He Can Take Her

the unholy trinity of piss-poor caretakers, tag yourself:

tomboy, meaning "this child is clearly queer but let's hope it goes away"

sensitive, meaning "clearly neurodivergent and often distressed but let's keep going until they grow numb"

mature, meaning "traumatized but let's ignore that"

I think what I’m seeing with the Slay The Princess fan base is that not enough people recognize that ALL the voices are a neutral force. Both positive and negative in their own ways.

I’ve seen people talk about Smitten showing love just as a thing, and I just saw a post talking about Paranoid needing to be written in fan content with his more negative side as well as his capabilities, but it’s actually like that for all of them! The voices are, quite literally, reflections of The Long Quiet— and they are their definition in every way it can be.

Smitten loves, and sometimes that love happens to hurt because he just wants what’s best for the Princess but she wants the same for tlq so it spirals and no one is happy.

I was thinking about Hunted, especially in the Den, where he is instinct and that instinct is to survive, but when he sees someone else also fighting to survive, he looks out for them and works as a team.

Cold is notorious for brushing off any emotions and with the mirror he will tell the decider that you don’t need to comfort the other voices. But he’s pushing for numbness so that it hurts less, so that you can handle it easier, so you aren’t paralyzed by guilt or by the decisions you have to make.

Opportunist is constantly changing his mind, trying to be on the “winning” side, and this causes him to be a jerk, pull the knife on the princess when it suits him and if you don’t want to hurt the princess he’ll then try to play it off. But he’s also got ways to keep you safe, know when something will turn on you because that’s what he would do, and he just wants the safety and security.

I could write them all out to be honest, but it’s about just taking their names at face value because that is literally what they are, and Slay the Princess does a really damn good job at portraying these traits as completely neutral. And it’s a game about perception, so depending on what choices you make, these neutral traits will seem more positive or negative, and I really think that’s a great message that can be done so so well and I honestly love it.

I have been waiting all year to post this.

Sorry I had to do this xD Petey with his last opponent: Grampa!

to me this is what slay the princess is really all about. not about grand concepts of life and death, not about some distant cosmic concepts, it's about a very specific thing about our lives and how we deal with them.

it's about the fear that the things that happened to you shaped you in a way that made you worse and you need to fix and undo them, the fear that if this bad thing didn't happen to you, you would be better, and how, no: there is no judgement to be made on your experiences or how they shaped you. your experience do not worsen or better you, they just change you, and that change is important and good because it makes you more complete and fleshed out as a person.

you can bring such a huge variety of difference princesses to the shifting mound, parts of her who have experienced a huge range of emotions and events, from tragedy and pain to happiness and love and everything in between, princesses with a huge range of personalities and character, and she sees value in every single one of them. no matter how dark, painful, horrible a chapter it is, no matter what awful things have happened to them, no matter what kind of princess it is or how cruel or horrible she is or what she's done, she can find value in them, because they add to her, and complete her.

she can find beauty and meaning and substance in the vicious razor, appreciate her joyfulness, she sees the vengeful and petty witch as righteous because her bitterness from the betrayal she experiences formed in her an idea of right and wrong, she describes the terrifying nightmare as tender because she sees her inner sadness and sensitivity, she describes the vicious and vengeful wraith as 'driven' because she sees her power of will and determination.

she does not make any moral judgements on either the 'good' or 'bad' princesses, she sees their experiences and the traits and understanding of the world they add to her.

the important thing to her is to have experiences and perspectives that flesh her out and add to her, they let her grow and gain substance and understanding. she has nothing bad to say about any of them, and the only 'bad' thing she has to say isnt a bad thing it all, it's not having much to say at all about a damsel who has little experiences and little to offer her, and it's not a sentiment she ever expresses on her own.

and i mean, it says it right here at the start of the game right, 'there are no wrong decisions, there are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings'. and then this line from the ending where you return to th stranger:

this applies to TLQ too. tlq is stillness so he doesnt change as the shifting mound does, but he also has parts of himself and his character as represented by the voices, and all of them serve their purpose. all of them have value. they are not bad or good, they are not better or worse, they just are.

and like, to me where this actively applies to real life isn't this that you should seek out negative or bad experiences, or that you should actively suffer to build character or anything so extreme. it's a way to understand the bad things that already did happen and the pain and trauma you did experience, and a way to understand the pain and trauma that sometimes is inevitable as just a part of any life experience, because the most important and valuable thing to a person is to have any kinds of life experiences, positive or negative. and in the case of the negative, you are shaped and changed by it, but you are not worsened, you just become more. it carve texture around your heart.

Uhh, here, a template

Original meme below

You now heart lungs liver nerves manually

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'There's a petition to ban conversion therapy in the EU' to Cas' 'I love you'. /End ID]

If you are a citizen in the EU please sign this petition:

eci.ec.europa.eu

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

o(^▽^)o

Princess duties