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flightworks2021-06-19 11:40 pm
feralphoenix) wrote in flightworks2021-06-19 11:40 pm
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SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS: The Mechanics of the Infection
this post can be rebageled on tumblr here! the tumblr version's sources aren't footnoted but instead included at the end of each section.
CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay contains discussion of body horror, cancer, and many of the darker aspects of Hallownest’s society.
ALSO, AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight as anti-colonialist fiction and all of my meta approaches the text from that angle. This essay is strongly critical of the Pale King and Hallownest, and affords sympathy to pre-Hallownest societies & native characters, including Radiance. If you come from a Christian cultural background (regardless of whether you currently practice the religion or not), some of the concepts I am going to discuss may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.
SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS: The Mechanics of the Infection
If you’ve ever looked through my Hollow Knight tags, you have probably seen me joke about the Infection like a lot, usually along the lines of Radiance casting Level 9 Inflict Tang on Hallownest, or “(radi voice) the End of EVA will continue until you Let My People Go” or some such. In addition to being some of the most beautiful body horror I’ve yet seen in fiction, its appearance also makes it a veritable meme factory.
It is also something that inspires a lot of very wild theorizing amongst fans, because canon tells us WHY the Infection exists but doesn’t ever directly explain WHAT it is. To name just a few of the guesses I’ve seen, people have posited that it could be some sort of pupa juice, or maybe some type of parasitic fungus.
I have my own guess, though, and it’s based on hints we can find in-game. I would like to share it with the class today, so let’s take a quick look through the sauce, starting with what we already know!
WHY
We learn why the Infection happened from Seer and Moss Prophet, and this is also summed up more directly in Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.
The Pale King wanted to be the only god of light in the crater,[1] so he tried to kill Radiance by thralling her children - attracting the moths with his light and making them forget about her,[2] assimilating them into Hallownest. Radiance survived because some moths still remembered and tried to preserve what they could of their original culture,[3] and eventually she attempted to reassert her existence and communicate with the bugs of the crater by speaking to them through their dreams. However, the Pale King realized what was happening and ordered his worshippers to shut her out.[4]
Radiance did not give up, and continued to broadcast her message through dreams. This unstoppable force VS immovable object conflict could not last forever - something eventually had to give, and what gave was the mortals.[5] The Infection was an accident that Radiance did not initially intend, but presumably chose to weaponize after the fact as a way to attempt to pressure TPK into releasing the moths and leaving her alone (or, barring that, a way to thoroughly destroy his kingdom at the very least).
HOW
Now that we’ve recapped why the Infection exists, let’s examine the process of how the Infection works. We see some examples of this with various characters in-game, and the Hunter also shares his observations of the Infection’s mechanics in his commentary on the Infected Crossroads entries.
Since we’ll be bringing up the Hunter’s Journal here, I want to first examine three entries to establish its dual authorship and how trustworthy it is: The Shade’s entry, the Lightseed’s, and Radiance’s.
We know that the bottom section of the Hunter’s Journal is the Hunter’s personal notes on each creature because the game itself tells us so. So who writes the notes on top that give a brief explanation of what each creature is? It’s a common fan theory that Ghost writes these, which I believe is indeed the case.
First let’s look at the Shade, which is automatically unlocked when we receive the Hunter’s Journal in-game regardless of whether we have died and fought the Shade or not. Mechanically this is important because if the Shade weren’t unlocked by default it would be impossible to attain the Hunter achievements without dying at least once - this would REALLY suck for anybody who likes to suffer enough to try to complete the journal in Steel Soul mode.
The Shade’s entry reads:
Notice that the top text knows exactly what the Shade is and how it works. In story terms, this would imply that Ghost has died and come back enough pre-game to understand the mechanics of how their revivals work.
The Lightseed’s entry reads:
In this entry, the top text assumes that Lightseeds are a Lifeseed-like creature that has been infected, and the Hunter’s notes reveal that this is incorrect and the Lightseeds were actually born from the Infection itself. From this we learn that the top text isn’t omniscient and can be mistaken: It’s written from a limited perspective.
And here’s Radi’s entry:
Here, the top text has information that the Hunter doesn’t, and which only a handful of bugs are privy to anymore.
From these three examples, I believe it is safe to say that Ghost is in fact the author of the journal entries’ top segments.
It’s important to remember that the observations these characters make can be not wholly correct, and I’ll bring that up when I believe it to be relevant, but for now let’s build a picture of how a case of the Infection generally progresses by looking at the Hunter’s commentary on Infected Crossroads enemies, and at a handful of characters whose Infection we directly observe: Bretta, Sly, Myla, and Moss Prophet.
The Hunter describes the broad arc of Infection progression in the Violent Husk’s entry: “First [the bugs of Hallownest] fell into deep slumber, then they awoke with broken minds, and then their bodies started to deform…”
The two NPCs who we can save from becoming Infected, Bretta and Sly, are initially found emitting orange fog and mumbling to themselves. In Bretta’s case, when listened to, she initially talks about being left behind and forgotten[7] as she assumes that all people will treat her this way even though she craves affection and attention; Dream Nailed either before or after being listened to, she mentions a “shining figure”.[8]
Meanwhile, Sly speaks about his pupil Oro and someone named Esmy, and when his symptoms subside he identifies that he was led to the Crossroads village ruins by a dream.[9]
Listening to Bretta and Sly completely brings them back to reality, after which they leave the underground area entirely to return to Dirtmouth. However, when the player encounters Myla after defeating Soul Master and obtaining Descending Dive, listening to her does not cause any change in her condition despite that she is not yet hostile.
During these encounters, Bretta is surrounded by orange fog, Sly is surrounded by orange fog and his eyes have also begun to turn orange, and Myla’s eyes are glowing but there is no fog around her. So, we can deduce that for as long as the orange fog is present, a bug may still be awoken and cured (Bretta and Sly both show no signs of relapse over the course of the game), but once the fog disappears the bug can no longer be saved by external means.
The “deformation” that the Hunter mentions in the Violent Husk entry refers to the large blobs of Infection that develop on the bodies of creatures that have been infected for a long period of time. We observe these upon the Infected Crossroads enemies, as well as on Hollow and the Moss Prophet. We also see that these Infection tumors can eventually kill bugs once they grow too large and impede bodily functions, just like real cancer: The Moss Prophet and Mossy Vagabonds are all discovered in this state after the Crossroads become infected, as are the Husk Guards in the Crossroads.
So, the progression we can see here is that bugs become infected through their dreams, and while they can initially be woken, if left alone they will fall into too deep a sleep to wake up. Some time after this they will start to move around again but will be hostile to any creatures that are not infected. And, if left in this state for a very long period of time, they will develop tumorous growths which are potentially fatal.
Potentially fatal. This is an interesting contradiction to a basic assumption that most players - and even Ghost and the Hunter - seem to hold about the Infection: That is, that the Infection functions like a pop-culture zombie plague, and infected creatures are all undead (reanimated dead things that can’t be killed); thus that the enemies that respawn after resting or going offscreen are the same ones that Ghost just murdered, and have simply been reanimated by the Infection once again.
But infected creatures can die of the Infection. What’s more, bosses and unique instances of generic enemies (such as Myla and the Moss Knight at the pier of Unn’s lake) do not respawn once killed. And it’s definitely not that Ghost killed them that counts: Traitor Lord dies whether Ghost fights him solo or whether Cloth is brought along, in which case she always gets the final blow. This creates the argument that the respawning generics are NOT in fact the same individuals reanimated over and over, but different individuals of the same enemy class, and that their different respawn rates speak to how plentiful those creatures are - small animals respawning faster because a new one will arrive in the recently killed one’s territory sooner, for instance.
Ghost and the Hunter both seem to assume that infected enemies are all undead - many creatures are identified as “husks” or “the remains of [whatever specific bug]” in the Hunter’s Journal. But we’ve already established that sometimes Ghost and the Hunter are wrong.
So, if infected creatures aren’t undead, then what are they?
WHAT
In a move very on-brand for Hollow Knight, there’s actually a line from Seer that gives the whole game away - and I mean this incredibly literally, she declares her loyalty to Radiance and says Fuck Hallownest and also hints at what she hopes for from Ghost all in two breaths!! - except that most players are never going to see this line because Seer only says this if you screw up platforming in the Forgotten Dream and yeet yourself off a platform before picking up the Dream Nail.
I do not doubt that I could wring a whole essay out of this one line by itself (and Seer deserves an essay from me so maybe I will), but today the part we’re concerned with is the third line of this dialogue, i.e. how she describes the Dream Nail to Ghost: “The power to wake this world from its slumber[.]”
Its slumber.
The Infection doesn’t only spread through dreams. It is a dream.
To put it in a more meta/video game mechanics sort of way, the Infection is a status ailment. Sleep exists as a common status ailment in RPGs, strategy games, and even some adventure games and platformers. Usually the status ailment of sleep is a mild nuisance that wears off after time, when a character is struck, or if the requisite curative is used; in comparison the Infection is Sleep But Bass Boosted. Appropriate, for a glorified status ailment that’s inflicted by the literal actual god of dreams.
The Infection can only be cured in the very early stages. Once an infected creature has fallen into a coma, there’s no longer any hope of a third party breaking the curse… and also, infected creatures sleepwalk. Violently.
This may also provide an explanation for why mummified bugs in the catacombs have been infected, too: If they were freshly dead and their lingering spirit was still attached enough to their corpses, and that lingering spirit retained enough of a mind to dream…
Aside from those mummified bugs, though, I believe it likely that most if not all of the infected enemies in-game are very, very much alive.
Beyond all the dialogue and lore crumbs pointing to the Infection simply being a cursed sleep, this explanation makes the most sense when thinking about Radiance as a character. She is the literal embodiment of dreams as well as the sun, so inflicting eternal slumber with bonus malignant sleepwalking is a natural extension of her power and a way to use it offensively without being directly violent.
(I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, but signs point to Radiance having been a pacifist prior to the Pale King’s invasion. Short version: The Moth Tribe were pacifists and Radiance was the center of their culture so it would be odd if she were an exception; she is incapable of inflicting any physical harm whatsoever in a game where lack of contact damage from an active enemy indicates helplessness and such enemies always flee from Ghost unless they have a tool they can use to fight with; her behavior in her boss battles indicates a lack of combat experience, and her nail-generating spells seem to be based on Hollow’s abilities. Real-life adult moths cannot fight - they defend themselves with flight, camouflage, mimicry, and I’m Poisonous So Fuck Off coloring.)
Now, I don’t want to downplay the harm the Infection causes - it doesn’t have to turn bugs into literal undead zombies to be devastating. What we can glean of Hallownest’s ruins suggests that as a state it was heavily dependent on labor to run its industry, so incapacitating the laborers would have turned the whole country on its head, especially because those laborers cannot be woken. The Infection also created an intense atmosphere of terror throughout Hallownest as bugs tried to discover ways to cure it or at least protect themselves. And as the Hunter observes,[10] because of how the Infection is caused, the harder you try to block Radiance out, the worse the Infection will get.
(A sidebar: Interestingly, the Infection’s progress seems to be very slow when a creature willingly accepts it; Moss Prophet has Infection tumors when met but doesn’t die of them until the Crossroads is infected, though many Crossroads bugs are found dead of tumors immediately. Traitor Lord and his followers opted in to the Infection long ago, but Traitor Lord is still at the “orange fog” stage and could theoretically be cured, if he wanted to be. Both Traitor Lord and Moss Prophet are still completely lucid, too.)
Radiance may not have committed any direct violence against Hallownest, but the Infection does incite violence: infected creatures become hostile to and will attack the uninfected. And as we’ve discussed, the Infection itself can become fatal once it’s progressed far enough for tumorous growths to form.
A god smiting the shit out of her people’s oppressors by nonviolently but thoroughly disrupting their kingdom, Especially if that kingdom is a genocidal colonialist slave state,[11] as a Let My People Go And Leave Me Alone :) ultimatum is not unreasonable. (And Moss Prophet tells us point-blank that literally just listening to Radiance in the first place would have prevented the Infection before it began!) But despite that Hallownest as an institution is unambiguously awful, Hallownest bugs victimized by their own state (such as the maggot slaves and other menial workers) probably saw much less benefit from Hallownest’s genocides than the rich and nobility, and likely deserved the smiting way less than said rich and nobility.
Meanwhile Hallownest’s neighbors - all native nations who are just as much victims of TPK’s bullshit as the Moth Tribe - did not deserve to get caught up in the smiting at all.
Lateral harm in Hollow Knight is another topic that deserves its own essay - and more than that, lots of in-depth conversation! - but, again, that’s not the topic we want to focus on today. I do want to make it clear, though, that infected creatures being alive and theoretically wakeable if the curse should end doesn’t suddenly mean the Infection was actually no big deal. If you want your jimmies rustled, try Dream Nailing enemies that pull from the generic Dream Nail dialogue pool: They are on some level aware that they’re dreaming and can’t wake.[12]
Clues that the Infection is literally a dream are littered all over the game, from Elderbug’s initial dialogue[13] to the name of ending 3, Dream No More - not only named that because that’s the ending where Ghost sacrifices Radiance’s life as well as their own to end Hollow’s suffering rather than only sacrificing their freedom.
Some of what Bardoon and Moss Prophet have to say about the Infection is suggestive of the nature of this dream, though. Moss Prophet appeals to their audience to find unity through the Infection,[14] and Bardoon also remarks on this, though he cautions that this comes at the cost of being reduced to instinct.[15] Dreaming does tend to come hand in hand with lack of inhibition and suggestibility, but I’m more interested in what Moss Prophet and Bardoon mean by unity, since infected creatures’ thoughts are different depending on what they are and what they were already doing while awake.
There’s less specific hard evidence for this aside from how we can observe that Infection blobs are connected to Radiance, transmitting her heartbeat and birthing the Lightseeds, her unintended creations. But given that those blobs do originate from Infection fluid according to the Hunter… Radiance is not just the embodiment of dreams but the heart of THE Dream. So could the Infection be a forcible pseudo-immersion into that capital-D Dream, the Dream Realm itself?
Whether my hunch here is right or not, I can’t in good faith end this essay without bringing all y’all’s attention to absolutely my favorite bit of The Infection Is A Dream foreshadowing: The way multiple parties mention the fact that the Infection smells and tastes sweet.[16]
You know… it’s sweet… it’s a sweet dream… get it………
And now that you can no longer unsee that brilliantly awful pun, I think I’ll see myself out!
SOURCES:
1 “No blazing kin. Only one light shall shine against the dark.” - Lore tablet hidden beside the Pale King’s throne in the White Palace.
2 “None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters.” - Seer’s 1200 Essence dialogue.
3 “But the memories of that ancient light still lingered, hush whispers of faith… Until all of Hallownest began to dream of that forgotten light.” - Seer’s 2400 Essence dialogue.
4 “The King and the bugs of hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the infection.” - from Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.
5 “Light is life, beaming, pure, brilliant. To stifle that light is to suppress nature. Nature suppressed distorts, plagues us.” - Moss Prophet’s dialogue.
6 I find it a very interesting tidbit of characterization for Ghost that they refer to Radiance as the Light, as native bugs do, rather than calling her the Old Light, as Hallownest bugs did. This has some fascinating implications for where Ghost feels their allegiances to be, but that’s neither here nor there right now lol.
7 “Ohhh… please… don’t leave me behind! You… forgot about me…? I knew you would… everyone always forgets about me…” - Bretta’s dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter
8 “…Shining figure…So bright…” - Bretta’s Dream Nail dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter
9 “…ugghh, Oro you oaf…. You wield your nail… like a club… …Esmy… how much deeper do we have to go… Oh! What?! Who are you?! …I see. This old village. What a strange dream, to have led me down here! If you hadn’t found me, I don’t think I would’ve ever woken.” - Sly’s dialogue, Crossroads village encounter
10 “The infection that swept through Hallownest so long ago… they say that the harder you struggled against it, the more it consumed you.” - Hunter’s commentary, Slobbering Husk Hunter’s Journal entry.
11 I’m referring, of course, to the maggots. See: “Weakest members of the kingdom of Hallownest. Generally looked down upon and forced to do menial labour.” (Ghost’s commentary) and “If they try to bargain for their life, just ignore them. They have nothing to offer.” (Hunter’s commentary) from the Maggot Hunter’s Journal entry as well as False Knight/Failed Champion’s backstory. Remember also that maggots are the larval form of flies like Sly (you’ll see the resemblance if you compare Sly’s features to the maggot siblings’), meaning Hallownest employs child slavery. In more cheerful news Sly’s backstory must be absolutely goddamn wild.
12 “I’m not…Dead..” “Am I…Sleeping?” “I can’t….Wake up…” - Dream Nail dialogue from generic Hallownest bugs (Wandering Husk, Leaping Husk, Horned Husk, Husk Bully, Husk Warrior) and from God Tamer for some reason
13 “Perhaps dreams aren’t such great things after all…” - Elderbug’s initial dialogue
14 “Embrace light! Achieve union!” - Moss Prophet’s dialogue
15 “Theirs is a different kind of unity. Rejection of the Wyrm’s attempt at order. I resist the light’s allure. Union it may offer, but also a mind bereft of thought… To instinct alone a bug is reduced…Hrrm…” - Bardoon’s dialogue (Listen four times, not counting other dialogue flags)
16 “A thick orange mist fills these walking corpses. It has a sweet, sickly taste to it. I find it foul. After you kill these creatures, I suggest you do not eat them.” - Hunter’s commentary, Husk Bully Hunter’s Journal entry, just for one example.
CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay contains discussion of body horror, cancer, and many of the darker aspects of Hallownest’s society.
ALSO, AS USUAL: I read Hollow Knight as anti-colonialist fiction and all of my meta approaches the text from that angle. This essay is strongly critical of the Pale King and Hallownest, and affords sympathy to pre-Hallownest societies & native characters, including Radiance. If you come from a Christian cultural background (regardless of whether you currently practice the religion or not), some of the concepts I am going to discuss may be challenging for you. Please be responsible in your choice whether to engage with this content, and also, be respectful here or wherever else you’re discussing this essay. Thanks.
SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS: The Mechanics of the Infection
If you’ve ever looked through my Hollow Knight tags, you have probably seen me joke about the Infection like a lot, usually along the lines of Radiance casting Level 9 Inflict Tang on Hallownest, or “(radi voice) the End of EVA will continue until you Let My People Go” or some such. In addition to being some of the most beautiful body horror I’ve yet seen in fiction, its appearance also makes it a veritable meme factory.
It is also something that inspires a lot of very wild theorizing amongst fans, because canon tells us WHY the Infection exists but doesn’t ever directly explain WHAT it is. To name just a few of the guesses I’ve seen, people have posited that it could be some sort of pupa juice, or maybe some type of parasitic fungus.
I have my own guess, though, and it’s based on hints we can find in-game. I would like to share it with the class today, so let’s take a quick look through the sauce, starting with what we already know!
WHY
We learn why the Infection happened from Seer and Moss Prophet, and this is also summed up more directly in Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.
The Pale King wanted to be the only god of light in the crater,[1] so he tried to kill Radiance by thralling her children - attracting the moths with his light and making them forget about her,[2] assimilating them into Hallownest. Radiance survived because some moths still remembered and tried to preserve what they could of their original culture,[3] and eventually she attempted to reassert her existence and communicate with the bugs of the crater by speaking to them through their dreams. However, the Pale King realized what was happening and ordered his worshippers to shut her out.[4]
Radiance did not give up, and continued to broadcast her message through dreams. This unstoppable force VS immovable object conflict could not last forever - something eventually had to give, and what gave was the mortals.[5] The Infection was an accident that Radiance did not initially intend, but presumably chose to weaponize after the fact as a way to attempt to pressure TPK into releasing the moths and leaving her alone (or, barring that, a way to thoroughly destroy his kingdom at the very least).
HOW
Now that we’ve recapped why the Infection exists, let’s examine the process of how the Infection works. We see some examples of this with various characters in-game, and the Hunter also shares his observations of the Infection’s mechanics in his commentary on the Infected Crossroads entries.
Since we’ll be bringing up the Hunter’s Journal here, I want to first examine three entries to establish its dual authorship and how trustworthy it is: The Shade’s entry, the Lightseed’s, and Radiance’s.
We know that the bottom section of the Hunter’s Journal is the Hunter’s personal notes on each creature because the game itself tells us so. So who writes the notes on top that give a brief explanation of what each creature is? It’s a common fan theory that Ghost writes these, which I believe is indeed the case.
First let’s look at the Shade, which is automatically unlocked when we receive the Hunter’s Journal in-game regardless of whether we have died and fought the Shade or not. Mechanically this is important because if the Shade weren’t unlocked by default it would be impossible to attain the Hunter achievements without dying at least once - this would REALLY suck for anybody who likes to suffer enough to try to complete the journal in Steel Soul mode.
The Shade’s entry reads:
Echo of a previous life. Defeat it to retake its power and become whole.
-
Each of us leaves an imprint of something when we die. A stain on the world. I don’t know how much longer this kingdom can bear the weight of so many past lives…
Notice that the top text knows exactly what the Shade is and how it works. In story terms, this would imply that Ghost has died and come back enough pre-game to understand the mechanics of how their revivals work.
The Lightseed’s entry reads:
A single-celled organism, completely infected. Scurries about simple-mindedly.
-
Strange air has been seeping down from above for years. Some of the air became liquid, and some of that liquid became flesh, and some of that flesh came to life. I don’t know what to make of it.
In this entry, the top text assumes that Lightseeds are a Lifeseed-like creature that has been infected, and the Hunter’s notes reveal that this is incorrect and the Lightseeds were actually born from the Infection itself. From this we learn that the top text isn’t omniscient and can be mistaken: It’s written from a limited perspective.
And here’s Radi’s entry:
The light,[6] forgotten.
-
The plague, the infection, the madness that haunts the corpses of Hallownest… the light that screams out from the eyes of this dead Kingdom. What is the source? I suppose mere mortals like myself will never understand.
Here, the top text has information that the Hunter doesn’t, and which only a handful of bugs are privy to anymore.
From these three examples, I believe it is safe to say that Ghost is in fact the author of the journal entries’ top segments.
It’s important to remember that the observations these characters make can be not wholly correct, and I’ll bring that up when I believe it to be relevant, but for now let’s build a picture of how a case of the Infection generally progresses by looking at the Hunter’s commentary on Infected Crossroads enemies, and at a handful of characters whose Infection we directly observe: Bretta, Sly, Myla, and Moss Prophet.
The Hunter describes the broad arc of Infection progression in the Violent Husk’s entry: “First [the bugs of Hallownest] fell into deep slumber, then they awoke with broken minds, and then their bodies started to deform…”
The two NPCs who we can save from becoming Infected, Bretta and Sly, are initially found emitting orange fog and mumbling to themselves. In Bretta’s case, when listened to, she initially talks about being left behind and forgotten[7] as she assumes that all people will treat her this way even though she craves affection and attention; Dream Nailed either before or after being listened to, she mentions a “shining figure”.[8]
Meanwhile, Sly speaks about his pupil Oro and someone named Esmy, and when his symptoms subside he identifies that he was led to the Crossroads village ruins by a dream.[9]
Listening to Bretta and Sly completely brings them back to reality, after which they leave the underground area entirely to return to Dirtmouth. However, when the player encounters Myla after defeating Soul Master and obtaining Descending Dive, listening to her does not cause any change in her condition despite that she is not yet hostile.
During these encounters, Bretta is surrounded by orange fog, Sly is surrounded by orange fog and his eyes have also begun to turn orange, and Myla’s eyes are glowing but there is no fog around her. So, we can deduce that for as long as the orange fog is present, a bug may still be awoken and cured (Bretta and Sly both show no signs of relapse over the course of the game), but once the fog disappears the bug can no longer be saved by external means.
The “deformation” that the Hunter mentions in the Violent Husk entry refers to the large blobs of Infection that develop on the bodies of creatures that have been infected for a long period of time. We observe these upon the Infected Crossroads enemies, as well as on Hollow and the Moss Prophet. We also see that these Infection tumors can eventually kill bugs once they grow too large and impede bodily functions, just like real cancer: The Moss Prophet and Mossy Vagabonds are all discovered in this state after the Crossroads become infected, as are the Husk Guards in the Crossroads.
So, the progression we can see here is that bugs become infected through their dreams, and while they can initially be woken, if left alone they will fall into too deep a sleep to wake up. Some time after this they will start to move around again but will be hostile to any creatures that are not infected. And, if left in this state for a very long period of time, they will develop tumorous growths which are potentially fatal.
Potentially fatal. This is an interesting contradiction to a basic assumption that most players - and even Ghost and the Hunter - seem to hold about the Infection: That is, that the Infection functions like a pop-culture zombie plague, and infected creatures are all undead (reanimated dead things that can’t be killed); thus that the enemies that respawn after resting or going offscreen are the same ones that Ghost just murdered, and have simply been reanimated by the Infection once again.
But infected creatures can die of the Infection. What’s more, bosses and unique instances of generic enemies (such as Myla and the Moss Knight at the pier of Unn’s lake) do not respawn once killed. And it’s definitely not that Ghost killed them that counts: Traitor Lord dies whether Ghost fights him solo or whether Cloth is brought along, in which case she always gets the final blow. This creates the argument that the respawning generics are NOT in fact the same individuals reanimated over and over, but different individuals of the same enemy class, and that their different respawn rates speak to how plentiful those creatures are - small animals respawning faster because a new one will arrive in the recently killed one’s territory sooner, for instance.
Ghost and the Hunter both seem to assume that infected enemies are all undead - many creatures are identified as “husks” or “the remains of [whatever specific bug]” in the Hunter’s Journal. But we’ve already established that sometimes Ghost and the Hunter are wrong.
So, if infected creatures aren’t undead, then what are they?
WHAT
In a move very on-brand for Hollow Knight, there’s actually a line from Seer that gives the whole game away - and I mean this incredibly literally, she declares her loyalty to Radiance and says Fuck Hallownest and also hints at what she hopes for from Ghost all in two breaths!! - except that most players are never going to see this line because Seer only says this if you screw up platforming in the Forgotten Dream and yeet yourself off a platform before picking up the Dream Nail.
I do not doubt that I could wring a whole essay out of this one line by itself (and Seer deserves an essay from me so maybe I will), but today the part we’re concerned with is the third line of this dialogue, i.e. how she describes the Dream Nail to Ghost: “The power to wake this world from its slumber[.]”
Its slumber.
The Infection doesn’t only spread through dreams. It is a dream.
To put it in a more meta/video game mechanics sort of way, the Infection is a status ailment. Sleep exists as a common status ailment in RPGs, strategy games, and even some adventure games and platformers. Usually the status ailment of sleep is a mild nuisance that wears off after time, when a character is struck, or if the requisite curative is used; in comparison the Infection is Sleep But Bass Boosted. Appropriate, for a glorified status ailment that’s inflicted by the literal actual god of dreams.
The Infection can only be cured in the very early stages. Once an infected creature has fallen into a coma, there’s no longer any hope of a third party breaking the curse… and also, infected creatures sleepwalk. Violently.
This may also provide an explanation for why mummified bugs in the catacombs have been infected, too: If they were freshly dead and their lingering spirit was still attached enough to their corpses, and that lingering spirit retained enough of a mind to dream…
Aside from those mummified bugs, though, I believe it likely that most if not all of the infected enemies in-game are very, very much alive.
Beyond all the dialogue and lore crumbs pointing to the Infection simply being a cursed sleep, this explanation makes the most sense when thinking about Radiance as a character. She is the literal embodiment of dreams as well as the sun, so inflicting eternal slumber with bonus malignant sleepwalking is a natural extension of her power and a way to use it offensively without being directly violent.
(I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, but signs point to Radiance having been a pacifist prior to the Pale King’s invasion. Short version: The Moth Tribe were pacifists and Radiance was the center of their culture so it would be odd if she were an exception; she is incapable of inflicting any physical harm whatsoever in a game where lack of contact damage from an active enemy indicates helplessness and such enemies always flee from Ghost unless they have a tool they can use to fight with; her behavior in her boss battles indicates a lack of combat experience, and her nail-generating spells seem to be based on Hollow’s abilities. Real-life adult moths cannot fight - they defend themselves with flight, camouflage, mimicry, and I’m Poisonous So Fuck Off coloring.)
Now, I don’t want to downplay the harm the Infection causes - it doesn’t have to turn bugs into literal undead zombies to be devastating. What we can glean of Hallownest’s ruins suggests that as a state it was heavily dependent on labor to run its industry, so incapacitating the laborers would have turned the whole country on its head, especially because those laborers cannot be woken. The Infection also created an intense atmosphere of terror throughout Hallownest as bugs tried to discover ways to cure it or at least protect themselves. And as the Hunter observes,[10] because of how the Infection is caused, the harder you try to block Radiance out, the worse the Infection will get.
(A sidebar: Interestingly, the Infection’s progress seems to be very slow when a creature willingly accepts it; Moss Prophet has Infection tumors when met but doesn’t die of them until the Crossroads is infected, though many Crossroads bugs are found dead of tumors immediately. Traitor Lord and his followers opted in to the Infection long ago, but Traitor Lord is still at the “orange fog” stage and could theoretically be cured, if he wanted to be. Both Traitor Lord and Moss Prophet are still completely lucid, too.)
Radiance may not have committed any direct violence against Hallownest, but the Infection does incite violence: infected creatures become hostile to and will attack the uninfected. And as we’ve discussed, the Infection itself can become fatal once it’s progressed far enough for tumorous growths to form.
A god smiting the shit out of her people’s oppressors by nonviolently but thoroughly disrupting their kingdom, Especially if that kingdom is a genocidal colonialist slave state,[11] as a Let My People Go And Leave Me Alone :) ultimatum is not unreasonable. (And Moss Prophet tells us point-blank that literally just listening to Radiance in the first place would have prevented the Infection before it began!) But despite that Hallownest as an institution is unambiguously awful, Hallownest bugs victimized by their own state (such as the maggot slaves and other menial workers) probably saw much less benefit from Hallownest’s genocides than the rich and nobility, and likely deserved the smiting way less than said rich and nobility.
Meanwhile Hallownest’s neighbors - all native nations who are just as much victims of TPK’s bullshit as the Moth Tribe - did not deserve to get caught up in the smiting at all.
Lateral harm in Hollow Knight is another topic that deserves its own essay - and more than that, lots of in-depth conversation! - but, again, that’s not the topic we want to focus on today. I do want to make it clear, though, that infected creatures being alive and theoretically wakeable if the curse should end doesn’t suddenly mean the Infection was actually no big deal. If you want your jimmies rustled, try Dream Nailing enemies that pull from the generic Dream Nail dialogue pool: They are on some level aware that they’re dreaming and can’t wake.[12]
Clues that the Infection is literally a dream are littered all over the game, from Elderbug’s initial dialogue[13] to the name of ending 3, Dream No More - not only named that because that’s the ending where Ghost sacrifices Radiance’s life as well as their own to end Hollow’s suffering rather than only sacrificing their freedom.
Some of what Bardoon and Moss Prophet have to say about the Infection is suggestive of the nature of this dream, though. Moss Prophet appeals to their audience to find unity through the Infection,[14] and Bardoon also remarks on this, though he cautions that this comes at the cost of being reduced to instinct.[15] Dreaming does tend to come hand in hand with lack of inhibition and suggestibility, but I’m more interested in what Moss Prophet and Bardoon mean by unity, since infected creatures’ thoughts are different depending on what they are and what they were already doing while awake.
There’s less specific hard evidence for this aside from how we can observe that Infection blobs are connected to Radiance, transmitting her heartbeat and birthing the Lightseeds, her unintended creations. But given that those blobs do originate from Infection fluid according to the Hunter… Radiance is not just the embodiment of dreams but the heart of THE Dream. So could the Infection be a forcible pseudo-immersion into that capital-D Dream, the Dream Realm itself?
Whether my hunch here is right or not, I can’t in good faith end this essay without bringing all y’all’s attention to absolutely my favorite bit of The Infection Is A Dream foreshadowing: The way multiple parties mention the fact that the Infection smells and tastes sweet.[16]
You know… it’s sweet… it’s a sweet dream… get it………
And now that you can no longer unsee that brilliantly awful pun, I think I’ll see myself out!
SOURCES:
1 “No blazing kin. Only one light shall shine against the dark.” - Lore tablet hidden beside the Pale King’s throne in the White Palace.
2 “None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters.” - Seer’s 1200 Essence dialogue.
3 “But the memories of that ancient light still lingered, hush whispers of faith… Until all of Hallownest began to dream of that forgotten light.” - Seer’s 2400 Essence dialogue.
4 “The King and the bugs of hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the infection.” - from Team Cherry’s dev notes attached to Seer.
5 “Light is life, beaming, pure, brilliant. To stifle that light is to suppress nature. Nature suppressed distorts, plagues us.” - Moss Prophet’s dialogue.
6 I find it a very interesting tidbit of characterization for Ghost that they refer to Radiance as the Light, as native bugs do, rather than calling her the Old Light, as Hallownest bugs did. This has some fascinating implications for where Ghost feels their allegiances to be, but that’s neither here nor there right now lol.
7 “Ohhh… please… don’t leave me behind! You… forgot about me…? I knew you would… everyone always forgets about me…” - Bretta’s dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter
8 “…Shining figure…So bright…” - Bretta’s Dream Nail dialogue, Fungal Wastes encounter
9 “…ugghh, Oro you oaf…. You wield your nail… like a club… …Esmy… how much deeper do we have to go… Oh! What?! Who are you?! …I see. This old village. What a strange dream, to have led me down here! If you hadn’t found me, I don’t think I would’ve ever woken.” - Sly’s dialogue, Crossroads village encounter
10 “The infection that swept through Hallownest so long ago… they say that the harder you struggled against it, the more it consumed you.” - Hunter’s commentary, Slobbering Husk Hunter’s Journal entry.
11 I’m referring, of course, to the maggots. See: “Weakest members of the kingdom of Hallownest. Generally looked down upon and forced to do menial labour.” (Ghost’s commentary) and “If they try to bargain for their life, just ignore them. They have nothing to offer.” (Hunter’s commentary) from the Maggot Hunter’s Journal entry as well as False Knight/Failed Champion’s backstory. Remember also that maggots are the larval form of flies like Sly (you’ll see the resemblance if you compare Sly’s features to the maggot siblings’), meaning Hallownest employs child slavery. In more cheerful news Sly’s backstory must be absolutely goddamn wild.
12 “I’m not…Dead..” “Am I…Sleeping?” “I can’t….Wake up…” - Dream Nail dialogue from generic Hallownest bugs (Wandering Husk, Leaping Husk, Horned Husk, Husk Bully, Husk Warrior) and from God Tamer for some reason
13 “Perhaps dreams aren’t such great things after all…” - Elderbug’s initial dialogue
14 “Embrace light! Achieve union!” - Moss Prophet’s dialogue
15 “Theirs is a different kind of unity. Rejection of the Wyrm’s attempt at order. I resist the light’s allure. Union it may offer, but also a mind bereft of thought… To instinct alone a bug is reduced…Hrrm…” - Bardoon’s dialogue (Listen four times, not counting other dialogue flags)
16 “A thick orange mist fills these walking corpses. It has a sweet, sickly taste to it. I find it foul. After you kill these creatures, I suggest you do not eat them.” - Hunter’s commentary, Husk Bully Hunter’s Journal entry, just for one example.