What’s in the Hole?

Hello inimitable Wyrmlings!!

It’s a-me again, Carolyn! I know, I literally just did January WYRMHOLE but I am BACK because everyone else is BUSY THIS MONTH (we are absolutely swamped I tell you, swamped!!) and honestly, my bachelorette is this weekend AND so is Isabel’s wedding (hurray!!!) so I am frantically cranking out words right now, just four hours before the whole party begins. Do I procrastinate? No. Trust me. This never happens (it happens about 1% of the time.) 

I’ll keep this first part short, because in this WYRMHOLE editorial I want to leave space for my WILDCARD compilation of awful posts about Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is a game I dropped about six months ago to give my writing a bit more space. But now that my writing has space– we are SILKING this SONG. And I am having the time of my life.

So without further ado, let’s move onto the rest of the newsletter! And celebrations to all!

Carolyn Zhao / March 2026 Editors in Chief / New York, USA

Recs & Reviews

Carolyn recs…

• The Magician’s Apprentice

  ^{Tamsyn Muir, Lightspeed.2017. 4.8k words.}

  I was introduced to Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb last year, and to my delight, a couple of friends told me she’s written short stories as well! The Magician’s Apprentice is a deft and delightfully gruesome telling of one girl’s path to become— well, the apprentice of the local magician. But naturally, this being SFF and Tamsyn Muir, there are more than a couple macabre little obstacles along the way…

Iz recs…

• Start the Clock

  ^{Benjamin Rosenbaum, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 2004.}

  I read this story like ten years ago for the first time and really enjoyed it, met Ben on a train last summer, did NOT recognize him as the author, and then randomly read this story again two weeks ago. Ben, if you're reading this, good job I liked it, I should have told you on the train.

Tina recs…

• Window

  ^{Charlie Hughes, The Dark. 2025. 1.9k.}

  This story about a haunted video is delightfully scary. Don't want to spoil too much because it's short, but don't read this if you're about to have a session with a therapist!

Tia recs…

• Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by K. N. Sirsi and Sandra Botkin

  ^{Cameron Reed, Reactor. 2026. 5k words. (A prior version appeared in Starlight 2, 1998.)}

• The Reactor one-line summary of this story describes researchers discovering “a family unable to conceive of gender.” In a fascinating form that reads so much like an academic paper I couldn’t be sure which cited studies were fictional without checking, Reed explores the concept of gender as a construct by detailing the research of two scientists who find evidence for “genagnostic” people who cannot easily differentiate based on gender. The story asks some big questions and doesn’t give any easy answers—it’s well worth the read.

H.H. recs…

• Magical Girl Antifa War Machine

  ^{Esther Alter, Escape Pod. 2025. 4k.}

  Buckle up kiddos, this ain’t Sailor Moon. This is questionable morality, gender dysphoria, irresponsible violence, and toxic codependency all wrapped up in anarchist rage at the End of the World. So Madoka Magica if it had a brain child with Exordia by Seth Dickinson. Whip-smart prose that blurs comedy and tragedy into Something New entirely.

The Best of February Cover Art

February Riddle of the Month

Good Moomin of the Month:

A Saga in Three Parts

WILDCARD

SKONG!

(by carolyn)

Okay. Backstory. I played Hollow Knight a couple of years after it released– 2019 maybe? And that’s when the trailer for its sequel, Silksong, came out. Now it is 2026. Silksong came out 6 months ago, around early September. So I have waited (including the post-release time) SEVEN YEARS to play this freaking game. And it is just as beautiful as I remember it. 

Now, what I want to talk about today isn’t necessarily about the game itself, but rather about a cultural phenomenon that sprung up around the game before it’s release: the SKONG.

SKONG / SILKPOSTING has its roots in the subreddit r/Silksong, a place that was once dedicated to updates on Hollow Knight developer Team Cherry’s progress on Silksing. Every popular video game has its eager followers. Now, this wouldn’t normally be a problem, except that a short while after the initial Silksong trailer released, Team Cherry went radio silent. And that’s when r/Silksong began to slowly descend- over the course of SIX years- into what can only be charitably called, “total detachment from reality.” 

Instead of regular posts, people began posting SILKposts, which were essentially memes about Silksong’s protagonist (the amazing Hornet,) TC’s development time, fake-outs of release dates, and so on…. 

But. Since the game released, there has been even MORE Silkposts on the subreddit. I’ll share some of my favorite ones down below, and not to be a Team Cherry shill, but you guys should really play Silksong. But only if you have a lot of time. Because this game is not easy-peasy lemon squeezy, it’s difficult-difficult why-is-this-so-difficult. It’s still one of my favorite games, though. So these six-seven (SIX-SEVEN) years have been worth the wait. 

Note that ALL memes have been taken from the r/Silksong subreddit. It’s just that nuts. Trust me.

The game in question:

and now the memes:

tl;dr

buy the game.

A parting song from the Editors…

Pink Pony Club - (Bard Core || Medieval Style Cover)

That’s it! That’s all we got! If you liked our stuff a HOLE lot, share us with a friend! Stay safe and warm, wyrmlings!