#ack I feel like I got a bit condescending towards the community there sorry

[alecraisa]

I think what I’m seeing with the Slay The Princess fan base is that not enough people recognize that ALL the voices are a neutral force. Both positive and negative in their own ways.

I’ve seen people talk about Smitten showing love just as a thing, and I just saw a post talking about Paranoid needing to be written in fan content with his more negative side as well as his capabilities, but it’s actually like that for all of them! The voices are, quite literally, reflections of The Long Quiet— and they are their definition in every way it can be.

Smitten loves, and sometimes that love happens to hurt because he just wants what’s best for the Princess but she wants the same for tlq so it spirals and no one is happy.

I was thinking about Hunted, especially in the Den, where he is instinct and that instinct is to survive, but when he sees someone else also fighting to survive, he looks out for them and works as a team.

Cold is notorious for brushing off any emotions and with the mirror he will tell the decider that you don’t need to comfort the other voices. But he’s pushing for numbness so that it hurts less, so that you can handle it easier, so you aren’t paralyzed by guilt or by the decisions you have to make.

Opportunist is constantly changing his mind, trying to be on the “winning” side, and this causes him to be a jerk, pull the knife on the princess when it suits him and if you don’t want to hurt the princess he’ll then try to play it off. But he’s also got ways to keep you safe, know when something will turn on you because that’s what he would do, and he just wants the safety and security.

I could write them all out to be honest, but it’s about just taking their names at face value because that is literally what they are, and Slay the Princess does a really damn good job at portraying these traits as completely neutral. And it’s a game about perception, so depending on what choices you make, these neutral traits will seem more positive or negative, and I really think that’s a great message that can be done so so well and I honestly love it.