#whoooooo tag ramble to hopefully put spoiler tags below the cut aw yeah let's go boys wow look at how long this tag is how long do you thin

[knockknockitsnickels]

Thoughts about Prison3r bc she's making me go insane

Spoilers under the cut (also minor spoilers - chapter name & brief discussion of other routes - in the tags, so don't read those lol)

I have a feeling the Cage is going to get overshadowed by Sp3ctre & Happily Ever After, but I was really surprised by the direction they took her in, and I think she makes Pris all the more tragic as a character.

IMO, the Prisoner route kind of functions as a giant trust fall. You've established in the previous chapter that you're skeptical of this whole setup (hence voice of the skeptic, lmao) and willing to help the Princess, and this route puts that to the test. Can you focus on what's important without getting caught up in questioning irrelevant details (the empty shackle)? Can you trust the Princess enough to give her your weapon? And on the other side of that, can she trust you to understand her plan?

Part of what makes the Prisoner compelling to me is the unspoken trust she has in the player (part of why I've never understood the take that she doesn't actually care about you? Maybe we've got some Autism2Autism telepathy going on though). Her lines in the Shifting Mound fight (if you free her) talks about how "shared skepticism blossomed into trust", and the Drowned Grey further implies that she put a lot of trust and hope in the player which they ended up betraying.

I was expecting Prison3r to play with that betrayal of trust - she showed we could trust her, but her trust in us was misplaced. It doesn't really matter if you leaving the head was an honest mistake or not, we still let her down. I was expecting a scenario where we'd be stuck apologizing to a Princess who couldn't bring herself to trust us again, no matter how sincere we were being. I was expecting her to be angry. I didn't expect her to just... give up.

If the Drowned Grey is meant to represent the Prisoner (metaphorically) letting go of the tight control she has of her emotions, (literally) drowning you in her (metaphorical) grief and rage, then the Cage is the opposite, locking her emotions even deeper away. Shifty describes her as (paraphrasing here, emphasis mine) "someone who wishes she could be just a set of eyes and ears." The Cage isn't angry with you for leaving her behind. Why should she be? It was her mistake, after all. She shouldn't have been so stupid to think she could break the cycle and actually be freed.

The route also plays with the contrast between the Princess and the Player (via the voices) in fun ways. While the Cage is already resigned to repeating the cycle, skeptic (and paranoid, if you get him) are panicking for the whole route, trying desperately to find a way out of it while unintentionally forcing you to into the same patterns as before (by forcing us to take the knife. Thanks guys, very cool).

It honestly feels like the perfect response to the common fan complaint of "Why is the Prisoner mad at you for leaving her head behind? It was an accident!". Well, here you go. She's not mad at you. It would honestly feel better if she was.