like he said he would, because of how heavy of a thing subversed expectations are in this game.

#hollow knight #hk #troupe master grimm #nightmare king grimm #brumm #brumm hollow knight #tbh all religion is slavery of a sort grimm just seems like the chillest one #im not excusing what came of his actions bc some people might not like it but he's #not really doing it on purpose i feel #thats just how gods work #anon #reply #meta #lore #hollow knight lore #hollow knight lore speculation