in september 2025 there was a category 5 The Character event...
i got into HK in late 2018 and was near the end of my first playthrough (in the white palace, to be specific!) when silksong was announced. there's a very funny tumblr post from 16 year old me to the vein of "wow, i'm beating the game just in time to play the new one!"
the 2 weeks between the release date announcement and said release date was such a happy, exciting time to be part of the fandom... the night before release i put the money for it in my steam wallet in advance to get through payment faster without it crashing. i occasionally cosplay as her and the first few cons i did that to right after release were very fun :]
i tend to only update this website in quick bursts when i am particularly fixated on playing with HTML, and when silksong came out there were other things i was more interested in doing obviously. soooo along with me being almost at the end of my third 100% playthrough (and one save file i'm leaving in act 2 for future updates) here is a slightly late post-release skong page to go alongside my pre-release thoughts. it is kind of just a shrine page for hornet as a character also since she is the most Blorbo From My Shows a character has ever been to me and silksong releasing has only made that stronger. picks her up in my mouth like a dog toy and shakes her (lovingly).

so, how was it?

well worth the wait! it felt pretty much.. like an improved version of the first game, which is exactly what i'd wanted out of it. as i am writing this it is a little over a year since release day and i have just finished 100% steel soul for my last achievement (until an update adds some embrace the void-esque bullshit, which is the one achievement i don't have in the first game). it is a little bit sillies to look back at the early day, pre-nerf difficulty discourse and realise that a good amount of it was just.. that people weren't really used to how hornet controls.
one of the things i was most excited about was getting more hornet characterisation. pharloom being much more populated than hallownest gives opportunity for a lot of fun dialogue. i'd predicted that she'd write the hunter's journal entries herself and was very very happy to see that be the case.
i love that they let her be sillies a little bit. the tendency to react to being offered prizes like a puppy being offered a treat (really funny to me how in flea festival she insists she's just playing toys to hone her skills and then immediately puts Become The Best At All Of Them And Win The Prize in her to-do list.) wanting to pet all the fluffy bugs and being really sad if they're too angry or spiky for it. the cloak drift animation. everything about the slab escape bit. truly the girl of all time.

the pre-release page in retrospect

a lot of the old page is theories on how the story of the game might go. how close were they?
the amnesia theory was incorrect... i still think it's a fun concept, though, so will probably reuse it for a fanfic eventually. i was Kinda there with the surface thing????? and the section about the delicate flower being important y. yeah. just a little bit.

here we go again

it's really funny to me how the fandom has almost immediately descended into pre-release waiting mode again while waiting for sea of sorrow. i think october is very plausible. grimm troupe released on halloween iirc? parts of SOS feel similarly halloweeny to me, so perhaps something similar will happen with its release date.
my prediction is that there will be a fishing minigame and hornet will get really into it.