(ramblings of a madman upcoming. this is borderline nonsensical but I just gotta get this out there)
ugh, I LOVE the voices parallels so much. they make me insane. and I’ve been thinking about opportunist/hunted and skeptic/smitten the most rn.
for the first two, in their respective chapter 2s they are survival responses put in situations where said responses are entirely reasonable, but will end up reinforcing the “status quo” if entertained. this is somewhat the case with most of the voices, but I think it’s especially noticeable with them.
the opportunist has a “betray them before they ever get the chance to betray you” mentality, and would you look at that, the witch has the very same mentality! and he is CORRECT in thinking she will betray you. because she will. but by following him and what he thinks, you’re just making it impossible to break the cycle of violence (this is literally the point of the thorn).
the hunted behaves… well, like prey, and uh. the beast IS a predator. he IS prey. she is hunting them. but if you just follow your instincts you’ll never be able to free her, or defeat her, or leave together or learn about reconciliation or do anything else that isn’t survive.
so their situations are reinforcing their behaviour, then their behaviour in turn reinforces their situation; they are stuck in a cycle. at least with the hunted you can have the skeptic to make a plan later on in the den, I guess. but it’s still a fascinating thing.
I think the stubborn and the broken chapters are a bit similar to them in this regard, but those have more to do with giving meaning to the princess and choosing whether or not you should fight against it in the end. it’s a bit of a different situation. skeptic and smitten also don’t quite… doom themselves if you just follow them, even though they actively feed into the chapter’s “concepts”, because they’re sort of “tools” made to complement and help you towards your goal (free the princess through skepticism or blind devotion) as opposed to survival responses.
talking about them… oh boy, skeptic and smitten in their respective chapter 2s. you can just go through with whatever the plan was (leave with her), but if you don’t, they won’t ever get the only thing they sought and will hurt others (and themselves) in their desperation. you take away smitten’s happy ending, and you leave skeptic without answers, and to that they just. fucking lose it. going with the previous tool comparation, you could say that’s what happens when a “tool” isn’t useful in a specific situation any longer. it can’t do anything else except for its designated function. so
when the illusion that love makes everything possible and that all you and the princess needed was each other shattered, the smitten couldn’t believe it. this was everything he ever wanted and everything he knew; you are the hero. she is a damsel. you are in love. you save the damsel and live happily ever after. that’s what HAD to happen, and if it didn’t, then it will. he has to make it happen, because it can’t and shouldn’t work in any other way.
in the prisoner, if you don’t take her head, you are shoved into eternal nothingness while left with only questions. what is this place? who is the narrator? what is he hiding? who is the princess? why is she locked up? how could she end the world? is there a world? where is it? why are we the ones doing this? why did the princess cut off her head? not only could they not go through with saving the princess like they tried before, but there are SO many questions, and skeptic didn’t get any answers! they can’t be left unanswered, the truth HAS to be unraveled. that’s what he’s been trying to do all along. it’s the only thing that matters. they WILL keep going and they WILL figure it out.
they are too obsessed to care about anything else. they are too stuck in their tunnel vision to accept anything else. they are too far gone to do anything else.
lord help me I am going insane because of this game /pos
chantillyxlacey:
i’ve seen a lot of takes (i am using the word ‘take’ absolutely neutrally here; and i’m specifying neutrality bc i have started to see that word as having inherently negative connotations in this context and i have no idea if that’s just a Me Problem but i figured specificity couldn’t hurt)
okay, that got away from me, let me start again
i’ve seen a lot of takes about The Damsel that have to do with idealization being another kind of dehumanization and how she’s Like She Is because you/TLQ are projecting a fantasy onto her and sanding away any traits that don’t fit into that fantasy and rendering her into little more than a vessel for your/TLQ’s wish fulfillment
and i don’t necessarily think that’s *wrong* either– but i think that’s also not the complete picture, and that only looking that that half of the image does kind of tend to paint TLQ in an unfairly bad light
because the thing is, in The Damsel’s route, TLQ is ALSO being reduced to an archetype just as much as The Damsel herself is! The Princess becomes the quintessential fairytale fair-maiden-in-distress that exists only to be rescued by a knight-in-shining-armor; and TLQ– if you allow them to be guided entirely by The Smitten– becomes that quintessential fairytale knight-in-shining-armor that only exists to rescue the fair-maiden-in-distress
The Damsel says over and over, explicitly, that “I just want to make you happy!” and The Smitten in this route is equally preoccupied with making HER happy– he even says it directly if you start deconstructing her. every other part of his identity has been subsumed to revolve entirely around her just as much as the reverse is true for her.
(speaking of the Deconstructed Damsel, i’ve also seen Smitten’s reaction to that touted as him not caring about her agency– but again, i always read that as him being unable to see any flaws in her rather than being pleased with the idea of her being biddable, specifically. if you halt the deconstruction his reaction is “she’s ALWAYS been perfect” – he’d think that no matter what she did or said, because his identity revolves around her the exact way that hers revolves around him/TLQ)
even the actions that lead to HEA fit into this, i think– i read that moment as less The Smitten lashing out at her because she didn’t live up to his fantasy– it still happens even after she’s said “i guess we can stay, if that’s what you want”– she’s giving The Smitten what he wants, but he’s still distressed because SHE’S not happy
i think it’s more The Smitten feeling that HE hadn’t lived up to HIS half of their shared fantasy. if she’s not happy with the idea of “all we need is each other” then it must be because HE failed somehow. if she needs or wants more than him, it must be because HE is not enough.
if he was just better at playing his part, if he just offered her more, if he was just clearer about his devotion–
“if we just showed her the contents of our heart, she’d be happy”
that’s not to say that what The Smitten does in HEA isn’t incredibly toxic for both of them– it definitely is, and it clearly makes both the Princess and TLQ miserable. “everything she doesn’t know she wants” is a bad mindset to approach a relationship with, whether that mindset is reached through controlling selfishness or a desperation to appease (and i definitely think Smitten is motivated by the latter– it’s no coincidence that we arrive at HEA through a literal and fatal act of self mutilation)
he’s definitely the antagonist of HEA, in that he is what TLQ and the Princess and the player need to overcome, but he’s not a VILLAIN (which i think is most clearly illustrated in the moment where the Princess admits she’s unhappy, that she’s never been happy here, and his reaction is to GIVE UP instead of lash out harder)
i never got the sense that The Smitten was ever putting any blame on The Damsel– he always considered *himself* to be the problem– he puppeteers TLQ just as much as he does the Princess, even if we can’t hear him while she can, and he asks TLQ/the player through her “isn’t this enough? isn’t this what you wanted?”
which in and of itself is an unhealthy way to approach a relationship– blaming oneself for every bit of conflict or lapse in synchronicity is just as harmful as laying all the blame on the other person. there IS no blame– sometimes people disagree or have conflicting needs or desires, and that’s not anybody’s “fault” because that’s just how people and relationships WORK.
…can you believe i wrote out all of this when my original intention was to lay out an entirely different point about a read on The Damsel/HEA routes that wasn’t about relationships at all?
OKAY!
THAT GOT AWAY FROM ME LET ME START AGAIN
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