For centuries, people have sought to divine meaning from the universe's apparent nonsense, examining tea dregs, sheep liver, or squeezing blood from deep cuts as warm sacrifices to their cold, mercurial gods. Today – a time of algorithms and frozen food – these methods might seem extreme, even barbaric, but a few dreamers understand the power of ancient desperation, and they all happen to be on the Hollow Knight: Silksong subreddit.
Fed up with the hourglass drip of information they've been getting over the past few months – the Metroidvania sequel is apparently finally releasing this year, it keeps getting gnat-sized Steam updates, etc. – Hollow Knight fans (as noted by PC Gamer) have taken to ritualistically banning r/Silksong members in exchange for information. Again.
"We made the choice, there's no alternative," a r/Silksong moderator says in a recent thread with over 3,000 upvotes. The mod team decided to ban one of their own, u/sand-sky-stars, as "an ultimate sacrifice"; as of writing, the user is still listed as a r/Silksong mod on their profile, but as past sacrifices have indicated, a ritual Silksong "ban" simply means being discouraged from posting about Hollow Knight on either Reddit or Discord.
Anyway. "Every r/silksong user holds a certain amount of power," the mod team explains in its thread, "that only gets released when we make a sacrifice, but no matter how many goodbyes we say, it's never enough for our Cherry Gods to respond to our prayers."
"WE WILL LEAVE TRACKS ON SAND AS WE VENTURE INTO THIS NEW CHAPTER, OUR CRIES WILL REACH THE SKIES AS WE SING FOR SILKSONG, OUR POTENTIAL WILL GO EVEN HIGHER THAN THE STARS," the mods cry out with age-old longing, "WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN BAITED MANY TIMES, WE HAD OUR LOWS, BUT TODAY WE OPEN A NEW CHAPTER AND WE SHALL KNOW NO FEAR."
"WE ARE THE HOPE GIVEN FORM" – scream it! Part the clouds with your desire! – AND WE WILL ENDURE EVERYTHING / FOR SILKSONG IS IMMORTAL AND SO ARE WE."
So what did the Silksong devotees earn from developer Team Cherry 16 hours after their uninhibited sacrifice? Concept art? A new trailer? A release date?
No, it's, uh, another incomprehensible Steam update. Well, at least they tried.
