this. this entire sequence from the nightmare -> moment of clarity…
“Like a creeping mold, the complete reality of your existence threads its way through your mind. Birth, death, birth again. Decay and bloom. A million stitches from a million microscopic wounds you’ve inflicted on everyone you’ve ever met with every muscle you moved and with ever word you’ve spoken.”
“Your existence hurts them.”
“A lonely soul in a room by itself weeping. It lives for eighty years and then it’s gone. And then it’s there again.”
“A reprieve. A good life. Love, children, a steady career. Recognition from your peers. Here one moment, gone the next. The worms have found their orifices.” (this line has no right being this good)
“Diagnosis. It forgets everything it is. Anger. Rage. Distance. Poverty. The lonely soul is lonely again. Love turns to mockery, It die. It is reborn. Worse. Lonelier.”
“This is all too much. I… can’t keep going.”
idk what exactly it means, but it feels like the narrator is speaking from the heart about how he feels towards death and all… but this time it’s a lot more sympathetic towards the princess for some reason?? why
i just can’t figure out what exactly this means, but together with the fact the nightmare/moc “desires only companionship but the only thing she knows is how to hurt” and the narrator’s constant dehumanisation of the princess thorough the entire game… it hits hard. seeing it again for the second time made me feel a lot of indescribable things.
I think the reason he sounds more sympathetic because of two things:
- This entire sequence is The Princess describing her own nightmare: a world without The Long Quiet in it.
- The Princess’ worst nightmare sounds disturbingly similar to The Narrator’s own.
A world without The Long Quiet: no stability, no order, nothing permanent, just endless, nonstop change. Everything dies, things can and will always get worse, and even if they do momentarily get better, that happiness can’t last, because everything always ends. You will always be alone. Even if you find yourself surrounded by people who love you, you might as well be alone because one way or another everyone leaves you eventually, assuming you aren’t ripped away from them first.
This was the world The Creator hated, the world he believed he lived in and sought to reform into something better by killing the very possibility of Death. And this is the world The Princess lived in once he separated her from you, day in and day out, with no rest or reprieve.
The Narrator sounds more sympathetic to The Nightmare as she slides into The Moment of Clarity because, for the first and only time, he not only understands her, but also understands the eternity of torture he’d condemned her to by separating her from you. He leaves because he can’t handle the guilt of being forced to seriously question his decision to kill her, and because there’s nothing he can do to right this wrong. The separation can’t be undone now that the two halves have stabilized into individual beings, and because the world is ending, the version of him that feels regret will soon die and be forgotten, anyways.
This scene not only helped me realize the tragedy of The Nightmare (and, by extension, the entirety of The Shifting Mound herself) but also the tragedy of what The Narrator did to himself to reach this point. Even if I disagreed with him and thought he was a fool to even try this, even if he went to outrageous and damaging lengths to control me, I could never bring myself to hate him after this point. He was only the way he was because he acted out of fear, he could never hold on to anything he’d learned between loops by design, and he no longer had the luxury to change his mind. He had to be right, because if he was wrong, then he’d have absolutely nothing left. He’s pitiful.