She's a cool princess

One of the first I've ever gotten back in the demo era and the voice of the Stubborn is one of my all time faves

The Razor --> The Stranger --> The Moment of Clarity --> Happily Ever After --> The Apotheosis (Specifically with Paranoid) --> And? What Happens Next? Always feel like the most complete adventure to me.

The first 2 are interchangeable if I want the Contrarian to show up at the end but otherwise I chose this combo of paths because it personally has the best payoff to me.

Happy, not Valentine's Day.

I'm talking about:

adversary / tower - fury
spectre / nightmare - wraith
beast / witch - wild
prisoner / damsel - grey

In my opinion although it doesn't change too much I feel like there is a difference.
the grey is the biggest outlier but I feel it's a similar thing about the others too. even in ones like the wraith where there isn't a lot of difference in dialogue

It was not a deep philosophical conundrum as I thought it would be, but cool nonetheless.

Like, what perspective do you think most fits with your first run? Were you a Hero the entire time? Were you Paranoid of everything going on around you? Skeptical of the whole situation? Smitten by the Princess of Shifting Mound?

I'm trying not quite sure for myself. I felt like the Hero defaulting to wanting to free the princess, and the Contrarian wanting to ruin the Narrator's day and seeing how much we could fuck with the path set out before us. I found the smitten annoying but I also felt a deep connection to The Shifting Mound (rather than an individual Vessel) which I think informed the overall trajectory of my first Run.

Is there any way to stop this without murdering people. Or slaying them for I don't want the police on my back again. After all, ever since someone brew a pristine blade into my house, the neighbors blamed me for being a criminal. >:(

After all, what else am I supposed to do I can't throw a pristine blade into their window.

[Examine the tombstones]

"kneeling down you run your fingers over the brine stained stone of the tombstone you've chosen. Sharp elegent letters carved in to read. Here lies one Ephraim Winslow just beneath a faded paragraph etched deep into the rock reads

"Should pale death with treble dread

Make the ocean caves our bed,

God who hear'st the surges roll,

Deign to save our suppliant soul."

Voice of the Contrarian: Y'know why the hell is there this sailor-type buried here if we're in the middle of this damned forest?!?

Voice of the Avian: How are we to know? Maybe he was just carried here for all that I care.

[Dig up the grave]

Voice of the Hero: Hey, isn't that just going a bit too far here? You're not disrespectful enough as to do that are you?

Voice of the Contrarian: Who cares? It's not like anyone's been here in absolute eons anyways. Couldn't he use a bit of a freshen up?

"I'm just not going to dignify that even with a reply."

Voice of the Avian: Well are you going to describe our grave robbing venture to us or not?

"I don't have a choice here do I?"

Voice of the Contrarian: Nope! Now get to it!

"Very well then. Due to your lack of a proper implement. You resort to your hands once more. Though considering how dry the dirt inside the cabin is, it takes significantly more effort to claw apart what's essentially hardened clay. You claw and you claw and you claw until your fingers practically bleed.

Though eventually you reach the rotten lid of what seems to be a coffin. With a swift kick it caves in, revealing the curved and arced bones of what can only be described as a half man half corvid."

Voice of the Hero: What the hell

[What if we throw the knife out the window?]

Voice of the Contrarian: Now that's another great idea! How do you keep coming up with this?

"No you are absolutely not doing this. I won't allow it, I can't"

Voice of the Avian: What are you gonna do? Take over our body like you did the first time around?

" Why...I must've only done that because the situation was extremely dire."

Voice of the Avian: Well it ain't so dire now so just hurry up and describe it already.

"With one swift motion you pick up the blade, your only implement, your lifeline, and you hurl it out of the window. Never to be seen again. Are you happy now? Are you happy that you've doomed us all?"

Voice of the Contrarian: Oh give over we haven't doomed anything.

"Just you wait and see"

[Enter the basement]

"Opening the door to the basement, the air distinctly shifts, not physically, but it's as if you've crossed a threshold into a place hanging in the midst of deep sorrow. The Princess's voice, forlorn and tired. Winces it's way up the stairs"

The Princess: So you've come back?

Previous Part

(Background details for the post:I originally did this thing since I wanted to make more fan made routes and I thought it'd be fun if I made it so the comments could give a choice and I'd have to come up with the outcome. So since I had fun writing it last time I thought of doing it again )

I'm probably the only one with balls to actually suggest just as a ship. This idea is primarily to emotionally damage myself. Because g****** happily ever after is a perfect chapter. But what would happen if smitten stayed? And then essentially die? I can't go to sleep without expressing this crackship. So here you go.

After my first run through the game, I was initially confused why the Princess became the Witch.

Not the part where she was distrustful and spiteful. That was obvious. But why the Cat Features? Why was the Chapter called The Witch?

My confusion came because the Narrator forced me to attack (I had already encountered the Damsel) so I wasn't thinking about what thoughts would lead me to take this path on purpose.

The other Vessels I met were easier to figure out. The Stranger? I had never met her before, of course she was a Stranger. The Prisoner? I took the blade, not trusting blindly, and evaluated the situation and determined she wasn't the monster I was told. I trusted only my own senses and all I knew for sure was that she was a prisoner. The Damsel? I treated her like someone who existed to be rescued. The Nightmare? She was too dangerous to set free and too powerful to face head on. She became a Nightmare, something that I couldn't survive in the presence of let alone fight.

But why the Witch? Why a Cat? I had betrayed her trust, why wasn't she a dupe? Then I thought about the thought process TLQ would have gone through to meet the Witch. He went into the basement unarmed, not looking for or expecting a fight. Then he determined that the best course of action was to kill the Princess. Because he assumed her innocence was a facade, a deception to lull him into a false sense of security, waiting for the moment to strike. So he struck first, expecting it to be the only safe thing to do.

So she becomes a sly cat, a Witch, who appears weak but has a hidden power.

This is a very bad joke. Also, contrarian is your lawyer. If you're wondering?

First, the dance under the stars.

And then... "I didn't think I'd ever get to be happy. But I think I am." (that is now my wallpaper, just so you know).

When I was COMPLETELY SURE that this game threw me the last and strongest gut punch, here's the second.

This may have just become my new favorite game of all time. Damn.

The Princess often mentions remembering something locking her in the basement. Do you think this is some sort of false memory or something else?

(Enter the cabin).

"Opening the front door to the cabin you find it's less the cosy woodland retreat that it's exterior suggested, but rather more a dingy graveyard. Tombstones littered about , inscriptions signifying those of great importance may have once held this place as their final resting grounds.

One other factor immediately becomes clear upon your entrance is a low, creaking. Constant and low, each low whisper etching it's way deeper into your psyche.

The only furniture of note is a small collection of tombstones that come together to form some sort of a table. Resting on its edge is a Pristine blade. The blade is your implement, you'll need it if you want to do this right"

[You haven't said anything about the mirror on the wall]

"That's because there isn't a mirror. There's the crate, the blade sitting on the crate, and the door leading to the basement. There's nothing else in here."

Voice of the Hero: There's definitely a mirror

"There isn't"

Voice of the Contrarian: You said it looked like there were people buried here right? Wouldn't it be interesting to take a look at who they are?

Voice of the Avian: Shouldn't you be caring on how she's doing down there? After the state we left her in?

(Background details for the post:I originally did this thing since I wanted to make more fan made routes and I thought it'd be fun if I made it so the comments could give a choice and I'd have to come up with the outcome. So since I had fun writing it last time I thought of doing it again )

Previous Part

Next Part

I don't know, she just looks so cool and after going on a whole 2 hour rant with my friends on why this game is the best narrative experience I've ever had I just felt the urge to draw this