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worldbeyondtheworld · 3 months ago

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Yeah yeah! A shift in perspective has the Creator / Narrator shift their roles. Both the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet can be seen as different aspects of death. One is that everything changes, which includes aging, which leads to death. But it's also about the idea about the status quo changing; about you as person changing, so the previous version of you 'died'. All of these bring uncertainty, fear, and loss.

The other is the stillness of the body in death. It is stagnating waters and stagnating character. It's the idea that some paths can't be altered, some events will happen in this certain way, some situations cannot be changed, no matter what you try to do.

Both change and stagnation are inevitable.

I love that you've kept the Narrator's condescension. While the Long Quiet would be more passive in this AU because they are not pushed into the role of the protagonist, they still have parts of the Shifting Mound in them. They are still a person with desires outside of the Princess affecting them. They are more than what the Narrator can understand as 'nothing'.

So here's the thing with the Narrator in my version of the Slay the Monster AU... he's still trying to kill death, he just thinks of death differently.

Now a lot of this is just my own philosophy, but I personally never thought of death as a form of change before playing StP. Death was stopping. Death was stillness. Death was an ending, and there's Nothing after. Change is when you go from living to dead, but being dead? That's an unchanging eternity. Your corpse'll change, sure, but that's not you anymore ("You are not your body.")

The Narrator wants a world without death. Without stillness, without silence, without rest. You might change from living to dead, but your heart will not stop beating, your nerves will not stop firing, and you will change right back from dead to living the instant after. You cannot properly die if nothing can stay dead.

Ongoing, ever-changing, vibrant, thrumming, thriving life.

So He splits the divine heart of reality. He sculpts Change into a heaving, beating cage for Stillness. But Stillness is too great a concept for anything short of divinity to ever truly kill, and the very nature of Change means Stillness cannot be imprisoned forever; sooner or later, Change will shift and leave an opening for Stillness to escape.

He does His best, though. He shatters Stillness and tucks each fragment away in a different chamber of the cage, trying to keep them separate. And He crafts a living, breathing avatar of Change to go kill it, one shard at a time.

Of course, He'll have to be careful about it. Change is a powerful thing, after all. This reality is made of her, and now she can think. Stillness is too broken not to be affected if Change decides it's something else.

A placid mirror will always reflect back whatever you happen to see in it.

#slay the princess #slay the princess au #slay the princess swap au

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pink-november · 9 months ago

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I've been thinking a lot about your Slay the Princess Swap AU. What misadventures do the Princess as the Spectre and the Gravedigger / the Voice of the Cold get into?

DING DING DING! SWAP AU BELOVED HOW I MISS YOU

Oh god thank you anon for asking this I will now proceed to gush about my swap au with the info I currently have.

Spectre (or Revenant as I call her in my head) cannot leave her own tomb without Cold's help so she only gets to tag along with him most of the time. Cold lets her just because he thinks it'll be interesting. He even sometimes let her possess him for shits and giggles. Like the one time she wanted to eat something and Cold had to eat against his will (it's not his meal time yet 😞). It was... an experience.

No one can see Spectre other than Cold so she gets real lonely and develops a mischievous side to her. She haunts the people residing there, often also trying to make Cold express something. She succeeds, sort of.

She's very ruthless to the village chief though. Mostly because he's an asshole who absolutely hates the monarchy and treats Cold poorly. She gets him to prank the chief later on and they become bestiessss ✨

Spectre did request Cold to go to the mountain but gets shut down quickly when he says no. Like he's not even entertaining her about it. He leaves her immediately whenever she brings up the topic and will avoid her like the plague the next day.

So she asks to leave the village instead because she hates being cooped up for too long and Cold just says he can't leave just yet. Not until his benefactor comes back and takes him with them. So Specter gets really pissed at him for it and at her shitty situation so she kinda uhhhh wrecks the village and gets Cold in trouble.

That's about it I think 🤔 lol 😆

#novem asks #the barebones of a concept #slay the princess swap au #slay the princess #cold as a babysitter to specter is hilarious to me actually

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worldbeyondtheworld · 2 months ago

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Here's the AU route I mentioned in my post (here) collecting several ideas for a Swap AU / Slay The Monster AU.

Please buckle in. This is going to be long, long post. The main part has *looks at numbers* more than 2,000 words. The author notes have more than 1,000 words. I will add the author notes in a reblog, so that you can find them if you want.

The Voices exist as separate entities after the Princess acts, dies, and the Chapter 2s start. They manifest as protectors of the Long Quiet’s pieces (Quiet for short) but only one can appear at a time and often needs time until they are fully physical. Who and how depends on the Princess’ actions in the previous loop as well as in the current one. Other Voices can manifest in their minds in chapter 3s and 4s as in canon.

Does that make it a Protect The Monster AU?

I love this direction because it evokes a similar contradiction to the canon game that doesn’t exist in this kind of AU. The Narrator wants the Princess to slay the Long Quiet. It’s the classical trope of ‘the hero / princess / prince slays the monster for the safety of their people’.

@billcyphersballsack has pointed this out in their own beautiful post about a Slay The Monster swap AU. Please give it a look here: https://www.tumblr.com/billcyphersballsack/754954086465585152

But the Narrator’s claims and the initial expectations are upended in the next Chapter when a set of protectors reveal themselves, wanting to keep the Monster safe and seeing the Princess as a threat. Or when the Princess claims to want to help, they work with her to free the Monster and escape the cabin.

The Voice of the Hero manifests rarely. He’s Quiet’s Heart and so the most vulnerable in some ways. He’s their emotional anchor, unwilling or unable to separate from them. When he does, it shows that something has gone very wrong.

Now for this route: The Princess argues in Chapter 2 with the Narrator. (From here on, I’m switching to the personal ‘you’ for the Princess as if she was addressing herself as the Long Quiet does in canon.)

The prisoner could be cursed and be actually like you. They are not monstrous! They are harmless as you’ve said before! You know after meeting them! You showed them step by step how to remove their own shackle after a trap caught you. They didn't know if they are a princess like you going by the charades they made, but you are sure that they will figure it out once they've escaped. They are just so sweet and kind, they have to be a princess! The monster is somebody else who’ve captured and imprisoned them in the cabin. Quiet just needs to do exactly what you say next time, because they’ve been down here so long, they don’t know anymore how to escape!

This is the only route where Quiet's body changes this much. They gave their own identity up and filled it with your reflection. Being themself didn't help anybody, least of all their Voices. And you were so kind…

When you spot the cabin again, it looks like before at first. But the closer you get, the more differences you see. (Related to Quiet, this is also the only route where the cabin changes.)

The Narrator is unsettled. This part of the Construct should always be stable. The Princess can find it even on the ever-changing path. The little details that were there before have vanished. You can’t tell if the walls are made of wood, stone, or something else. The cabin’s inside has no furniture anymore. It’s featureless – the ceiling, the walls, and the floor look all the same. The weapon lies next to the entrance which is just a perfect rectangle at the back, as if cut out. You ignore the weapon. You’re here for your friend, after all.

Walking down reveals a different picture. The stairs crumble under your steps. You arrive in a long corridor which is lined with cob-webbed mirrors on both sides. Your reflection moves in infinity alongside you. The Narrator warned you that you’d be changed. It’s still very strange.

At the end, behind a rusted door, you find… Another prisoner? It’s not the same cage as before. It looks similarly to the cabin behind but as if it went through an earthquake. Cracks run from the floor up the walls to the ceiling. Some spots hang uncomfortably low or bulge down like bubbles about to pop. The bars in the tiny window have bent.

This prisoner looks similar to you. Another princess, here? They wear the same dress you do, after you’ve changed from dying. Even the same gloves and shoes. Up close, you are unsettled because you could be looking into those mirrors again. They repeat your movements a few second after you. Looking closer, you notice that their skin is reflective. They only move when you do. But when you stop smiling, they continue, just looking at you.

You think you spot black feathers underneath in glimpses in-between as they fail to answer your questions about your friend.

Oh. OH. OH NO NO NO NO-

When you shake their shoulders, asking them to speak, they mirror you - much softer as if afraid to hurt. They still don’t speak. It’s like you are the only person left in the basement.

Alright, alright, you can fix this! You've promised them you'd leave together, so that's what you'll do! They both can tackle everything else once they've left the cabin and these damned woods.

You either vow to help them – you don’t know how, but you know you’re the reason for this horrible transformation. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t look like you. It doesn’t matter that you feel lonely and want another person who understands you. It doesn’t matter that you were afraid of the Monster. You forced them to be like this, rather than respecting who and what they are. And it’s your responsibility to help them undo the damage and heal.

Or you double down on your self-lies and tell yourself that this is fine. Your friend was always a princess / prince / heir apparent. This is just another effect of the curse. Probably something about mirroring every living being they encounter under specific circumstances.

No matter your choice, the basement begins rumbling ominously. The already unstable ceiling gains more cracks, raining rocks down. Rushing, you pull Quiet up, sling their arm around your shoulder, and go go go.

You are reflected infinitely as before, but Quiet doesn’t appear in the surfaces. The earth’s shaking makes everything that much more confusing. You don’t notice at first the shadow in the mirrors following you, because it is not being reflected.

Your actions and their consequences have earned you the ire of the Voice of the Hero. Or he is just that terrified, so he's lashing out. He doesn't trust you. He fears what else you might do to Quiet after you not only destroyed their agency, but also forced their own identity onto them. He heard you ignoring every detail Quiet shared with you about themself. So he’ll kill you if you’re not careful: Swiping out of the glass with his claws at your heart from unexpected angles, to try and save them.

A - If you have vowed to help Quiet heal, your determination allows you to pass the corridor without tripping. For a moment, there’s the thought that this is a demon. But you realize because of the previous loops and from his words that this is a (true) friend of your friend. He’s trapped, too, but in the mirrors. And he's not thinking rationally because he’s afraid and wants to save Quiet. If he kills you, everybody will just reset in the same place they were in the beginning. Quiet might get worse if they stay any longer.

If you look to the side just as you’re about to leave the corridor, you see a second figure reflected next to you. They look vaguely like how your friend used to look like. Their arm is around your shoulder. Next, the ceiling caves in from the earthquake, blocking off the corridor.

As you climb the stairs, you hear the Voice of the Hero crying to give them (Quiet) back. His voice cracks from grief and fear and loss. You can leave in silence because you think you trying to comfort him will be shallow. From his perspective, you’re kidnapping a dear friend whom you have turned into a shell of themself for selfish reasons.

Or you steel yourself and yell back a promise (for both of them). “I’ll return and free you as well, once they are in a safe place where they can heal. Nobody will hurt them for their true self. Or maybe you’ll get better first.” You address Quiet. “And get here before I do to save your friend.” As the silence drags on, your heart sinks and you turn to leave.

“Alright. I’ll hold you to that vow,” a familiar voice whispers, right into your ear. “If you hurt them, I will tear your heart to shreds.”

Whipping around, you find no other company other than the person you’re holding up. Have they become heavier? They’re leaning more into your side. You would have seen if they had turned their head to you. It was their voice – same tone, same cadence – when you first met them before you died. It’s the voice of the shadow who attacked you from the mirrors to save his friend. They sound the same. How?

You shake your head to clear your mind. No more dawdling. There’s two persons who need help, quickly, and who need to reunite. You shuffle forwards. Your friend doesn’t fall in step even as you both reach the stairs’ top.

“Are you o-” No. Do not ask THAT. “-Oh. Is your leg hurt?”

They’re not looking at you, but down into the basement. Just five steps down, darkness swallows the stairs. Not even a hint of the mirrors is visible. Funny, it didn’t feel that far.

There’s a likely reason for their reaction. You encourage that independent thought. “Let’s get out of here. The sooner we’re hiding from any scoundrels left around, the earlier we can plan how to get him out.”

It’s only now that they look at you. Their smile is gone. The edges of their face are blurring. Black feathers peek out of their hair that darkens at the roots. More feather are growing on their arm where you’re holding on. They look better- not much, but they do. They nod.

At the door, they stare around. They’re holding onto the door’s handle, clutching it so tightly that it crumbles in their hand and their pointed nails suddenly pierce their palm. You gently nudge them to let go – waiting until they uncurl their fist on their own. Staring down at your joined fingers, they exhale shakily and take the first step outside. This is when the sound of thousand of wings flapping announces the Long Quiet’s fetching of his Shard.

B - If you have chosen to double down on your mistake, you try to appease Hero. You have no weapon to defend yourself with against him. Everything is shaking apart, that you can barely keep upright. It’s a wonder the mirrors have only gained cracks. You lack the determination to evade and run because deep down you understand what you’ve done and intend to do is wrong.

He's probably another poor soul trapped - maybe her friend's personal knight, because he carries himself like one from the little you see. He's just misunderstood what happened and wants to protect them from a stranger.

You claim that this isn’t your fault, that you didn’t know that this would happen. But isn’t it better to look like a person again instead of a monster? The rest of the curse will surely leave once they’re outside and under people again. And if not, you’ll take care of them. All the while expressing that you will keep making all the choices for Quiet without ever bothering to find a way for them to communicate what they want, especially now that they seem to be unable to act for themself. And you only care about them because you think they are like you, not different.

The Voice of Hero goes eerily, dangerously still. A chill runs down your spine, and the hairs on your arms and neck stand up. A predator is lurking nearby.

“I understand,” he says, echoing from everywhere. You clap your free hand over your ear but it's still ringing. Speaking softly, his words drip with apoplectic rage. “You wouldn't have even bothered to hear them out if you thought them a monster. You only care about what is the same as you.”

The mirrors have reached their limit. They begin to crack, splintering the Voice of the Hero’s outline into several pieces that eyes, each of them staring you down. The ceiling is dropping. The mirrors’ surfaces go blank, one by one and become opaque. It removes the dizzying infinity but also hides him from view. What was once felt too wide open – an infinite room that you could never find a way out of because it could go anywhere – closes around you like a moving wall.

You start running again, but your escape is cut off by the mirror that slams down in front of you. You look- Why do you look changed again-

Shards explode outwards. From behind you, from both your sides. From above, from below. Your reflection vanishes as blood spurts. The shards cut you up, the last one piercing your chest. A clawed, feathered hand pushes it in deeper until it reaches your heart. You fall to the floor, unable to keep standing. By chance your eyes fall on the massive shadow that has manifested, cradling something pale close to their chest. He’s crying, water running down his face and dropping onto your friend, somehow unharmed, still wearing your previous face. They are crying too, eyes anguished over their sunny smile. They are not looking at you.

Everything goes dark and you die.

----

Voice of the Cheated / a similar Voice manifests in the next Loop as the first one. The others follow depending on the Princess’ choices, but it Will be all of them. The Princess in her self-lies feels cheated out of having a new friend; Quiet is anguished to be treated as less for what and who they are. They want to be treated fairly and with respect.

My Ideas about the next Vessel are sparse, except that she looks like what she saw in that last mirror and fears the Shadow / Voice of the Hero. He in turn will fall into a protective rage if she comes close to their hiding place.

#slay the princess #slay the princess au #stp au #slay the princess swap au #stp swap au #slay the princess base princess #slay the princess the long quiet #stp base princess #stp the long quiet #slay the princess voice of the hero #stp voice of the hero #body horror

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bones-boneyard · 7 months ago

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So I've been looking at the "slay the monster" stuff and i think the stuff I've seen is neat i gotta ask. Has anyone thought about it where the goal ISN'T to slay the monster but to be a sacrificial maiden for the monster. A switching of places but not of roles.

I mainly ask this because i think it'd be very interesting to instead of the narrator painting the creature as something that deserves to be killed whose entire existence would be better off destroyed, it would be the narrator trying to show you how good it would be if you just let the monster devour you. You're a princess so obviously they wouldn't have sent you away if they COULD do something else. Look at how nice this cabin is, wouldn't it be lovely to rest here while doing a good thing. The monster while powerful and scary is gentle and will allow you to pass painlessly. Go on princess, step into the beast's maw and slip away into a deep slumber forever....

I do feel like the princess wouldn't be instigating the resets but the monster. I feel like it could play on the monster always wanting to desire something. The "cold" route (aka just doing what you're told with no hesitation) would be interesting. Imagine seeing a lady wordlessly step into your maw and allow herself to be devoured. While the stp cold route is vengeance of a killer i feel like it'd be the opposite. A curiosity the monster couldn't sate as it sat there after that odd event. They could feel time slowly pass now that they had an unanswerable question. Eventually becoming too much to bear so they die and it starts up again.

Anyways i mainly think it's interesting purely because the vibes of everything would be so different.

#slay the princess #slay the monster #stp swap au

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worldbeyondtheworld · 3 months ago

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I feel this Narrator would focus on how 'other' the Monster is, rather than painting them as an unreasonable tyrant as he does with the Princess.

But I have to think more about this. Just like you can't translate all of the routes one to one from canon the AU or at all, because of real-life dynamics of violence from men against women and the Voices are male-coded. The angle of 'other' - with the Long Quiet as the victim, and the Princess looking like a white woman - makes it even more complicated.

Actually no joke I need to see more slay the monster (or whatever the reverse au is called) content.

I need to see the princesses perspectives translated into voices I need to hear how they think how they process. So much of (some of) the perspectives power comes from their control over their situations and I wanna know what they’d do with that partially taken away

I need to see the voices translated into perspectives I need to see how their forms are twisted and shaped by the princesses interactions with them.

I NEED to see how the narrator would respond to the shift. The entire reason the voice of the hero initially puts doubt in the player and hints that the narrators word might not be law is by pointing out the obvious tonal dissonance of a hero SLAYING a princess rather than SAVING her. But that doesn’t exist with slay the monster. The narrator wouldn’t need to work as hard to convince the player that they’re doing “the right thing” cuz it’s a monster! It’s chained up and dangerous and going to hurt a lot of people if you don’t kill it! The voice of the princess (my decided title for the VOT Hero in this au cuz obviously the actual Princess would be called the shifting mound the same way we’re the long quiet) would then have to take an angle of “we’re supposed to protect our subjects and our people. Monster or not, isn’t that what this creature is?” Which is still an appeal to the common trope as well as your morality. The narrator would play into your role as a princess like crazy going on about your duty to protect the world you rule over and to save innocent people who’s lives are in your hands, basically what he does to the long quiet but more

Mostly though I just think an inverse of their situations in the cabin would be fun. The chapter one princess is such an interesting character because she’s not the perfect victim. Her honey sweet voice and her doe eyes and her innocent scared demeanour aren’t necessarily fabricated just overplayed. She is genuinely scared, that’s the part that’s true, everything else is a desperate appeal to your humanity that you’ll let her go. It becomes somewhat real in the damsel rout when you free her and warn her and fight tooth and nail to save her, but for the most part it’s for show. If you come down there with a knife or decide mid convo you’re actually gonna kill her for real she drops it. She’s harsh and cold and keeps you at arms length, she acts bored and above it all when she speaks to you picking at her nails and glaring at you. GRANTED THAT COULD ALL BE WRONG! Maybe the harsh and cold personality is the fictitious one, a front built up to protect herself from danger, and really the frightened and desperate personality is the real one. MAYBE THEY’RE BOTH REAL! OR MAYBE THEY’RE BOTH MADE UP. It’s probably that last one but for the sake of my bit we’re going with the first one.

The point is the princess tries to appear put together and composed in both these versions of her personality, but deep down she’s like a caged wild animal and isn’t afraid to act like a caged wild animal if she has to

Now imagine the inverse of that, for The Monster

Outwardly a beast who smarls and claws at every surface trying to break free from its prison. If you bring the blade it slinks into the far corner of the room and hisses and spits while you trying and communicate with it but if you go unarmed it will lunge at you held back by its chains just barely. It’s frightening it’s threatening there is no attempt to appeal to any morality or present a domineering front to strong arm you into doing what it wants, it’s just pure violence and fear, a creature who wears its emotions on its sleeve. Depending on what you do it’s iterations become more or less beastly (I’d imagine guys like Stubborn or Broken or Hunted or Cold would get even more violent or reactive but guys like Paranoid or Opportunist or Cheated or Contrarian would have a more pensive and thoughtful approach, you can decide for the rest) but as you play and as you try and speak with it you discover actually there’s a lot more complex thought behind its eyes, and once the fear subsides there’s a person with throught and feelings hiding under all those feathers and teeth. Also not the perfect victim, they also bite the hand that feeds, but like a little to the left you know

Can you tell? Can you tell it’s like a worm digging into my frontal lobe and eating away at my brain? Huh? Can you tell???

#slay the princess #slay the princess au #slay the princess swap au #slay the princess meta

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