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felikatze · 1 year ago

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Yoo, what game are you playing? Your post made it seem so interesting, I really wanna check it out

i'm playing Slay The Princess, a horror visual novel about a hero going to slay a princess to save the world.

"A fully-voiced, cosmic horror black comedy/romance. The Stanley Parable meets Call of Cthulhu with a dash of Disco Elysium." - Black Tabby Games' website about the game. And yeah, that applies.

It has extremely branching paths and a timeloop aspect (yall can figure i'm a sucker for timeloops) and it's morbidly fascinating to watch how the hero and the princess both shape each other in their mutual dance of longing and repulsion.

it's that combination of horror and romance that really gets to me, cuz i think repulsion and adoration are very similar. do not ask me why. it just is, to me.

an individual playthrough took me two and a half hours but i only saw a FRACTION of the options available, and a full playthrough of everything is supposed to take 15h, i think.

horror game tws obviously for: self-mutilation, suicide, murder, unreality, spooky ghosts who want to kill you so bad, burning to death, intrusive thoughts, some degree of auto-cannibalism, body horror (lots of it), the changing and twisting and warping nature of reality, etc etc.

it has in my opinion great hand-drawn illustrations with a fantastic breadth of design for just one singular character. it also features jonathan sims as the majority of the cast, if you like his stuff - if you enjoyed the magnus archives, you'll definetely like hearing his writing again. both he and the princess' VA, Nichole Goodnight, both did fantastic jobs of bringing all the different facets of these characters to life.

a lot of the game is listening to yourself bicker, so make sure you enjoy that before you buy it. I'd recommend ManlyBadassHero's playthrough of it (currently ongoing) if you just want to check it out first. ...i cant count how many games I checked out because Manly played them.... that guy is singlehandedly responsible for my love of rpgmaker games, damn.

also, despite it being a horror game, there were a good few moments that made me laugh, too (the razor is a master of comedy), and i found it to be very emotionally moving. Probably since it's a visual novel, but my anxiety disorder didn't give me a hard time playing it like it usually does with horror games.

i had a fantastic time with it and i'm 100% booting up another file to see even a fraction of what I missed on my first go-around.

#feli gets asked #slay the princess #this is my official endorsment

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fogwitchoftheevermore · 1 month ago

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Hello,,, pretty please discuss renskizz at me as I've never heard of these two paired before today,,,, I'm so curious

HI absolutely can do. and i'm gonna come in with CITATIONS on the quotes in this one because i have a normal amount of emotions about these two.

so, first of all, the reason you've never heard about renskizz is because 1. not enough people are skizzleman fans and 2. their best season is third life, which is also the season where the insanity going on between ren and martyn gets the most attention from the average viewer (and from ren)

this is not an entirely one sided dynamic, because ren has an innate ability to be romantic with every single one of his friends, but like i said, most of ren's attention is on martyn, and skizz is so obsessed with this guy from day one, so it oftentimes feels one sided, or at least like skizz cares significantly more about ren than ren cares about him. but let's got into it!

so all this starts in literally the first episode of third life. while martyn is technically the first person ren recruits as an employee of renchanting, skizz is the first person ren recruits to follow him. they first encounter each other early in the first session, when ren is out in the rain and dark right near skizz's ugly ass house. skizz attempts to save him from some mobs and does a bad job, but offers ren some shelter from the storm. once inside, they do a small trade- ren asks if he can have skizz's leather, for his upcoming enchanting business, and he gives skizz a golden apple in exchange. skizz thinks this is a way uneven trade, and now skizz is tied to ren forever (all this happens around 6 minutes into skizz's first third life episode).

skizz and ren meet back up later in the first session, after ren has begun to establish renchanting more clearly, and after he's begun to recruit etho. ren, etho, and skizz decide to go check out the desert together, and this is where skizz has his first death to an enderman. every single one of skizz's deaths in third life is about ren, somehow, btw!

from there, while skizz doesn't immediately move into dogwarts, he's on their side from day one. skizz and ren (and jimmy but this ain't about him) both die to the enchanter trap. skizz is red, and ren is about to go red with the whole red winter thing. also, it should be noted- skizz looses all of his stuff to the enchanter trap. in the aftermath, bigb gives him some gold armor and half broken iron tools, just so he can make his way home safely.

when martyn kills ren to usher in red winter, about half the server initially assumes that martyn turned on ren, including skizz. skizz assumes that ren is in danger, and that he needs help. it takes him a hot second to get there (partially due to his extremely shitty armor), but he's the first person to arrive at dogwarts after this happens (about 15:25 in ren's episode 9). he shows up shouting for ren to get behind him, saying he's there to help, to protect him, with his INSANELY SHITTY ARMOR AND WEAPONS. skizz gets talked down pretty quickly, but there is no way he would've won a fight with martyn if he actually needed to get into it with him. but he's willing to do it anyways in order to keep ren safe.

once he has everything explained to him, however, skizz is instantly down. skizz's favorite thing in the world is to be a "loyal sword" (direct quote describing himself, from impulse's first episode of secret life around 14 minutes in), and ren allows him to do that so completely, in a way not a single other alliance of his ever has. skizz is willing to put his entire life and all his decisions in ren's hands, and ren is willing to take on that responsibility. both of skizz's kills in the first season are entirely to protect and support ren. does this blind faith in ren always go well for skizz? ehhhh not necessarily. but his final death, which is under ren's banner, and sees him shouting "i love you guys and i hate them" to the red army, isn't actually at ren's command. in fact, it's explicitly against ren's command, but it's skizz's final show of loyalty to and care for ren and the red army, and a decision he makes entirely on his own. so even though it kills him, he can't blame ren for it, and there's no animosity between them come the start of last life.

in the wake of skizz's death, ren also gets TWO WHOLE FINAL KILLS with the sword he named in skizz's honor, which i would just like to note. ren wields skizz as sword long after he's gone.

THEN we get last life. moments get a lot sparser here because they're on different teams, but there's important things to note. namely, that two of skizz's three deaths that season are to ren!

the most insane of the two, to me, is when ren boogey kills skizz (in skizz's episode 4). skizz is on edge when he arrives at ren's base, but he's immediately drawn in by ren anyways. they both spend the entire conversation being sickeningly sweet to each other (with skizz complimenting ren's build over and over and ren constantly complementing skizz's appearance and telling skizz he loves him). and the thing is, skizz knows from basically second one that ren is the boogey. he has that feeling when he walks up, and he knows ren is just a nice guy, but he's still very on edge the whole time, and it's obvious from how he's constantly running around/trying not to stand in one place so he can't get trapped. BUT REN MANAGES TO TRAP HIM ANYWAYS!

and not only does ren manage to trap him, but skizz CAN'T EVEN BE MAD!!! like, he dies and goes "oh, i hate him", "he's the worst", "i am broken hearted" but he also knows it's his own fault for trusting ren so wholeheartedly ("he went fishing, and he got me" "i walked right into his trap, he got me"). even while he laments having died to the trap, he's still complimenting ren's abilities in regards to building it and his charisma in getting skizz to fall for it, and it's SO FUN, i love it. skizz simply cannot help but be nice to people, but it really is clear here that he has a huge soft spot for ren. he's holding a grudge, but he can't help but compliment ren the whole time he does it.

and then, of course, there's skizz's final death. skizz and impulse come up on ren's tower after lizzie kills bigb. ren is on guard, because he's a green surrounded by three reds (though lizzie leaves very shortly after killing bigb), but he doesn't make any moves on them. it's skizz who takes the first shot, firing on ren while he reminisces about ren killing him at this same tower as his first death of the season. the two engage in a fire fight for a bit, with my favorite part of the interaction being:

ren: what do you want skizz? skizz: i want blood! (skizz's episode 7, 23:50)

it's extremely reminiscent of a conversation the two of them have in third life multiple times over. skizz repeatedly tells ren that he wants blood, that he needs to kill, once he goes red. the last time he says this is before he runs headfirst into his own death. this is a sentiment ren is deeply familiar with, and before, this need for blood was channeled into protecting ren. now, though, ren's on the other side of it, and it is scary. ren's constantly asking that skizz just leave and not make him retaliate. for all that he's terrified, he doesn't actually want to kill skizz here if he doesn't have to. or at least he doesn't want to try when he's so outnumbered and scared.

the fight continues, and skizz is doing the same thing he did in response to ren's boogey kill- complimenting him. he tells impulse over and over how skilled ren is, constantly saying that they're up against a master, even as ren is actively running away from the fight. he has an insane amount of faith in ren, and he always has. even when that faith in ren should be shaken, either because they're actively trying to kill each other or because ren, frankly, looks like a coward this whole fight, skizz can't help but be impressed with ren, and his faith remains strong. eventually, ren gets backup from cleo and scott, and skizz decides to run, but as he runs, ren works up his courage and shoots him dead. skizz is mad, but he's not mad at ren, he's mad at himself for not being able to kill anybody.

and then the two of them get separated. skizz isn't in double life, and ren isn't in limited life or secret life. and everyone has talked about how weird martyn gets in the absence of ren, but it happens to skizz too. both skizz and martyn are trying to fill the hole ren left in their lives in limited life, but they're doing it in different ways. martyn is trying to find someone (scott) to replace ren as someone he can be truly loyal to and skizz is trying to fill the hole ren left as leader, as king, not by finding that leader in someone else, but by stepping up to fill the role himself. and it doesn't work out for either of them!

skizz doesn't explicitly say that's what he's doing in limited life, but it's very clear, with the most notable example of this being skizz, just like ren, giving up his life to one of his "soldiers", by handing them an axe and saying "i need you to kill me for your own good". just like ren.

and i will say- this is not a limited life exclusive thing. skizz tries to recreate the red army in last life too, with team BEST, and it doesn't really work out there either (though it certainly goes worse for team BEST). so come secret life, skizz says "maybe i can't be ren, maybe i need to find someone else i can trust to lead me" and he TRIES in the first episode of secret life. he says, explicitly, that this is what he's doing (in the "loyal sword" conversation mentioned above, and in the small bit of conversation that proceeds that, which is around 18:40 in scott's first episode). but he can't find a single person willing to fulfill that same role, so he steps up to do it again. and it fails again.

and here's the thing about skizz trying to fill ren's shoes, trying to recreate what he had with ren and the red army every single season since then. that's how i've been interpreting skizz's actions for the entirety of the series, but also SKIZZ EXPLICITLY SAID THAT'S WHAT HE WAS DOING.

(quote starts at 1:08:01 in the imp and skizz episode about secret life)

"it's just in my nature, i'm like, i just don't- i don't care about winning. but- but i- but i'm not gonna- i'd be lying if i said it wouldn't be kinda nice. and i wanna- and i do wanna last, and i wanna be competitive, but i'm really more focused on having a great time and putting together good content, and creating alliances that are very, very strong, and are a brotherhood. like what we did with the- i mean, every season. from BEST to TIES to uh, to the Heart Foundation, like it's been a really strong family, really strong brotherhood that uh- that i've really enjoyed that- that journey in creating. and it started with ren and martyn in season one."

IT'S ALL BEEN MODELED ON DOGWARTS! IT'S ALL BEEN DOGWARTS FOR HIM THE WHOLE TIME!!! skizz has been desperately trying to recreate what he had with ren since the moment he no longer had it anymore and i think that's insanely interesting. and i choose to interpret that obsession with ren as romantic because ren and skizz are. like that. and cannot refrain from calling each other hot or telling the other that they love them or what have you, but even if you don't want to interpret it as romantic, i think their dynamic is INSANELY interesting and i need more people talking about them.

#trafficshipping #renskizz #rendog #skizzleman #AND YES I *AM* MAINTAGGING THIS BECAUSE I NEED MY DEMONS TO BE INFLICTED ON MORE PEOPLE #also i decided this post worked better if i ended it at the OFFICIAL SKIZZLEMAN ENDORSEMENT of this interpretation #but i would also like to hightlight ren's amnesia cold session of secret life #1. for the bit where ren turns the 'ren get behind me' from third life back on skizz by trying to protect him from jimmy #and 2. for the bit where ren (pretending to be tango) brings himself up to skizz and skizz instantly launches into a rant about how #he thinks ren is so cool and smart and attractive and humble #obviously the second part is a bit but like. it's always a bit. this is the 'interpreting bits genuinely' factory

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