Thread by @shoveledknight, hey I'm feeling self indulgent do u guys wanna hear abt my [...]

hey I'm feeling self indulgent do u guys wanna hear abt my oc/canon hollow knight ship I promise it's good

ok ok I'll make it a thread gimme a bit

alright *sits down and cracks open my giant tome of hornet meta and hc* this ship relies on a lot of headcanon so bear w me. tw for a bad injury during this story, but otherwise it's pretty soft

so y'know how hornet's a spider? but she only has 4 limbs? even tho even her mother had 6? the easy explanation is that her dad nerfed her limb count (tho personally I hc he's got a ton of small limbs under that cloak) but I like to think she used to have 6 limbs but, lost a pair

so imagine you're hornet, age 4. you've been living in the white palace with the king and queen as long as you can remember. but today a group of deepnest bugs come breaking down the door demanding custody of you bc your mom was their queen and they deserve you more than pk does

the adults decide on compromising, and now you spend half your time living in the white palace, but on thursdays the midwife comes to pick you up to spend the weekends in deepnest with your weaverling pals. life is alright

ok now imagine you're hornet age 9. and you kinda understand more about the world now and u kinda understand the whole vessel thing that happened when you were like, 1. and you're probably not very happy about what your dad did to handle the situation

so naturally, you run away.

except you've never,,, made it from the palace to deepnest on your own before. so you wing it. and you make a wrong turn. and you end up... somewhere else?

you end up in the hive.

youve never been to this place before but it's warm and smells like honey so that's cool you guess

and some bee guards find you and assume you're a trespasser so they take you to their queen to figure out what to do with you
and queen vespa looks at you, a cute sheltered 9 year old, and is like. oh fuck I wanna keep her

okay I'm dropping the second person perspective now. vespa lets this kid go home but offers her a position to train under her. so she spends the next few years traveling between deepnest and the hive to train and learn to nailfight

she's good at it too! so good, she earns the title "hornet" (she didn't really,, have a name before this, higher being naming conventions are weird at best and nonexistent at worst). and vespa offers her the position of her hive knight (before the ingame one came along)

but something,,, goes wrong. during training one night, hornet takes it too far and there's an accident, resulting in the loss of her lower set of arms. hornet's embarrassed by her recklessness and tries to fix herself up, but she ends up passing out before she gets a chance to.

and she wakes up... somewhere else.

in the mantis village, of all places.

with a mantis sitting by her bedside, waiting for her to come to.

so naturally, hornet freaks out.

the mantis calms hornet down and tells her she found her in the hive, bleeding out. she'd brought her to her village and just wants to help.

why's a mantis in the hive you ask? well, uh, she's a scout, you see. gathers info for the mantis lords.

what about the mantis lords actually? well this mantis girl has already told them about hornet, and they're welcoming her with open arms. the house they're in now is hers to keep, actually. and they'll give her free food and anything else she needs while shes here. she's a guest.

hornet is..... suspicious. but it's not like she's in any position to be running away right now, she can barely sit up without help. so she lets the mantis girl take care of her.

her name is cricket. not a very good name for a mantis. but hornet isn't a good name for a spider.

over the next two months, hornet makes a steady recovery, and cricket is there for all of it. they learn more about each other and hornet comes to... appreciate her. consider her as a friend.

now in my version of the story, stuff happens that leads to hornet and cricket never seeing each other again, before hornet realizes she's in love (but that's another story for another thread). but I really like thinking abt what coulda been, or what might be if they ever reunite

cricket was definitely flirting w hornet the whole time, but hornet was just kinda, oblivious. hornet at this point doesn't realize she's gay. she doesn't express much interest in relationships at all, she's too busy. but this downtime lets her explore those feelings a bit more.

I like to think during her time in recovery, they did get Very Very Close to a kiss or a romantic confession a couple times. cricket and hornet just inches apart, one whispering a secret to the other. something only for them to know.

but they always pull away.

cricket stays over at hornet's place one night, then another night, then on weekends, then whenever they feel like it. she moves from sleeping in another room to the other side of the same room to right next to each other. just to make sure hornet'll be ok through the night, ofc

if they ever met again, cricket could definitely convince hornet to settle down with her. her service to hallownest has always been enough, been more than enough. she's never gotten thanks for it. but she deserves the rest. and hornet can't say no to her, her first love.

contrasting this w how I see lacenet, where they go on adventures+empower each other. lacenet is more,, donluan to me, where cricket/hornet (cricknet??) is more prospecter, at least how I write em

which is funny bc I know a lotta ppl see lace as the propeller to hornet's specter

but yeah cricket is the partner that tells you you've done enough. you're good enough. she loves you, and she wishes you could see yourself the way she sees you. and then she cuddles up to you under a warm blanket she made and puts on a fun movie for the two of you

I haven't drawn cricket yet in a way I'm happy with yet but if ur craving any content of em after this thread here's something I did of the two of them as gijinkas instead. thank u for reading my soft gay bug ship thread

side note since I'm remembering now that my hornet gijinka is, kinda not anything like most hornet gijinkas. someday I'll make a thread abt why hornet is very mixed-race coded and such but for now just trust me on it lmao

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