#pristin lq

[determinedowl23]

so you guys like the apotheosis now that she shows empathy. mkay. gotcha gotcha gotcha.

[wolfateacatagain]

Surprised I didn't realise the cursed sketch was a lesser dog reference, though the Exeggutor joke was still a good one >:D

Btw, did I say I love Den in your style? She looks regal

...I had an idea, so I had to draw that idea.

Inspired by a new Den route. I imagined her picking TLQ up by his scruff, like he is a kitten or a cub, and I could not resist drawing this. This is also my first time ever making fanart for the Den, she is so intimidating and difficult to draw for me, but I love her!

I also drew this quick sketch of her... but oh, this sketch is cursed:

For context: Abby, the artist for Slay the Princess, stopped by in Black Tabby Discord and dropped a surprise reference sheet for the Den. Now, the important part for context is this quick note:

...well, uh

...Somehow, it gets worse

...Den has gone where no Princess has gone before.

I am sorry, but I am also not sorry

[cedesect]

I want to talk about the happily ever after route for a second. I want to talk hows it's actually about the narrator. I want to talk about how smitten and the princess directly parallel the relationship between the narrator and LQ.

Smitten as the shadow does what he does out of love for the princess- a misguided sort of love. I'd argue the narrator feels the same kind of love for LQ. A love that traps, that cages. He thinks he knows whats best for LQ- he "rewards" him with something endless and meaningless in "the good ending". "happily after ever" is a VERY similar title, and in it we are also trapped in the cabin by someone who thinks he knows what we want, and that something is something endless, and meaningless- plates refilling, games resetting. It's awful. it's torture, the narrator admits this when he watches the events unfold, it's one of the only times we see him show such abject... I mean, it's hard to describe the emotion. He's a little bit distraught, a little horrified, a little disgusted. he sounds broken, really, like the full weight of his actions has just been shown to him.

These lines stand out to me, too. This chapter really puts him in a new light, even if it's just for a moment, before the echo of him fades away. God, the Pristine Cut is a masterpiece. I've had so much fun with it so far, its really fucking great.

[sop-soap]

list of minor things pristine cut has taught us:

-the narrator reads from a script

-LQ sees the title cards

-when the voices in LQ's head are arguing, it's in real time, so he spends a lot of time just Staring

-the princess wears mascara

-LQ is tall enough to touch the ceiling of the cabin

-he also has TEETH.

[salty-an-disco]

I love that among the many feelings The Long Quiet always has, he did not expect himself to look LIKE that.

I'm kind of imagining him now trying to ask the Echo at the Mirror if he was the one to make him look like that, and how different scenarios could go.

I love how much Pristine Cut fleshed out LQ/Gary themself as a character. Even tho you can roleplay them as certain ways, they still very much have their own personality and set of beliefs and perspectives. It's just a matter of which side of it you get to see (much like with Shifty!!)

I actually think, when it came to Narrator's and Quiet's appearance, it was the other way around. Narry killed and put a piece of himself in Quiet, and the consequences of that is that he looks a lot more like the god he created. It didn't matter what Quiet looked like after all, he was more focusing on making sure they had some humanity in them so that they'd sympathize with his cause. The princess looking human tho, I think was very purposeful in his part, since she couldn't look too threatening as to not influence our thoughts.

Very interesting then that the more monstrous versions of the princesses (Nightmare, MOC, and Beast/Den, specifically) tends to have darker color palettes and in Den's case, have a lot of Quiet's characteristics. When stripped down to instinct, this is what they look like.

[wolfateacatagain]

!!!!

The Hero and the Beast // The Princess and the Dragon

You are here to [Slay / Save] them.

-

(sketches and notes under the cut)

inspired by the parallels between the den / beast originally being inspired by questing beasts and the archetypal naming of the long quiet as a dragon. took some liberties with the designs and anatomy.

i chose to title it 'the hero and the beast' rather than 'the den' despite using her design because i felt the name was more evocative of that mythical monstrousness, but narratively and aesthetically i like the den better than the beast route for this. similarly, the cage fit narratively and in environmental aesthetics for the princess' 'save them' scene but the body was too far from the baseline (the center 'choosing' characters are intended to be gestalts rather than any one particular form) and the scale was too small to cleanly draw all of the chains so i went with the prisoner as the chapter ii that leads to the cage.

drawn in pencil on 5.5" x 8.5" paper and digitally rendered in medibang.

[strangeracrossthestreet]

So, I think PATD route finally answers a question I don't think has ever really been answered before.

What is the Pristine Blade?

And what do I think it is? It's what the Narrator used to cut Shifty and LQ from one into two...

[mpsideadump]

Pristine Cut new routes!

I've currently played through all of the new routes (as in the new branches of Specter, Damsel, and Prisoner) and I just wanted to get all of my initial thoughts down and share them with you guys!

So

I TALK SPOILERS, DONT CLICK THE READ MORE BUTTON IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE NEW ROUTES OR ARE NEW TO THE GAME

The Princess and the Dragon was the first one I did and FINALLY SEEING THE LONG QUIET IN FULL because we're inside the Princess's body is AMAZING!

Like?????

And the fact it confirms that LQ just stares when he's talking with the other voices, and the voices can share control of the body and they actually have distinct mannerisms! For sure now one of my favorite chapters!

The Cage's design is SO COOL! I'm not disappointed in how the Cage turned out cuz the way the Woods look and the Cabin being on a floating island makes it one of the more distinct Ch.3s. I will say that I am disappointed in how my run of the Chapter went cuz Skeptic turned into one of the worst voices for me when he's paired with Paranoid (my favorite voice and unfortunately).

I've heard that there's actually a bunch of variations for this chapter that end up with a happier ending, but the one I got where LQ gets decapitated and he just watches his body fight the Princess's felt a bit too jaded for my tastes. I'm gonna be experimenting to see what else I can do!

And finally...

OH MY GOD HAPPILY EVER AFTER IS OFFCIALLY THE BEST CHAPTER IN THE GAME!!! (in my opinion!)

I'll be honest, Damsel wasn't really my favorite because going through it as it was was just kind of...boring. Deconstructed Damsel was far more interesting because it pointed out the problems with her as she is (and the doodle is hilarious to boot). The Burned Grey, while a cool design, also wasn't really all that impressive to me because that chapter always ends with you and her burning together (but I do get what that route was trying to get at, which is how destructive a person blinded by love can be).

Happily Ever After takes that same idea and applies it to the fricking Smitten! SMITTEN!!

We finally have a chapter where Smitten is taken to the extreme and I'm all for it. The way he kills us to get to it is fricking terrifying, and the form he ends up taking to control the Princess is also heartbreaking (pun partially intended).

BUT HAVING THE FRICKING NARRATOR FINALLY REALIZE HOW BAD HIS IDEA IS AS WELL?????

Him witnessing first hand the torture of having someone else tell you what to do and how you should be happy as well as what stagnant, never-changing life actually looks like....

And him getting a mini-redemption arc out of it🥲

And gaaaaaahhhhhhh that final dance under the stars with her was perfect😭😭😭

I actually didn't want this Princess to go and was so sad when she got picked up by Shifty (its what I felt towards Thorn but like 10x worse).

Overall, I honestly believe that "Princess and the Dragon" & "Happily Ever After" can make great final princesses before Shifty is fully reconstructed. HEA even more so because of Narrator's redemption and I have the sneaking suspicion that getting this as the last Princess might actually change his opinions when you meet him.

The Cage was pretty good, but like I said I need to see a more uplifting variation of it to be more satisfied with the chapter itself.

[therowdymagpie]

No because I NEED to ramble about The Princess and The Dragon(TW: Spoilers for the Pristine Cut.):

I got such whiplash from this vessel...she is just...SO aufghughaurigh, so unexpected and wonderful, one of the sweetest and kindest vessels in the game. Not to disregard the others, like the Shifting Mound has said, they are all different manifestations of our love for her and her love for us, but the Dragon (I call her The Dragon) FEELS different.

Literally I love the Specter route which the Princess and the Dragon derives from because we have a chance to have an actual, normal(kind of) conversation and because she is dealing with what happened in a realistic manner, sure she's angry at us but she really doesn't care, she just wants "to go home, wherever that is". But it's very important for the game to apply a certain Uncanny valley to her and every other Princess even the one from the Hero and the Princess, so that they have a reason to be dangerous, capable, slightly dehumanizing them at times, which OK SM and LQ aren't actual people but still the vessels just become something other than what we have been led to believe.

A ghost, a demon, a predator, a literal god, an eldritch horror made of blades, all of them are formed by our beliefs and expectations, they are the ways we perceive her, they are perspectives. It is a very skillful way to subvert the damsel in distress character that the princess has been shoved into, she is never JUST a princess and yet at the same time the Dragon is the only princess that is actually very human in how she confronts the fact that we are who we are and we do what we do to her with such Grace and forgiveness.

Now when it comes to the other Princesses, even if the Damsel is technically an innocent as well and doesn't try to kill us, her always trying to "make us happy" is the thing that immediately sets her off and gives us an excuse to believe she is strange and off-putting. Even the witch and the thorn , who make us feel terrible for hurting them at certain times because one can present a certain remorse and the other is simply broken so much that there's nothing else to hope for. Both of them immediately back pedal into being hostile if you hurt them again though, since that's what they have to do to survive. I could go on for each vessel but no matter how much we dig into the psyche of the princesses and find out that they have a genuine reason or a not genuine reason to kill us at all, they are all trying to survive and follow their nature, they all progress for their characters with a predictable unpredictability.

But the Dragon? She is SO forgiving, so kind, especially when in some cases, she shouldn't even be. We've killed her twice yet, much like the Specter, she doesn't hold a grudge, doesn't try to immediately kill us afterwards, she isn't following some twisted narrative of doing something that was always meant to be. She is just...curious and trying to understand why we're doing this, how she can get on our good side, how to work together to make the best of this situation. Out of all the vessels, I think she is the purest manifestation of Swifty's belief every time we see her that 'we are the only thing like her and she's the only thing like us', so they should be together, try should try to get along…right?

Also a funny thing I noticed is: The fact that we see things from her perspective kind of gives more leverage to some of the other princesses for being mistrusting and hostile, I mean we're a terrifying bird thing that is often quiet, holding a Knife and doesn't always answer you, often doing unpredictable actions…I wouldn't trust this either. And STILL, she says that even though we look scary, she doesn't mind, "Looks aren't everything" and tries to communicate with us, at the same time not being completely helpless. She speaks her mind, tries to be assertive and bringing up good points during the entire time.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, The Princess and the dragon feels like the most Princess character in the entire game, even more than the Happily ever after, even more than the Damsel, exactly because out of all the princesses she has the capacity to understand us and we have the capacity to understand her, it is so incredibly human and surprising.

For the first time ever we are dealing with someone who is painstakingly our equal, not above or below us, not our better, not our worse, not something out of our understanding but simply? Another confused inmate in this Twisted Concept, that tries to create the best case scenario where we both survive like us. The Shifting Mound calls her the empathetic heart...it's the first time we see her perspective of US for a change, it's how we have truly become ONE, even more so than The Wild and that breaks me...

[modeus-the-misanthrope]

Live reaction of LQ, Hero, and Smitten.

Okay so this little tiny ittsy bitsy teaser got posted in the discord and like. Why is damsel frowning. She didn't even frown when she got STABBED just smiled and cried😭 how did we fuck up so bad that the damn damsel is going:(

[modeus-the-misanthrope]

I cracked the codes and figured out how we will make Damsel do her sad frowny face in the Pristine Cut!

First get her to the upper room of the cabin, as shown.

Once there when she asks, "What do you wanna do." You will get the option to ask, "Well...if I can ask you something a little personal...." This will cause her to lean forwards in interest. Like so.

And then she will respond "Of course, anything. Just say what you want." Which will be responded to by LQ without the players input asking. "Do you know if Prisoner is seeing anyone?" Resulting in the camera zooming ij further on this expression.

[dualogical]

Divorce the Princess AU - credit to Cabin Enthusiast

I've talked with a few people in the Tabby Discord. They agree that there should be an ending where Quiet separates from SM but doesn't slay her.

Think about it: Whether intentionally or not, they have hurt each other, and sure an option is to shove everything under the rug, but there can be more options.

Maybe once Quiet goes to the Heart with Hero and are above the basement - let's suppose Hero got them out of Her - the Voices can stage an intervention? It's difficult to see you're in a bad situation if you're in the thick of it. Hero genuinely cares for your wellbeing and I'm sure Contrarian wouldn't be opposed either. Smitten and Broke would possibly be the hardest to convince. Just talk things out with people that can see from the 'outside' or at least one step removed.

Here's my readings/evidence

Adversary: Look, I love adversary and it can be healthy, sure! But if the wrong options are picked she beats him to death, even moreso if he tries to go upstairs and hide from her. Needle outright blames him from what she's become. Even SM agrees she victim blamed him!

Damsel actually doesn't do anything, she's fine. LQ can make her deconstruct but it's accidental at least? (I hope the Pristine Cut doesn't make me eat my words)

Prisoner is also fine other than strangling him with her chains. Boundaries, people.

The Greys kill you but to be fair you killed them first so it's a bit of a cycle.

Spectre: LQ outright killed her first. I've never been killed so I don't know if ripping out the heart is an appropiate response. Wraith has some lines in the posession moment that's heavily reminicent of other things.

Witch: If it's Witch alone I can say 'fair', because it's a cycle of betrayal. Both hurt each other in this one.

Wild is also pretty okay but you can also read the route as codependency given form.

Nightmare and MOC are pretty irredeemable in my book, what with hurting him enough times even the Voices are heavily traumatized. That's an overreaction to being locked in a basement. I get the initial lashing out but to keep it going...

Beast and Den: She fucking eats him. Enough said.

Tower: The most obvious one, verbal abuse galore and makes him hurt himself. Fury from what we have won't be a cakewalk either. And given the trailer Apotheosis can stone you

[pink-november]

Idk how long ago it was, but reading your writing on a stp swap au made me come up with a possible premise for a swap au that i don't think i've seen before. Which is:

What if death was contained in tlq's multitudes (or perhaps more aptly, fragments) instead of tsm's? Dying may be a change, but I think death could considered be a stasis. when you die, you can't really become anything Not Dead.

I wish I could build on this concept (for one, the narrator might have to be different since i feel like he had originally had a dislike for change/unpredictability though I might be misremembering) but the game's story hinges so much on its premise and roles that doing a swap requires changes and considerations that i simply don't have the confidence nor brain power for. Still, i do think my idea was interesting

First of all, I thank and commend you Anon for remembering I had a Swap AU in the works (and for reading it woah! 👏) because the last time I mentioned this is around mid-February. How time flies 😳

(halfway writing my answer, i realized i rambled far too long and had to put a read more here. but for folks who needs a TLDR, though it's a bit tricky for me to do a swap au with the premise of LQ representing death and all that entails, it is something i had considered in my original swap au from months ago and below the cut are some lore i made on how this could possibly work in this case)

What if death was contained in tlq's multitudes (or perhaps more aptly, fragments) instead of tsm's? Dying may be a change, but I think death could considered be a stasis. when you die, you can't really become anything Not Dead.

I hope you don't mind me dissecting parts of your ask but the idea of calling The Long Quiet's "multitudes" as fragments is brilliant and will therefore be called as such for the entirety of this post.

In my humble opinion, Slay the Princess likes to focus on how much of everything that happened in-game is a cycle: TLQ and SM being previously the cycle of life and death, The Construct being a narrative cycle that traps our characters in an attempt to fulfill The Narrator's wish, and The Adversary, The Moment of Clarity and The Razor (as of pre-Pristine Cut update) being prime examples of vessels that have some elements of a cycle in their routes. There might be other cases that I failed to mention here but STP, or atleast The Shifting Mound, gives a lot of emphasis of an ongoing cycle that dictates the flow of the universe itself.

The difference between dying and death is important to note then, for our hypothetical Swap AU to work, because as you said dying is a precursor to something new, a continuation to the cycle Shifty purports, while death is the extinction of what once was, a final epilogue.

I wish I could build on this concept (for one, the narrator might have to be different since i feel like he had originally had a dislike for change/unpredictability though I might be misremembering)

For clarification, The Narrator fears death, specifically based on these:

For me, what Narry is really scared of is the thought of nothing being left behind in the aftermath of whatever end the universe is facing: oblivion, the unknowable state of being. The Narrator is mortal and terribly flawed for it, so him oversimplifying oblivion=death=bad is a very human thing of him to be mistaken of. Especially when you consider how the game has The Oblivion Ending, the very thing he's trying to "destroy". And it is something that we as the player (and to an extension TLQ) can make happen, simply for choosing inaction. There is irony to this, how The Narrator had instead brought upon the thing he wishes to destroy, by none other than the hands of the being he had fashioned to be a weapon.

but the game's story hinges so much on its premise and roles that doing a swap requires changes and considerations that i simply don't have the confidence nor brain power for. Still, i do think my idea was interesting

I do agree making an actual Swap AU where both TLQ and the SM keeps their respective natures while alternating their fundamental purpose is hard because STP is ironclad in its premise and philosophy, something I absolutely love the game for. Your idea is one I had very much considered in my own Swap AU but as you can probably tell, it's a very difficult thing to convey properly without upending several key components of the game. Namely, the nature of The Construct, the roles the Voices and Vessels must play, and The Narrator himself.

I guess this is the part where I'm going to messily loredrop my AU now >v<

The Barebones of a Concept, the unofficial name to my Swap AU, has a Narrator that is dedicated to achieving immortality, an escape to the inevitability that is oblivion. His dedication soon borders on obsessiveness until he had torn the cycle of life and death to achieve his goal in subverting the ending and turning the universe into an endless march of continuous change. With no death hanging over their heads, whatever life is left in the aftermath will enjoy in the abundance and safety of an everlasting growth, of progress unhindered, and if it came to it, an ascension to becoming divinity itself, becoming a fundamental concept of reality.

But the tear he made is far jagged than STP!Narry's own cut, resulting in The Construct he prepared to collapse into itself, trapping him inside, never to experience the results of his hard work. TBC!Quiet takes the brunt of this abrupt tear for the worse, becoming lesser than its counterpart, unable to act and be aware of itself. TBC!Shifty, on the other hand, explodes in a flurry of sheer transformation and growth, preventing the total collapse of The Construct but also turning it into a living, breathing dome. She knows far too much and is too much, so her newly formed consciousness melds and forgets herself, while her oceans drown the Construct with her influence.

TBC!Narry is persistent though, convinced that to escape his cage, the other god must slay its counterpart and become the new order of the universe he envisions. Death cannot meaningfully touch the Ebb and Flow and so he must somehow guide this nascent god into locating the remains of Oblivion and erasing it for good. By that, I mean locating its fragments scattered all through The Construct and slaying them.

Shifty's vessels would then take on a new form for this AU, and rather than there being chaptered routes and loops, there would instead be "Incarnations" to perform the role of the Slayer and one converging timeline to gather all the Fragments to awaken their higher selves.

[paintinthesims]

Slaying Simming the Princess

I finished playing the pristine cut update for Slay the Princess a while ago and thought to myself: what if I made these guys in the sims? And so I did. I guess this is where they ended up after the "And? What happens next?" ending. XD

I started on The Long Quiet first. I'll admit that his CC is pretty scuffed, but this is the best I could find. It really should not be this hard to find animal parts (that actually work) for a sims game that's been out for this long, but that's just how it is. 😤 I kept seeing these big, beautiful wings taunting me from ts4 the whole time I was cc hunting... I also gave him a long, pointy nose to replicate his beak, and I think it looks alright. I may shorten it in the future, but he does canonically have a pretty monstrous-looking face, so maybe I should just let him be a little ugly. I also think his expression and slight overbite are also kind of cute. ^^ As for his traits, I realized that LQ is actually meant to be sort of a blank slate for the player to project onto, so I picked his traits off of how I personally played him. I also gave him the "Natural Cook" trait since he's already proficient with a knife. XD

Princess was much easier to find CC for, but her anime facial proportions posed some challenges of their own. Knowing from past experience that you can't make anime eyes really work in ts3's artstyle, I tried to go more semi-realistic. I'm not totally satisfied with how her face turned out, but I think she at least looks pretty by normal human standards. I may go cc hunting for a more accurate hairstyle in the future as well. I gave her the "Loves the outdoors" trait since I figured she would appreciate being outside more after being confined for so long. Also, you can't see it with her dress, but I made it so that she's usually barefoot. I mean... in the game, you never once see her wearing shoes, so I figured that she just doesn't have 'em. 🤷‍♀️

So... that's all I have to say about these two for now. I'm going to move them into Moonlight falls, and may consider moving them to Dragon Valley later (after they scope it out with the traveler mod). I plan to post about their first days doing life together sometime soon. ^^

[birdmitosis]

Voice of the Hero and the long quiet :))

Awwww HERO!! I love how easily I could tell that was Hero before scrolling down!! The combo of breastplate and scarf is so good (that scarf looks so comfy...) and I really do love how all of them hold the pristine blade super differently... It's very fun.

ALSO THEN LONG QUIET JUMPSCARE. Hehehe, I love how much of a cryptid LQ is in this art, it's perfect. And I love the shape of those wings, as well as how feathery and soft they look!!

[acutemushroom]

Ok, I know the pristine cut won't add any princesse, just ligns of dialogue but I wonder something.

I wonder what kind of chapter 2 and 3 vessel would be create if in chapter 1 we kill ourselves in front of her. No words, no nothing. You just walk up to her and silently end yourself.

I imagine that it could result in a quite defaitist vessel. After all, she thought her suffering would finally end, be it through escape or death. Yet, her salvation umpromptedly decided to commit suicide in front of her very eyes. She would be heavily chained, similar to the Prisonner. But her chains are mental. She knows that, no matter what, she won't make it out of this cabin. She wouldn't even try to. The LQ could try to console her, apologize for the heavy trauma he gave her, similarly to the Thorn. When you'd try to slay her, she wouldn't resist. Actually, she'd be faintly surprised but it would seem as if a heavy burden has been put out of her shoulders. If you try to free her, similarly to the Adversary, she would resist and even kill you. She knows this is in vain, she is afraid of suddenly having a freedom she's been denied.

Or she could be quite protective. Somewhat like the Burned Grey who knew it was the Construct that prevented your love and and decided to burn with you. I have seen a spider princess Oc somewhere, where she would trap uou into the basement to protect you. This one could do it so she can't be alone or to prevent you, prevent the Construct, from harming yourself again.

I know such princess won't exist, at least in the near future, but I find the thought experiment interesting