#I'm also well aware “the damsel isnt romantic” is probably a bold fuckin take but idc. I do genuinely think that

[red-talkin-graves]

I feel like. HEA isn't too out of character for the smitten or princess tbh, and it feels like a very natural endpoint for the Damsel. I'm gonna. Ramble about it a lot below the cut

The smitten is blind to her flaws, single-minded, and obsessive. Even before the pristine cut all these traits were present. He never saw issue with the grey burning us alive. He never saw any issue with the razor cutting us to bits. He never took any issue with the deconstructed damsel, who existed as a two-dimensional cutout of a person that refused to have her own will and seemingly only existed for us. That's not really a healthy way to think of someone you love, I think. Which isn't to say there aren't chapters where the smitten does genuinely love the princess. The damsel just... doesn't strike me as one of them.

And the princess forgives the player so easily because the shifting mound is as we percieve her. In the damsel, we saw her as a loving being who would do anything for us, and in the chapter before, we refused to listen to the narrator's warnings(blinding ourselves to her flaws, creating the smitten). That perception becomes cemented into her nature. In the adversary, we had seen her as a capable fighter who we were evenly matched with, so that perception becomes part of her. This is how the princess is, as a narrative device and a character. There's a reason we get to the shifting mound by interacting with a mirror. She reflects what we see in her, and we see what she reflects, and that cycle goes around getting amplified every time. Every chapter is the last pushed to the extreme. The cage is the most extreme form of the prisoner, the apotheosis the most extreme evolution of the tower... she always amplifies what we see her as. And in the Damsel, we saw her as forgiving, loving; and willing to do anything for us.

Tbh I found the Damsel to be a very uncanny and uncomfortable chapter from the start, long before the pristine cut was released and even without having gotten the deconstructed ending myself. The Damsel was never romantic to me, she was always uncomfortable and jarring, because I know what it's like to be in her place, having to abandon my own autonomy and will to appease people just to survive. And I know what it's like to be loved by someone who takes no issue with me lacking autonomy, too.

At the start of the Damsel, she's still chained up. Her freedom is in our hands. She forgives us for the stabbing attempt in the damsel, and that becomes amplified. She loves us despite her lack of autonomy in the Damsel, and that gets amplified too. Even in the damsel, even after we bring her out of the cabin, she still is bound to our will for the few seconds before the world ends, because we still have the blade and still could kill her. HEA feels to me like where the Damsel was always going to end up, a natural continuation of how uncomfortable and uneasy the "romantic" parts of the Damsel were.