toadletthethird

[toadletthethird]

some more dressing up with my Main Blorbos while burnout is kicking my butt. MOC and Fury editions

for MOC:

– Cold's X scar is much bigger and stretches across its entire torso and even the side of their head, and only the fluffy top of their cloak remains. Eyes hollowed out

– Hero here is just a shadow wearing a knight costume. He has no defining features of his own, and his clothes are much more exaggerated

– Contra just got hit by a very strong wind /j

For Fury:

– wanted Contra to look more like a rogue here, tho they still retain a 'jestery' piece in the form of that funky cloak.

– for Hero, I just kinda fused together his Champion and Savior looks, since Fury herself is smth of a fusion between Adversary and Tower (another Hero evolution loses an eye. rip)

[toadletthethird]

Shut up, it's technically Lunar New Year so I am right!

Tradition dictate that I always draw a piece to celebrate the New Years. So have my fav Couple of the most recent hyperfixation! Line up children so grandma can give you lucky money!/jk

May great fortune this year brings to all.

[toadletthethird]

are you still there? are you still you?

defenetely one of the most impactful princesses!

Love her and love the unwounding...

[toadletthethird]

Random headcanon, I think the Voice of the Cold would be like. Really weirdly good at Just Dance. Nobody knew this until Opportunist and Contrarian pushed him into playing it.

I think Contrarian would also be really good at it. Stubborn and Smitten too, but they'd probably be way pickier about the songs they play. Opportunist is okay at it, but he doesn't like it very much, so the only time he plays is if it's to one-up someone in some way.

After Contrarian got into it, he'd always bug Cold to play, who usually agrees if he doesn't have anything better to do, and it became their little bonding thing. Contrarian also started pushing Hero to try it, but Hero didn't have enough stamina to keep up the whole way through most of the songs and he kept bumping into people.

Cheated and Opportunist would probably do some sort of Just Dance competition at some point. Cheated, despite his poor luck and lack of dancing experience, somehow won. Fighting Razor so many times probably upped his reaction time and coordination.

Hunted would also be pretty good at it. I could see him using it as a way to keep himself moving with purpose now that there wasn't anything to run from.

Paranoid would probably refuse to play unless Hero, Hunted, or Broken convinced him to, but if he did, he'd probably end up trying to copy everything the dancer on screen was doing.

Skeptic probably wouldn't want to play, seeing it as a waste of time. He could probably be convinced with enough prodding and the argument that they have nothing but time (assuming this is in "A New and Unending Dawn"). He'd probably be okay at it, not great, but okay. I don't think he'd be that big a fan of it.

Broken probably wouldn't ever play unless Hero really wanted him to (not super likely given that Hero doesn't like it all that much), but he probably wouldn't be great at it. I imagine he likely has a much slower reaction time and moves much more lethargically. He'd probably end up accidentally getting stepped on by someone else.

[toadletthethird]

In case anyone needs new study hacks

[toadletthethird]

It's so fun how the Princess and the Dragon acknowledges and plays with game mechanics that are assumed to be non-diegetic, and uses them to add insight to the story/characters.

The title card is a really obvious example, being something that TLQ actually sees and can comment on, and something that the Princess hadn't ever seen. What most would assume is just a framing device for the player is a real element of the world/construct.

I think it emphasizes how the story that the Narrator constructed is only "meant" to be told to TLQ. After all, The Narrator only appears in TLQ's mind, providing elaborate descriptions and attempting to contextualize the events of the game as a heroic task to save the world. Meanwhile the Princess is all alone, with no title cards or exposition, no context for why any of this is happening to her. The story revolves around her, but it doesn't care about her beyond her designated role, as something to be slain and hated. Her perspective is irrelevant to the Narrator's plan, so she doesn't get the fancy presentation or necessary context: she doesn't deserve it.

There's also those long stretches of dialogue where the voices talk to each other in TLQ's mind without progressing the story. They're occasionally acknowledged by the Princess elsewhere (Prisoner, Nightmare) but P&tD makes it very explicit and confirms that time is actively passing during these conversations, with TLQ staring in silence for who knows how long.

(Personally I don't think all of the voice dialogue is necessarily in real time, if only because some Princesses wouldn't have had the patience for it. Like if you had really stood still for that long, the Beast would've definitely eaten you... she's not waiting for you to finish thinking lol)

This one I think is more for humour, but it also draws attention to how much of the inner conversation the Princess is missing in normal chapters, when the voices aren't actively speaking to her through TLQ's body. Where we're having vibrant debates or key information revealed by the Narrator, she just sees a silent, staring figure. Speaking of the Narrator, He's completely absent from the Princess' POV, either because He doesn't want to speak to her or is somehow unable to (He does say in Tower that she's not supposed to be able to interact with Him...) Again, the story was not made to be told to her, so she isn't given His context, and because the player is usually so immersed in TLQ's perspective, they probably wouldn't realize just how much she's missing until they see things from her perspective.

One other example: if you choose to [Say nothing] immediately after you excise yourself, the Princess reacts to it:

I just find this so hilarious tbh, and the fact that she repeats back those exact words implies that she literally senses the text written in brackets. If you do it once you're back in the basement, she says this:

I wonder if it's the same for the Narrator/voices... do they also “feel” your actions while you’re choosing them? Do they hear you say (Lie) before you lie? When Skeptic said "Wink" out loud did he actually choose a dialogue option with [Wink] in brackets?? Ok that last one's a joke but there's lots of potential here

I just think it's cool because the average player wouldn't think twice about any of these things, because they seem like simple stylistic/game design choices. In a game where all player input is through dialogue options, the square brackets are an immediately understandable way to convey action, as opposed to plain text. In a game structured around repeating loops, it makes sense to make those loops distinguishable for players by separating each loop with a title card, and the chapter naming convention works as a nod to the fairytale storybook aesthetics the game draws from.

But by placing you into the Princess's head and acknowledging those design choices as diegetic elements that change depending on your perspective, it forces you to reevaluate your experiences: the things you didn't think were really "part of the game" and the experiences you didn't realize weren't universal. It exposes your hidden privileges, the luxuries and structural supports you have compared to the Princess that you don't even notice because you've never experienced the alternative.

It might make you realize how the way you perceive and conceptualize the world might be very different from how others conceptualize it (Tony's recent ask about the multicoloured glass in HEA could also play into this in a fascinating way, with the mismatch in perception between TLQ and the Narrator's script). It's all just very cool for a game that's based on perception.

It also makes me wonder... what other elements of this game are diegetic that we just haven't paid attention to?

Well, I think that the captions are probably also diegetic. TLQ occasionally refers to the voices by their complete titles despite them not ever referring to each other by those titles, instead opting for descriptors like "jumpy one" or "the worst one" or "rage boy" or "chilly little freak" lol. For a direct comparison, Paranoid exclusively calls Smitten "the lovesick one" or some variant in HEA, but TLQ refers to him by his full name using quotation marks, as if he's quoting something he's read:

The voices don't seem aware that these titles exist, while TLQ does, despite them sharing a mind. Also, when the Princess shares a body/mind with you, she never uses their titles either. In the Spectre/Princess and the Dragon, she calls Hero "the nice one", Cold "the quiet one" or "cold little freak", and the Narrator "the bossy one" or "that murder-happy know-it-all". Spectre describes the voices as shards of broken glass on the floor, so she likely perceives them completely differently to how we/TLQ see them.

Even The Narrator isn't aware of His title. If you call Him that in the mirror conversation, He says "'The Narrator'. I suppose that's my job, isn't it?", reacting to the title as if it's His first time hearing about it. There's also this question from the fourth Shifty encounter:

It seems like the titles are presented specifically for The Long Quiet/decider, and that they somehow reflect how TLQ perceives the voices/Narrator, since TLQ takes credit for "calling him" that. If the captions were specifically shown to TLQ in the same way that the title cards are, it'd explain how he has this information without it ever being verbally told to him, and why the Princess doesn't know their titles even when she's sharing your body.

But besides the captions, I think it could be fun to interpret the game as if most, if not all of its game mechanics exist in-universe. The choice menu, the music, the cursors, the save/load icons, saving/loading in general, the title screen, the Clown Princess living in the walls (game files), you name it. Let’s peel away these game mechanics cell by cell! Let's see what meaning we can find together, let's see what we're made of!

[toadletthethird]

Hi. If you’re still doing requests, could you maybe write what hunter and stubborn talked about back in chapter 7? Or just the two of them in general. They just seem like really fun voices to mash together.

(OH MY GOD YES!I was actually planning on writing their little conversation so now you've given me the perfect opportunity to write it, so thanks, and enjoy!)

(This takes place in Chapter 7 of Tongues and Teeth, right after Stubborn kills the monster.)

Stubborn rubbed his knuckles, grimacing down at the dead corpse at his feet.The thing was barely a challenge, going down in a few good hits.

Contrarian was making exaggerated gagging noises, and even Cheated quietly went,"Ew," to himself, taking a small step away from the corpse.

There was a rustle of movement, and Stubborn quickly looked up, but Hunted had already ran back into the forest before Stubborn could say anything.

He gritted his teeth as frustration bubbled up within him.Stubborn hated to admit it, but his mind was a mess right now, switching from pure excitement and adrenaline at getting to do what he wanted, to feeling absolutely lost and shitty.

He thought that taking on that monster and saving the others would clear his head, but it only created more guilt for him, because he knew that this was what the flock needed of him, but he hadn't been ready to accept that.

He continued to stare down at the corpse, even when Hunted returned with Paranoid and the others, even when Opportunist smiled and lavished him in praise for his bravery.

Stubborn just grunted in response and looked away, trying to spot Hunted amongst the other bodies of feathers.He spotted him, at the very back of the group, but when their eyes met, Hunted flinched and lowered his head, attempting to make himself look smaller.

It made his heart sink, and he glared at the ground, but the thought of letting this thing stop him from properly being with his flock was even more terrible. He felt Broken nudge his side, and when he looked down, Broken nodded towards Hunted and whispered,"You need to talk to him before it's too late." Before they find Hero.Before they figure out what's going on.Before they get settled and Hunted runs away from him forever.

Stubborn sighed, then picked up a limb from the monster and announced, "I'll get rid of the trash for us."Then he found Hunted and looked him right in the eye and asked,"You wanna come with me?" Hunted's wings tucked in against his back in alarm, so Stubborn quietly added,"There's something I gotta talk to you about."

He didn't like being open in any way around the others, but he needed them all to see that he actually just wanted to talk to Hunted, and not chase him anymore. Judging by the way Hunted's shoulders lowered slightly and he tilted his head curiously, the message had gotten through.

Then Hunted silently nodded, and Stubborn let a sigh of relief out.

They walked into the dense part of the forest in a tense silence, Hunted using the dead corpse as a barrier between them, and also keeping slightly behind Stubborn, probably for a better chance of escaping, which Stubborn didn't blame him for.

Stubborn didn't exactly have a plan for how to dispose of the body-he had sort of just decided to take it far enough away from the camp and leave it there, but then he heard a soft patting sound, and he stopped, looking over his shoulder.

Hunted was a few feet away from him, patting the ground below them and seemed to be listening out for something. He did that for another minute, before standing up straight, still avoiding eye contact with Stubborn, and said,"The ground is good here. Good place to bury the body."

"Bury it?Why can't we just leave it somewhere to rot?"

Hunted looked out at the forest around them as the sky began to darken, explaining with a soft urgency,"Because rot will attract more monsters, and bring them to the flock. Burying it will conceal its scent for awhile, enough for a night, at least."

That made sense, so Stubborn dropped the body in compliance, and before he could say anything, Hunted got right to digging a hole, an intense focus in his eyes that Stubborn's presence was probably not helping.

They stayed like that for two whole minutes before Stubborn couldn't take it anymore."Hey, pipsqueak."He instantly regretted using that nickname from the way Hunted flinched, and he seemed to lean his face further into the soil then and there.

Stubborn clenched his fists in frustration, but continued,"Look, the reason I dragged you out here is because I wanted to-say sorry."Hunted paused for a moment, before continuing his digging."Go on,"was all he said, and Stubborn sighed, once again feeling that weird guilt in his stomach.

He pressed his knuckles into the palm of his other hand for something to do, and he averted his gaze, even though Hunted also wasn't looking at him.

"I'm-sorry for chasing you around and not listening to you."He said the word sorry like he had never heard of it before, and he knew it.It was because apologising meant going back on his previous actions-essentially giving up, and giving up was not how Stubborn operated.

But he also knew that this was different, that he had to go through with this.

"It's just-I got excited at getting my own body, and I didn't really think about the bigger picture-just in the moment."

Hunted hummed, so that must meant that he was doing something right.But then the conversation drifted into awkward silence, as Stubborn wasn't sure how to proceed further. Should he keep explaining himself?Should he say sorry again?Hunted wasn't really being particularly responsive, so Stubborn couldn't be sure where to go from here.

Eventually, the silence started to piss him off, and he sighed harshly and snapped,"Look, I promise not to chase you around anymore, are we good now?"

Hunted paused in his ministrations, and without looking up at him, said,"You made me feel scared."

He may as well have punched Stubborn in the gut. He felt the need to look away in guilt, but he resisted, determined to go through with this and make things right with Hunted.

Hunted continued, twisting his hands around to stare at his muddy palms,"You wouldn't give up and you wouldn't listen to me. You kept chasing me and I knew you wanted to hurt me.I've only ever felt like that with her."

Stubborn deserved this.Stubborn deserved this guilt.Maybe Broken was right. Maybe fighting wasn't always the answer, and giving up wasn't inherently a bad thing.

Hunted's face scrunched up in confliction."But you still felt like flock to me, and I didn't want to leave you alone. You kept trying to fight me, and I kept running away. You were a friend and a foe and-and I couldn't stop thinking-'wrong,wrong!We shouldn't be running from our flock!We shouldn't be scared of them!'-but I was."

Hunted ended his speech abruptly, standing up straight and staring at the half finished hole. Stubborn, on the other hand, was drowning in his own guilt because this was all so fucked up!

"Fuck, I didn't mean to make you feel that way," Stubborn quickly explained, because all these feelings were just going to keep twisting and hurting him unless he got it all out of him.

"Hunted, I wouldn't have gone after you so badly if I didn't think you were the toughest birdie here. I just needed someone to focus on and fight because-because-"

"Because what?"Hunted asked, and Stubborn sighed and quietly admitted,"-because I didn't want to deal with what I was now."With the reality that he had been thrust into.Instead of being there for his flock, he essentially attacked it, and nothing made him feel worse than seeing the damage to that-from Broken's emotional outburst, to the fear he had instilled within Hunted.

Stubborn stared down at the hole emptily and said, "I was just too stubborn to face the fact that He left us, and I took it out on you, and I'm sorry for that."

Once again, they were left in silence, but Stubborn now just felt hollow, which felt unnatural for him-to be without a drive or a passion to pursue until the very end. But it was his actions that put him in this position, so maybe he didn't deserve to be called the protector-

"You're not alone, though."

Stubborn's lifted his head so fast that he almost made himself dizzy, but the only thing his mind could focus on was the fact that Hunted was actually looking at him now.

His eyes were calm and focused as they pierced through him."We were always a flock-back in the Decider's head, and now, when we are not.I don't-" Hunted paused, a look of hurt and longing flashing across his face, before he blinked and went back to that focused mask-"like thinking about what He is doing right now, without us to protect us, particularly you."

Stubborn gulped, feeling like the hole on the ground was going to grow bigger and swallow him up, but he didn't break eye contact.

"You were always the fighter.You refused to go down without a fight, and refused to let us think that we couldn't do anything.You drove us to fight for ourselves, and I can't help but admire that."

Stubborn had no choice but to let the compliments sink in and heat up his face, despite how weird it felt to hear them.The guilt was no longer drowning him, but he still felt uneasy and lost in that moment, so he gestured around them aimlessly and asked,"What about now?Am I still the protector of the flock?Do I even deserve to be?"

Hunted looked him up and down, and he rubbed his palms together and softly replied,"One day, I would like to fight you, without fear or consequences.I'd like to know what that would be like.Until then, we have a flock to get back to."That didn't exactly answer his question, but Hunted quickly went back to digging, seemingly done with this conversation, and Stubborn was left feeling lighter and heavier at the same time.

They worked in silence from then on, but the atmosphere didn't choke him with its tension this time.Hunted dug the hole and Stubborn tossed the body in, but then he got impatient so he just started grabbing armfuls of dirt and began throwing it back into the hole, and it was filled in a matter of seconds.

He still didn't know where he stood with Hunted, as they walked back to the camp.He hated the idea of Hunted being scared of him, and he hated the idea of failing the flock even more.But Hunted said that he'd like to fight him one day, so where does that leave him?

He got his answer when they met up with the others, and his eyes immediately went to Cheated and Broken, the latter giving him a soft smile while the other gave him a big thumbs up with a toothy grin.

Stubborn didn't feel like he had been that successful-something that got on his nerves, with the thought of losing something he had been so determined to set right.Was this how Cheated felt all the time?

His thoughts were interrupted by the feeling of something warm nuzzling itself against his wrist, and he looked down to find Hunted softly rubbing his cheek against him.Their eyes met, and Hunted smiled at him.

Hunted scented him.He was still a part of the flock.

Stubborn lived to protect another day.

[toadletthethird]

Does anyone else have a feeling that whenever they think about prisoner associations like "cool independent mastermind" come up, but the slightest notion of cage and like. bbaby :( babyy.....my babby......and like. Fall to the ground. In helplessness. Or is it just me

The difference between them makes me insane.

"I had to take it in faith" vs "I didn't think it was possible". The one with an aim and the one with a dream. The patient heart, because she will wait for any chance, and the watchful heart, because there is nothing for her to wait for, only to perceive. The smart and the open hearts. The testament of will and bliss of indecisiveness. I can't. I can't.

[toadletthethird]

thinking about how in some endings, the voice of the hero stays behind. You and Her head out for something new, while He is dead, and the voice of the hero, the one who is always there, even when the Narrator isn't, stays behind. willingly. not forced into silence. he quietly lets you go, and if you ask if he'll be okay on his own, he tells you that he won't be. not for long. the other voices have to be around here somewhere. he'll find them.

(when glass shatters, it's best to clean up the shards as soon as you can. especially the tiny ones that stab at the soles of your feet from where they got embedded into carpet.)

thinking about. the voice of the hero, as he stays down there. where it all began, in a cabin basement, with two chains mounted to the wall, a window overhead, with creaky old stairs behind him, leading up to a room with windows on opposite sides of the cabin. there's a old wooden table, and that pristine blade on the edge of it, waiting to be picked up. does he have a physical form? if he does, maybe he'll tidy up. dust off the table. put the blade somewhere that it won't fall off edge or hurt anyone. cleans the windows. maybe he'll find a way to fix the stairs so they don't creak so loudly.

the hero stays behind, and he looks for the other pieces that were left behind. or too weak to pull themselves into the light. or too afraid to approach.

he lets it go, with the trust that he won't be alone.

everything that is not Her, is You.

[toadletthethird]

Can we have cage for that ask game? :3

Ohhh thanks for the question! but I might be the bad person to ask this, because I love to talk about her wayyy too much

Send me a character and I'll list:

1) favourite thing about them

I love her so much from narrative standpoint for things she can represent. Her chapter can be a great statement about trauma response that is often overlooked. Fight or flight are great, of course, but freeze just hits home.

In prisoner's chapter her one resort of hope was lost. She made a plead to be saved in the act of decapitation and was unheard. Such a wish broken. To put everything into something to not work out is so painful. Especially the second time. And new attempts would just remind about the helplessness - disappointment is not an easy wound to heal - so it's easier to embrace it. To find meaning in your pain. It is cruel and absurd and undeserved, but it is yours. You can find beauty in its horrors. And it makes it significant. It gives it at least some little sense it needs to not be so painfully pointless. To her, at least. It's her way to survive. (Oh how I love overrationalisation as a way to cope)

And I like how it's shown that it's hurtful not only to her but to people around too. She is not violent herself, but by not rejecting this harmful behaviour she lets the circle of violence to continue. And it what happens when you fall into a mindset like this. You get so focused on endurance that you fail to see the aftermath of your actions. It can manifest as neglect, direct danger or, most often, the suffering your close ones feel watching you. And there's no exit from the cycle but to acknowledge how harmful your coping is. It's not her fault, but it is so. (Interestingly, while the Allegory of the cage ending is exactly like that, No Exit is about bringing someone on the same level as you.... Becoming the same danger you were afraid of..... and to project that fearful worldview onto someone, subconsciously.....I think it can have interesting connotations to real life)

I believe her story can be beautiful allegory to withstanding any traumatic event that gives you no other choice than to accept it. You know: grief, chronic illness, abuse, depression, etc. You name it

Also, there is a reading of prisoner-cage as an allegory to self harming behaviour in my main account. I can't say if it's as good as I remember it to be (I physically can't take a second look at anything I do until a decade passes - yeah, it's a curse thing. never trust fairies), but it's still very dear to me.

2) the least favourite thing about them

I'm a simple girl...... The only complaint I have is deleted dialogue from prisoner........

3) Favourite line

Of course it's "Look at us go. Aren't we beautiful?"

But honourable mention is her head pun because.......I love puns. And "What? Like the answer's obvisous? Like it's staring me right in the face? Just like you?" because it was so funny to find

4)brotp

Cage and HEA would find a lot in common. I like to make all damsel and prisoner based vessels friends. And I love parallels

Also with thorn and PATD because of the "were in terrible situations and survived" similarity. I just like to imagine them all happy together, you know

5) OTP

I....I might like her with broken........I just really like broken in this chapter

6) notp

Nothing there

7) random headcanon

She and Prisoner give me insane Antiquity vibes for no particular reason. So I like to imagine Cage speaking ancient Greek (a lot of linker words make this language sound extremely cycle like. And sometimes prepositions start somewhere and stretch a looooong way only to remind of themselves again in the end of the sentence - very chain like) and Prisoner speaking Latin (very clear to use intellectual language). Just for fun.

8) unpopular opinion

My hierarchy for cage's endings is: No Exit, The Riddle of Steel, Allegory of the Cage

Yeah, I'm so shameful about that, but.... I love tragedies..... And I don't like when the solution to the puzzle is beyond the puzzle....... I'm so glad happy ending for her exists, but it's not for me

Oh and I like the possibility of free will ending. It's horrendous, no doubt, but I'm glad that there is such a choice available. After the horror of withdrawal we can experience the horror of freedom. Absurd of selfexpression. There is something about it

9) Song I associate with them

"I bet on losing dogs" by mitski simply because she is my baby :(

10) favourite image

Oh I love every shot from this chapter. But the dance sequence particularly

(Also there is a very particular shot when you strike her in the heart and her body, while still standing, holds the blade so firmly but I'm afraid it's too risky for tumblr and I'm not in a risky mood hahah)

That's all!

[toadletthethird]

To see the whole world.

Where are they going to next?

[toadletthethird]

🔪🔪🔪

[toadletthethird]

Well... the Princess & the Pauper AU took over my mind... so, here, have some first thoughts as to how this story might work:

-Obviously, Damsel is Annalise and Prisoner is Erika, though they both have slightly different interests and motivations. Damsel, rather than being a science geek, is a lover of stories---tales of high adventure, daring rescues and escapes, and sweeping romance, and has a secret dream of becoming a writer herself. Prisoner, meanwhile, finds her love of dancing and her dreams of someday becoming a professional singer embarrassing and unrealistic, pushing herself to someday run her own dressmaking shop instead as a more attainable goal. She still does occasionally sneak out and sing on the street, but it's a guilty pleasure for her.

-Opportunist is Preminger---because, genuinely, there was no other character who could've fit, and you know that they'd absolutely kill a jazzy remix of "How Could I Refuse"---but even though I love a good-old-fashioned campy villain, I decided to make their motives a bit more complex. They want to be the ruler of the kingdom because they're hell-bent on being the one in charge, but it stems from growing up dirt-poor, with one mother who's chronically ill (Wild) and another mother who's been badly mistreated as a servant (Thorn). Opportunist started out telling themselves that everything they did was to give their family a better life, but that's become a secondary motivation as bitterness and greed have warped them over the years... and, well, in the end, Oppy always looks out for themselves.

-To that end, Opportunist is only four years older than Damsel---26 to her 22---and if you're wondering how they managed to snag a royal advisor position that young, it's exactly how you'd expect. They lied their way into an assistant advisor position in their teens, and when they found out that the old advisor was intending on collapsing one of the gold mines in order to embezzle from the kingdom... well, they saw an opportunity, and made sure that one other person got trapped underneath the rubble.

-Witch is in a role similar to Julian's---she's just the palace gardener instead of Damsel's tutor, and everyone talks about how they're "such good friends" and ignore the fact that they're obviously in love with each other---but I decided to keep my long-standing dynamic of her and Opportunist being cousins, because the drama is something that could not be ignored. In fact, I went one step further, making it so Opportunist is the one who got her the job at the palace... and while they kept her in the dark about all of their plans, Witch knows both Damsel and her cousin too well to not see through the kidnapping scheme.

-Hero is Damsel's personal guard, her best friend aside from Witch, and the person who makes sure that Damsel isn't constantly ditching her lessons and running off to explore the kingdom... at least, not without an escort. He's very sweet and very considerate, and though he's always gently trying to steer Damsel more towards palace life and her duties as the future queen, he still listens whenever she tells him about this new idea for a story---and sometimes, he'll even jot some of it down and hide it in the library for her to find. Hero's a good friend.

-Stubborn and Contrarian are Opportunist's henchman (though, Oppy prefers the term "troublemakers for hire," since that gives the boys a bit of an ego boost), and they masquerade themselves as two of several workers who still work in the mines... all of whom are on Opportunist's payroll, but Stubborn and Contrarian are the only two they trust to do some of the dirtier work. Stubborn's always happy to get his hands dirty, but Contrarian... well, he's a bit of a goof, for one, and he gets more and more uncomfortable with the boss's plans as they go from just stealing gold from the mine to kidnapping the princess to attempting to murder the princess. This is partly out of a sense of conscience... and partly because Contrarian is head-over-heels in love with the princess's personal guard. And yes, those feelings are absolutely requited.

-Prisoner's horrible boss is Wraith (I debated Tower, but the role needs a crone), and the other employees of the dress shop are Nightmare---who also has dreams of being a stage diva, though is much more open about them---and Stranger, who's also trying to pay off an inherited debt. Stranger also has an older sister in Razor, who's taking a... less than legal avenue to paying off all that money, working alongside her longtime girlfriend-turned-wife (who's Adversary, obviously). While Prisoner considers Nightmare and Stranger to be friends, her closest allies are...

-Spectre and Cold are Wraith's grandchildren, and while they technically have a leg up on the employees due to, well, not having to slave away for years on end, they're still very much at the mercy of their grandmother, and both of them do little things for the dressmakers---sneaking them good food and personal affects, throwing little parties when their grandmother's on a trip, shaving off as much of the debt as they can without Wraith noticing---in short, everyone's eager for the day when the two finally take over the shop. Spectre and Cold are also very loyal friends to Prisoner, to the point where when Prisoner suddenly has to impersonate Damsel, Cold goes with her to pose as a guard... for her safety, of course, but also because he just wants to see what a palace is like.

-Smitten is the neighboring monarch who Damsel's in an arranged engagement with, and they're incredibly eager to meet and fall in love with their future bride---but their twin brother, Skeptic, is more than a little rankled by the whole situation, considering the sudden loss of the kingdom's wealth highly suspicious. It definitely doesn't help that when they arrive at the palace, Smitten somehow winds up spending way more time with a tall, dark, and smarmy palace guard who seemingly has zero decorum... and Skeptic, meanwhile, finds himself drawn to the princess's surprisingly blunt, frank, and cynical demeanor, and she seems to like him a lot more than his sibling. (I'm incapable of writing a Slay the Princess fic without Priskep. Sue me.)

-And last little thing (before I figure out how to cameo some of the others)---Happily Ever After is the queen, a once bright and optimistic ruler turned melancholic after the death of her husband and the hardship her kingdom has fallen under. She's poured her heart and soul into helping her kingdom and making sure her daughter is happy, but she's also exhausted... and that's caused her to overlook a lot of things that have been going on in the kingdom since before the mine collapsed. Not to mention, the very clear signs that her advisor might not be as trustworthy as they appear.

[toadletthethird]

send me a character and i’ll list:

favorite thing about them

least favorite thing about them

favorite line

brOTP

OTP

nOTP

random headcanon

unpopular opinion

song i associate with them

favorite picture of them

[toadletthethird]

I like this a lot actually. It was so fun to make.. the way Prisoner is looking at him... The way he has his wing around her... And the chains.. so romantic.......... *Sob*

Yeah I didn't draw glasses for my Skeptic cause I thought it looked a little awkward.

(melting)

[toadletthethird]

"I Love This Little Life We Built"

I find the torchlit ending of the Epilogue to be the best among them, even beyond the gorgeous Danse Macabre, because it is the truest to the twin natures of you, it is the ending that both of you would choose for the sake of the other and yet it is the ending in which nobody wins. Though perhaps the Long Quiet in a diegetic manner does not understand that the Princess is yielded to the Shifting Mound every time she feels the starlight of the world enter her eyes, we the player (if they were indeed to get the torchlit ending) are, crucially, all too aware of that, and I would assume that is the predominant reason that we would choose the "stay with her" option rather than the "leave with her" one. With regards to the Deconstructed Damsel, it is a different story, but to some extent the same logic of "protecting her from those all-powerful hands" remains a priority.

So though you may not leave together, lest she be taken and the love story be destroyed and begin anew, you can at least remain together. But the Princess wants to leave, she wants to see the world and, to some extent, be wrapped in those cold arms, she wants to abandon her vessel and join the conglomeration. She wants to commit suicide. But you prevent her, and, because this Princess is pliable to her core, she reticently accepts that. But she is unhappy with this. She does not understand that she will die, and the Long Quiet does not have the words and knowledge in order to explain it to her. And so she is unhappy, she does not understand why she cannot leave and she does not understand why she must stay trapped within her hell. Why she must live. And, of course, the Smitten cannot bear that, everything goes dark, and we die.

We appear in a place where she has, in part, come to terms with the fact that she is unhappy, that she will forever be unhappy, because just as we are willing to bear the heartbreak for our partner, so too is she. And so she smiles with a melancholy fondness and allows us to participate in this life that we put together, she, though we have denied her for what seems like no reason at all, continues to love us. She entertains us, she feeds us, she engages in conversation with us, she portrays herself as happy for our sake. And we too, we smile all the while as the food grows rancid, as the games grow boring, and as apathy eats us alive. Because to leave with the Princess is the death and rebirth of her, and we cannot allow that to happen. And Smitten, the same one to kill us in the beginning, almost begins to understand this. He takes care of the Princess and traps her both, just as we do, and she does not understand why, only that he genuinely does care for her yet still hurts her in this way.

And finally, rather than making the other unhappy, we each sit in our own unhappiness forever, each one of us insufficient in totality, yet utterly devoted to the other. She cannot understand us, and we cannot understand the pain that she is going through. But we grin and bear it, because an eternity of this is still better than death for her. We have become the Narrator, and she has too, just as the Danse Macabre is the ultimate rejection of the Narrator. We love her, she loves us, and because of that, we damn ourselves to an eternity of nothing, each of us secure in the knowledge that the other one loves us, and that we love them, and we waste away in decay.

And in the end, the hands take her nonetheless, all our agony so vain.

[toadletthethird]

The Process of the Voices designs (inspired by @everestgale )

(If you’re seeing this, it means that all of the voices have their own references!)

So

Um

That was a big project

(Height lineup with current designs!!!!!)

(And apparently there was a limit to how many photos I can add per post on mobile so I had to work around the limit in order to be able to show you as much as possible. I’m sorry if the sketches have horrible quality ;^;)

Starting thought process

The first thing I had thought of when I had just stepped foot into the fandom space all the way back when the game was still new was to make each of the voices be represented by a different bird. I had never really drawn anything regarding to that idea, however.

But as Pristine Cut released, I had finally found the motivation to actually start designing the voices. Now the game is done, my thoughts process became “let’s just make the voices look vaguely bird-like without really basing them off of any bird type completely” to give myself a bit more freedom in designing them. Just a little leeway. TLQ is basically a mix between mammal and bird, so I thought I can probably continue this design aspect with the voices as well.

I had also challenged myself to not use any clothing items for any of the voices, cause TLQ isn’t really wearing anything in the first place, so I don’t really think the voices would spawn in with clothes already on their bodies.

With that said, let us continue to…

Terror and Longing (Paranoid and Cold)

Cold is the first ever one I had drawn, which is why he looked so “rough” and less shape like in my post for him. My thought process for him is pretty straightforward, and it’s just a reaper bird with a hole in his chest to symbolise the emptiness that can never be filled by normal means. His princess is a ghost, a lot of the chapter 3 routes that he’s in have princesses that are related to ghosts in some way, so to me it just makes sense for him to be a reaper. His body is basically just a big ol’ blanket. A cold one, but a blanket nonetheless. You can quite literally go inside him like he’s some sort of blanket tent.

Also I’m gonna semi-retcon the “Physical form gained with the leave ending” part of the notes. He and the rest of the voices already looks like this even before they gain their physical form, albeit much more shadowy and without actual line art.

Unlike most of the voice designs here, there really aren’t any visual elements that connects Paranoid and Cold together as parallels on how they view pain. Mainly because I mostly designed Paranoid solely on his overall “vibes” as a character. In my concept sketches, he looked more like a spindly exposed nerve noodle than how he is now. I do intend to give him a minor redesign in the future so that he could match better with Cold, however.

But in a way it kinda worked out for me, as Nightmare and Paranoid are basically just creepy delicate doll + goofy sock puppet, which is kind of funny to me

Now looking back, it would have been perfect to name the post as “Bones and Nerves” if I had decided to post them in paired at the very beginning.

Skepticism and Blind Devotion (Skeptic and Smitten)

(^^^Cloaked/Detective Skeptic design and Caged Head Skeptic design belongs to @/remaking-machine and @/bubblybloob respectively. Mainly drew them for inspiration and get my gears going)

When I had first sketched Smitten, I knew that I wanted him to have a big chest and to have an overwhelming presence, to show that Smitten thinks with his heart instead of actually seeing what’s in front of him (hence the small round puppy eyes that he closes most of the time). He’s delulu and I love him for that <3

But then a thought just came to me like “hey, wouldn’t it be really funny if his chest is like, 80% of his whole body?”, and so I listened because god damn it it’s so funny that I CAN-NOT NOT listen to that (and I was so delighted to see most of the tags were pointing out the size of his bosom. Funniest thing ever). Smitten is top-heavy, which kinda symbolise how Smitten is a pretty “head-in-the-clouds” sort of guy, where his heart/chest make him look like it’s gonna take flight with him, flying up like a balloon

(Unfortunately the ratio of his chest and body became a lot more balanced again the more I draw him, since I realised that it’s harder for me to draw his chest fluff consistently.)

As for Skeptic, I wanted him to parallel Smitten regarding their physical appearances. And hence, Skeptic has sharper, bigger eyes, smaller body with huge wings to cover himself up, which contrasts with Smitten’s round, smaller eyes, with a big body revealing his heart to the world and small wings to “guard” himself with. His big wings being a play on “the truth sets you free”, but it clearly becomes more of a burden as he continuously tries and push onward and makes things more complicated then it should be, like how he does in Cage. (Fun fact, the bigger the wings the harder it is to swim)

Originally I wanted Skeptic’s design to look like a blob of smoke/shadow with little to no clear defined features except for his face, or just a bunch of lines like those line creature thingies from the animated movie Soul, but it later didn’t really click for me when I compare him with the other designs I have made (it’s kinda boring looking), so I’ve made a slight redesign to give him a more defined body structure, since I don’t think he needs that shadowy unreadable body when he already has his big wings to protect himself with.

(You might not have noticed this, but Smitten and Skeptic are the only two that have their full bodies drawn in the same panel, while the rest of the pairs have them be separated in two different panels. I just decided to keep it that way, since I thought it was funny that these two have never met face to face with each other in game, but here they are the only ones drawn together)

Consumption and Betrayal (Hunted and Opportunist)

Ahhhh Oppy

I immediately knew what I wanted to do with this slimy bastard, and that is making him a fox.

Part of me really really really want to make him cat-themed so that not only does he match well with Witch, but to also hit the pun for “cat-fight” for the dance of infinite tricks between the two. But a fox fits him as well, as foxes and cats do not seem to like each other. Oppy still being a bird while making himself look like a stereotypical scheming predator also makes for good symbolism for how he hides his vulnerability behind his many masks. His creepy smile was inspired by how he looked in PatD while he was controlling TLQ’s body.

I also gave him a longer neck, so that he could look farther away. I just think a long neck fits him.

(He doesn’t tell anyone this, but he feels more comfortable walking on all fours. He’s just accustomed to walk on two legs to make himself look slightly bigger, since he’s already on the shorter/cuter side)

As for Hunted, my first thought for him is to make him big and nimble-looking, but I had decided that I’m gonna be the contrarian and go the other direction that isn’t my first thought, settling down with a smaller, cuter looking Hunted then what I had first envisioned, as you can see with the first paper sketches of him being a small little creature

I wanted him to scream “prey”, and to further contrast him with Beast, who became bigger than what she had started with. That’s a big part of why I had decided against the longer design despite a part of me really liking the idea.

(Since Hunted is not only a bird, but is also a rabbit and a rat thingy, in which all three are prey animals. Does that make him prey-squared)

Rivalry and Submission (Stubborn and Broken)

Stubborn’s design is pretty straight forward, as I’ve already have a clear image of what he looks like in my head. I was worried that he might look too human-like, but I guess my worries were all for nothing cause he turned out quite monstrous. Decided to make him have big arms to make him look even heavier and much more of a hard hitter.

His design was inspired by multiple things, being a demon, a dragon(both the demon and dragon part are here to tie his route with Adversary and to parallel Broken), a roaster and a bull, while also keeping the bird-like elements. Out of everyone, he was probably the hardest to draw on digital aside from Smitten when I had first started drawing them. I am not good at drawing big men.

The bull/horns part came later while I was creating my design for him, and you can see that I was trying to take inspiration from All Might of all people to give Stubborn those two little thingies on top of his head. I did not like the V shaped tuffs and settled for horns instead simply because it looks cooler. It then just created this demon-angel connection with Stubborn and Broken, and I liked it so much that I decided to just go with it

Broken’s design had actually evolved a long way from his first conceptualisation. Originally he was just a bunch of broken glass shards that vaguely forms into an image of a person. But then I realised it’ll be too hard to draw over and over, so I redesigned him into more of a sad lump instead. Really happy about my decision.

He’s mostly round in shape language until he decides to stand up straight, which makes him look more regal and “angelic”. His eyes and beak have that sharp edge to them to show that he still has the capacity to bite back if he wanted to. The crack on his eye was meant to make him look like he’s crying instead of a scar to be proud of like how Stubborn’s scar reads, making him a weeping angel.

(Looking back on it, he kinda look like a melted candle)

Pain and Unfamiliarity (Cheated and Contrarian)

Oooooh boy, I have a lot of things to say about these two

I have tired sketching Contrarian’s design out many many times, and many of them weren’t able to hit the exact spot(which is kind of ironic, cause it’s Contrarian that I was designing(he also deserved his own spread sheet of sketches, cause there was so so much of it))

These ideas include—making him the only one with white feathers, having an odd number of limbs, making him look like a twisting messy arrow, making him look like a Picasso art piece, taking annoying character design do-nots and then putting all of it onto his design just to be annoying(aka very crowded and unreadable designs where you don’t even know what you’re looking at anymore), making him into a regular bird simply because it would be really funny, giving him more then one singular head etc (also, that little Jester imp design I’ve drawn to de-stress was made by @/itsonlypolite . Thank you for the design absnsjaj)

It was until I had decided to take a break from designing him that I had finally figured out what I really wanted for him. I reminded myself that I wanted his design to be simplistic enough so that it would be easy to draw, so I had returned to the basics for him, which back then was just a simple fluffy bird noodle, and then things went a bit more smoothly after that.

I took inspiration from Discord’s design from MLP and made Contrarian have body parts that corresponds to the other voices. After all, what is a Contrarian without anyone to contrast with?

I also designed his head wings to give the illusion of a jester hat. Unlike the rest of the voices, he doesn’t have wings on his back, the one place that a pair of wings should be at anatomically speaking, simply because it would be funny. He does have a pair of wings on his butt though.

And the more I designed him, the more clear I was for the theming for Contra and Cheated, which is basically a Jester and the unfortunate person who got picked for the Jester’s practicing of magic tricks. And the person is just trying not to get hit by the throwing knifes.

As for Cheated, I also had trouble coming up with a design for him. Unlike Contrarian, whom I had too many ideas that I didn’t know where to go from there, he had way too little sketches and ideas. I already knew that I wanted him to look like he had been ripped apart to compliment Razor, but I had never tried to sketch him out until almost all of the other designs were complete. Then I had started to try and relate his character design with game elements, since both Contrarian and Cheated are basically meta for the player mentality, and I eventually came up with him having a Paper sort of texture. Not only does it relate back to paper cards, it also shows that he could never win against Razor, cause Scissors beat Paper no matter how you try (and Narrator is the Rock no one wants)

(That would make him and Razor’s ship name be PaperCut. That’s so cute actually)

At one point of the process, a part of me wanted him to look like a rabbit to fit the whole magic thing, but eventually decided against it due to not wanting him to overlap with Hunted, who already has a rabbit theme. So I’ve turned my attention elsewhere.

The inspiration for his design are mainly origami birds, since I wanted to give him an illusion that he was made out of paper cards to fit with the game theme. His silhouette, much like Contrarian, is not symmetrical at all. But instead of having the different parts be mashed together harmoniously in a weird way like Contrarian, his body is just a mess, with him sticking his body back into place over and over again. I’d imagine that his body was sewn together with paper with different textures(he gets even messier in Razor!!!).

With him being paper themed, it also gave me the opportunity to hide small jokes in his design and just go wild with the puns. A part of me felt like that would be a tad bit too cruel for him. He’s been through enough… but then again… paper puns. (Call me Razor cause I’m just having fun torturing him)

At the Heart of it all… (Narrator and Hero)

Hero is actually one of the easier ones for me to design, considering I’ve already decided that he is going to look the most human out of all of the other voices. I designed him with the image of a harpy and some of the fandom’s interpretation of TLQ at the back of my mind. Since I made these designs with the Pristine Cut being out, I had referenced his appearance from what the Pristine Cut trailer has shown of TLQ, which is a lot more human-like.

Hero is basically a smaller and less intimidating looking version of TLQ, since he is what TLQ wishes he was. A Hero. He’s probably what TLQ imagined himself to look like when he still didn’t know his own appearance, and imagined himself to look less intimidating, much like how the fandom in the early days imagined TLQ to be like before Pristine Cut. It’s a bit meta, but I think it works.

I had considered giving him a helmet, but then decided against it for two reasons:

One, I don’t want to break the rule that I had set for myself, which is to not give any of the voices clothing items(acceptable to give them the illusion of clothes, however)

And two, him not having the helmet, the symbol of knighthood and heroism, shows that he is unsure of his heroism, and is usually unsure of his decisions and what should be considered as “the right thing to do”

Narrator on the other hand look basically the same as the other interpretations of him. I had actually considered giving him an alternative design, where he is a well-dressed man with a crow mask covering his head, holding a scroll in his hand.

But I decided that the symbolic meaning of a mortal man losing all semblance of humanity after his death, and the gods he had trapped have become more human then he is much more fitting (and ironic). So now he’s just a bird with a scroll.

Author on the other hand, I decided to keep his head in the shadow and keep it as a vague silhouette, while the rest of his body is still somewhat visible. I designed a version where he’s got his face uncovered, but I later decided that it’s more fun with Author’s faces being inconsistent every time I draw him, mainly because Narry probably doesn’t even remember how he had looked like when he was still alive. These sketches are probably vague recollections of what Narry believed he looked like, so each of the faces look a little different from each other. He will be the only one without a solid reference.

I wanted Author to have tired sad-looking eyes, and so his eyes are one of the few consistent things about him. Aside from the eyes, his two hair tuffs and his glasses are still gonna be a part of his design, but will probably look slightly different every time his face was drawn. So there’s that.

Annnnnd that’s about it for my rambling! Thank you all for sticking around till the finishing of this project ^^ (and reading all of this till the end holy hell I’ve typed so much)

And oh boy this took me a while to make, I was literally making this post at the same time as I was drawing the references. It kinda made the journey a little less intimidating for me hehe