Not yet another inn! Well, heh, this one I made is meant to be a central hub for one of my bigger campaigns, and it holds a lot of opportunities for environmental storytelling.

The map contains 4 levels, which are from bottom to top:

Basement, Main Floor, 2Nd Floor, and Roof. The first floor has the hall and dining area combined, bar, kitchen, stairs to the rooms and a couple of storage rooms. As well as a toilet, a well area, a wood chopping area, a trembita (a big musical instrument used for sending signals around the mountains), a dishwashing area and a toilet. Stables are in the right building.

2nd floor has rooms for rent; one of the rooms with 2 beds is free. I would describe the stories behing other rooms, but later and if ppl interested lol.
The building's second floor is a closed-down brothel. Has a small secret enclosure behind the false wall where the bottles are.

The basement is used for growing mushrooms and wine prep. Also has a secret room behind a movable stone wall; pull the nearest lamp to open x)

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We humans, as a species, love sorting things into categories - picking out what we consider objects from the world's chaos, and then sorting those objects, over and over, into different little boxes by all sorts of criteria. Video games are no exception - we're used to classifying them into separate groups by all kinds of criteria, and far from just genre.

For instance, all games can be very loosely sorted by their philosophy of power. Take Skyrim, where a prisoner who's just barely escaped execution becomes a publicly recognised dragon-slaying hero and one of the local jarl's inner circle within twenty minutes. The protagonist, in any medium, is a vessel (pun intended) for the audience's consciousness, and in games, especially role-playing ones, that works with double the force.

Within this framework, Skyrim is an example of what's called a Power Fantasy - a narrative style where the protagonist basically marinates in power and authority the whole time.

Weakness Fantasy (the name's still a work in progress) is a narrative in which everyone and everything around the protagonist is stronger than they are. The audience's enjoyment comes from the protagonist solving their problems not by possessing power but despite lacking it. In the good old German game Gothic, which, as a fantasy RPG, genre-wise lines up with Skyrim, you're a prisoner. (Being a prisoner is also a core criterion for getting classified as an RPG at this point). You've been locked away in a mining colony under a magical barrier you can't get out of. If Skyrim tells you you're a magnificent hero, here you'll spend several more hours as dirt under a miner's fingernails, while the protagonist scrapes and claws his way up the social ladder by any means necessary.

Slay the Princess

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Of course, all that setup wasn't for nothing. Because the theme of how power gets distributed is a key part of what we're going to talk about today. And I'm talking, of course, about Slay the Princess, and this time we're going to dig into the "Tower" route. The route where we, as the protagonist, end up most visibly in a position of total powerlessness before the Princess.

Honestly, it'd be an interesting mental exercise to try classifying Slay the Princess itself, as a whole, on this scale - from Power to Weakness Fantasy. Sure, that's easier to do with RPGs than with visual novels, but it's still an interesting question. Because here we run into a superposition. The protagonist in Slay the Princess is literally a god who's lived through countless worlds, and that gives us immense power. But this god is also lost and confused, and keeps getting overwhelmed, again and again, by a force just as powerful - their own divine other half.

Chapter 1 - Hero and His Unconventional Erotic Preferences

Slay the Princess is also unique in that its narrative openly acknowledges the protagonist's existence on three separate levels at once. The voices that speak in our head - that's the protagonist. The god who serves as the avatar and the eyes through which you see the world - that's also the protagonist. And the one all of them occasionally call the Decider - meaning "the one who makes the choices" - is also the protagonist. In other words, you, the player, become a full-fledged part of this universe for as long as you're playing.

This time, right from the doorway - or rather, from the stairs - the Princess wastes no time establishing, so to speak, her authority in the room, both in tone and in body language. Tellingly, when we make eye contact with her, the Hero voice's first reaction is:

"She's so beautifully cold. Is she really a threat to the world?"

Let's say we know the Princess will always be appealing to the Hero in one way or another. But "beautifully cold" isn't exactly the most obvious first phrase to describe someone's appeal. You could even start to wonder if our hero here didn't get hugged enough as a kid. If you break it down into its emotional components, the Hero isn't just stating a fact like "She's dangerous" or "She's hostile." He's genuinely captivated by her in that moment - and captivated specifically for these reasons.

And here's the most interesting part: this happens exactly when we've come down to the basement with the knife, meaning, as it seemed to us, from a position of strength. This moment can lead to many different manifestations of the Princess. But since we're covering the "Tower" today - the branch of this story built around the theme of domination - it's worth pointing out how this reaction colours everything that follows, right from the start. Finding aesthetic appeal in someone else's dominance is definitely not a strong move. If anything, it's the first step toward submission.

I hope we can agree that it's better to mistakenly free someone guilty than to kill an innocent person for no good reason. That's how the basic human moral compass is wired, or so I'd like to believe. We decide to try freeing the Princess. Great intention, but we're not going to live long enough to carry it out. In the process, the Narrator takes control of our body, clumsily trying to do the job we refused to do. A reckless decision that provokes the Princess into attacking.

Having methodically shattered about half the bones in our body, she moves on to actions that, despite how aggressive they are, carry a somewhat… intimate edge. An intimate edge that becomes the main channel for that transfer of power we've been talking about. The vibe we're about to observe is genuinely there. And nothing in this story is written in "just for a laugh."

Poor thing, let me free you from your suffering.

BDSM:

BDSM, aside from being both the subject of countless memes and clumsy jokes and one of the most popular search terms on certain shady video-hosting sites, is also a legitimate part of many people's intimate lives. I can say with 90% confidence that your favourite barista, the one who makes your coffee almost every day, is also part of this subculture. People don't advertise it to wider society, for obvious reasons. In BDSM, the transfer of power is a conscious exchange of authority, where partners voluntarily redistribute roles. The dominant (or "top") takes on responsibility for controlling and directing the process, while the submissive (or "bottom") gives up control, handing their power over to their partner.

BDSM also comprises a wide range of individual practices. Take trampling, for instance. The practice involves the top partner pinning the bottom to the floor with their feet, walking or even jumping on them.

And then there's asphyxiation - a pretty dangerous one. This is the deliberate, temporary restriction of oxygen to the brain. Choking, in plain terms. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the brain causes dizziness and a euphoric state. People like it. And I am not encouraging anyone to try recreating anything read in this essay at home. Before trying anything you've read here, please consult your barista.

Having beaten us, the Princess calms down and stops thrashing your body with her feet in a fit of self-defence. Instead, she pins your prone body to the floor with the heels of her shoes and says, in an almost gentle but commanding voice:

"Poor thing, let me free you from your suffering."

Maintaining eye contact, she starts pressing her knee down on your throat - with a strength you'd never expect from such a fragile-looking body. So, sitting on top of you, she watches you in the eyes as you die from lack of oxygen. Everything goes dark, and you die.

Say what you want, but this wasn't just a killing. Especially since, for two divine beings, killing is a pretty loose concept anyway. This was an intimate process of deep psychological redistribution of power, one in which the Princess finally became the dominant one.

Chapter 2 - Good Little Bird

Welcome back to the beginning again, which is also a continuation. This time, alongside the Hero voice, the Broken voice shows up - a complex, multifaceted character.

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Learned helplessness:

The Voice of Broken shows up in a mood that fully matches its name. Learned helplessness is a state in which, after a string of failures, a person stops trying to improve their situation. And that's exactly what the Broken voice does, which is to say - nothing. Its favourite line, which we'll hear more than once, is something like: "What difference does it make what we do, the result's going to be the same either way." It has handed over its power - given up its control to the Princess, along with any responsibility - and is now convinced it has no resources left to influence the situation at all.

If we try arguing about the Princess here, on the path, the Broken voice will say flat out: "What if we just stopped pretending we can do anything about her, and just handed ourselves over to her?" Which, curiously, shows not just a lack of will, but also an unconscious desire to end up at the disposal of the being that control was handed to. Because if it were scared of her power, wouldn't it be more likely to suggest running away instead?

There's a survival mechanism in which, in situations of mortal danger, the psyche unconsciously begins to form an attachment to the aggressor, thereby justifying their cruelty. In the obvious absence of control, having a positive attitude toward your abuser creates the sense that the situation can at least be predicted, which means, however illusory and small, it can be controlled. Yes, we're talking about Stockholm syndrome.

The tragedy of the situation is compounded by the fact that the victim's behaviour - our Broken voice's behaviour - starts genuinely irritating the other people in the conversation: the Hero voice and the Narrator. And they, in turn, start directing aggression right back at it. This happens a lot when the role of "victim" becomes a social one. Because a victim who's fully integrated into a social group often ends up being a victim to everyone, even when the other participants in the process don't realise they're becoming aggressors themselves.

Reaching the cabin, which suddenly turns out to be a huge, grand hall on the inside, we see the mirror again. The Broken voice absolutely refuses to look into it. It says that whatever we'd see in there is just the worthless face of some worthless creature. A comment that only draws snide jokes from the rest of the group. When absolutely everyone keeps reminding you how worthless you are, you start believing it's an absolute truth yourself.

Going down the stairs, we hear the Princess's deep, booming voice: "Don't linger on the stairs, come down and witness me." To which the Broken voice suddenly does a complete about-face. It's like it suddenly lights up with enthusiasm: "She wants us to see her! We need to see her as soon as possible!" In a way, getting closer to the Princess, the Broken voice instantly remembered where its only comfort zone actually is - at her feet.

Karpman’s triangle:

There's a model of social relationships called Karpman’s triangle. In it, participants are dynamically sorted into a few roles in real time: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor.

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The Narrator and the Hero supposedly have good intentions - at least they want to save the world - but the Broken voice's helplessness irritates them, and that irritation instantly channels into aggression. Meanwhile, the Broken voice itself acts as the chronic Victim, periodically jumping into the role of Rescuer... toward the Princess herself. It tries to defend and justify her, nursing feelings for her, despite the fact that she's its direct Persecutor and aggressor.

This forms a closed loop of oppression that just doesn't leave anyone a way out of their assigned role. The people near the victim start getting irritated by their passivity, which turns them into new oppressors. And the victim, in turn, keeps acting like a victim precisely because they're used to being surrounded by aggressors.

The Princess patiently waits for us to make our way down - and I don't mean that figuratively. Every step of these giant spiral stairs is as tall as we are, which means we're literally forced to climb down each one. It's a very slow process. The Princess's patience might even seem strange here, given that she's supposedly meant to be playing the role of our personal tyrant right now.

And when she - majestic, bathed in light, towering over everything around her - finally sees us, she actually seems happy. She gives us sharp commands in a divine voice that's impossible to disobey. And when our body, against our will, drops the knife and falls to its knees in front of the Princess, she says:

"That's my good little bird."

That's my good little bird.

And that comes across, surprisingly... not as humiliating. If anything, there's a note of genuine fondness in it.

July 24th is the unofficial international BDSM day. The date falls on the 24th day of the 7th month as a reference to a relationship format popular within the community, simply called "24/7." That doesn't mean the people involved dress up as 24/7 convenience-store cashiers in the bedroom. It's more that the game of voluntarily handing over power in the relationship isn't episodic - it runs around the clock.

And well... I generally hold the position that everyone's entitled to do whatever floats their boat, but I can't say I have a clear-cut opinion on this specific case. Can the psyche, in the context of a format like this, actually track the exact moment when your own voluntary transfer of power stops being voluntary? Or when your boundaries get crossed in some way, if the very terms of the arrangement partly rule out the space needed for that kind of reflection?

Military?:

Another popular format of round-the-clock dominant-submissive relations is the military, where it's simply understood that a private will unquestioningly obey a commanding officer. But, just like in round-the-clock BDSM relationships, in the military, the concept of refusing to carry out a clearly criminal order, even though it's spelled out plainly in regulations, isn't always something you can fully process in the moment - once the order's already been given, and, say, pressure is being put on the private from up the chain of command to carry out that criminal order anyway. So, all in all, probably the hardest but most important thing a top has to provide is leaving the bottom full freedom of choice.

Fortunately, exactly these kinds of small beacons of humanity and consideration - like the fact that the Princess patiently waited while we struggled down the stairs, or her playful praise - are, for now, a sign that whatever's happening between us is at least relatively healthy. A top has to be aware of the bottom's limits. A commander has to value their troops.

For the Broken voice, the Princess is now the only shelter it has. Yes, it sees her as something unimaginably bigger than itself, but unlike the other voices in our head, its existence at least doesn't irritate her. Strangely enough, in submitting to her, the Broken voice actually gains more self-worth than it would have "as an equal" alongside everyone else. Given that, it's entirely predictable that the Broken voice keeps dragging our insides further toward obedience to the Princess, trying to talk the other voices into listening to her too.

The Princess wants to be freed, but she wants it done specifically with our help. When we ask her what role we, such a weak creature, could possibly play in that, she answers that it's exactly us who have to break the chains holding her. Well, an obvious question comes up right away: if she's this powerful, why can't she break the chains herself? And once again, answering this question, the powerful Princess doesn't even get angry. She can. It seems like she just wants us to have a role in shaping this relationship too. To her, we're not worthless - we're a partner, if a fairly... unconventional one. This seems to be an important contradiction here, where we're equal as people but unequal as partners who've chosen these roles for themselves.

And all of that is great in theory. And if things stayed exactly as they are now, maybe it'd stay great going forward too. In fact, if you don't disrupt the established dynamic, this route ends without much further conflict. But the only way to explore the other facets of this system is to deliberately break it. To deliberately tear down a system of absolute submission, the only thing we can do is show radical disobedience, in an attempt to shake up the balance of power between us.

Violation of boundaries:

And sure enough, pretty quickly, if we keep stubbornly resisting, the Princess climbs into our head - literally, to read our thoughts. If that's not an obvious violation of healthy boundaries, I don't know what is. This is the moment that finally separates the dominatrix Princess from the controlling Princess. Controlling types love getting inside other people's heads, as you may know. Or may not know, if you're lucky.

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Once she's in control of our thoughts, the Princess quickly gets rid of whatever she sees as extra in there - the Narrator. In a genuinely brutal scene of him being erased, the brutality is conveyed entirely through an incredible piece of voice acting. It's one of the most uncomfortable screams of pain I've ever had to sit through. Without the Narrator, who had some limited control over the Construct's narrative, nothing stands in her way of doing whatever she wants to us anymore. Her power becomes absolute. Wanting to punish us for not thinking the way she wants us to, she orders us to end our own lives with the dagger. Everything goes dark, and you die.

Chapter 3: I Am a God. How Can You Kill a God?

Apotheosis is, without a doubt, an interesting title for the third chapter. In Ancient Greece and in Imperial Rome - which, let's be honest, basically just stole the Greeks' entire culture - Apotheosis referred to the process of elevating outstanding rulers or heroes into the ranks of the gods. So right from the doorway, it's pretty clear that our devotion to the Princess is about to escalate into even more radical forms.

We find ourselves in the woods, on the pa... but our inner monologue is suddenly interrupted by a new voice! And, oh gods, this one's my favourite.

Reactance:

As we've already touched on indirectly, one defensive reaction to harsh restrictions on freedom can be the impulse to do the exact opposite of everything - just everything, indiscriminately. And that's the Contrarian voice in a nutshell. He's that same guy who, on principle, will always go looking for the third, most complicated and convoluted path, even when there are two obvious and simple ones right there. Understandable trauma response, which, in its pathological form, often spirals into complete absurdity.

Reactance

The Broken voice is also still here, and it's changed for the worse. Instead of wanting to earn the Princess's favour through submission, it now just says, "Whoever has the power is right; she is divine and all-encompassing, and we are nothing." And as a third wheel, the Narrator is still stubbornly whispering in our ear that, by the way, there's a princess sitting in the cabin's basement, and we have to kill her. Or the world will end.

With our head now hosting a group of voices this polarised, even the Hero voice starts having a crisis of will

"Do we actually decide anything?" he asks. "We either do what she says, or do what this Narrator guy wants."

"The world isn't binary,"

The Contrarian replies, "We'll find a third path that nobody's going to like." The position this new voice occupies is called reactance. It's a motivational state that arises when an external condition restricts your Freedom, and the main function of this kind of behaviour is restoring lost or limited freedom. The usual result is a conscious, demonstrative choice of the forbidden or restricted option, and, typically, a strengthening of the person's own convictions. Though with some nuance. Like any of our psyche's defence mechanisms, at its core this is a good and even useful thing, but the bad news kicks in the moment consciously choosing the unavailable option starts to do a person more harm than good.

Cult logic..

The Broken Voice, meanwhile... well, look, I'll say one more controversial thing, since we've come this far together. There are illnesses that, at the current level of medicine, can be considered incurable. And the cases where such illnesses do go away are treated as exceptions, even though they're an important foundation for research. Applying that to mental health - it's fair to call pulling someone out of a totalitarian cult one of the hardest therapeutic challenges in psychology. And that's exactly the kind of rhetoric already coming from the Broken Voice -

"Respect my god, you heretics!"

You can already hear it in its voice - it's going to use every cognitive gymnastics move available to humanity to justify anything the Princess does, treating her as an absolute, all-encompassing source of truth. It's unpleasant that one of the passengers in our head has been this thoroughly swept away, but what can you do - let's just consider this one already lost to us for now.

Either way, we're not going to have long to think about it, since the cabin on the hill, and the hill itself, erupt like a suddenly awakened volcano, and out of it, she rises - exactly as the Broken voice manifested her. One of the closest representations in this game of the classic concept of a cosmic entity - a being that exists on an entirely different level of perception, immeasurably larger than us in every sense of the word. There's an interesting comparison here. Think about it - what's an ant compared to you? To it, you're an unknowable cosmic force that could crush it without even noticing. Everything we knew in this world now orbits around her like it's orbiting a black hole. On today's internet, this kind of thing has become trendy to call "biblically accurate angels." Speaking of angels, factoring in the Broken voice's behaviour too, we're seeing a representation of Western beliefs as well - ones that, in a lot of ways, are even more totalitarian.

Either way, fate, wearing the Narrator's face, has thrown us one more chance - by an incredible coincidence, the dagger, flung aside by the cabin's explosion, ends up wedged blade-first in the bark right next to us. For dramatic effect, let's say it even sliced off a lock of our hair. Blade in hand, we launch ourselves into the Princess's orbit and land on her chest, aiming to carve out her heart.

At least, that's how the Contrarian pictured it in his head before making the jump. In reality, her skin turns out to be tougher than the blade's steel, and the blade just slides off it, leaving only minor scratches. According to the Broken Voice, she really is a god after all. How can you kill a god? (Hey there, Dagoth Ur.)

How can you kill a god?

The Princess picks us up by the collar with two fingers, like a misbehaving kitten, and, lifting us to eye level, says,

"I forgive your sins, but my fate is inevitable."

Sign this petition, or I'll follow you home and kill your dog:

Madeline Heilman ran an experiment in 1976 in which passersby on the street were asked to sign a petition. God only knows what the petition was actually about, and it doesn't really matter, because during the signing process, the test subjects ran into obstacles of varying intensity. And the more intensely people tried to prevent them from signing the petition, the more likely they were to sign it anyway. In other words, the actual content of the petition took a back seat.

You can scale this little scenario all the way up to model human behaviour in broad political processes - political reactance and the mass radicalisation of society are exactly what the reincarnation of fascist far-right parties is so actively exploiting in big politics right now, for example. Because choosing "the third option nobody's going to like" stops being a logical pursuit of freedom and turns into a plain old emotional reaction to the world.

The boomerang effect:

The boomerang effect is a situation where public-service messaging or bans provoke a reaction in people that's the exact opposite of the intended one. As an example, we can dive back into ancient history before 2022, when humanity's worst trial, laughably enough, was considered the coronavirus pandemic. Classic work by John Brehm analyses in detail how people behave during radical crises (e.g., epidemics and environmental disasters). When government institutions or doctors use the language of ultimatums - you have to wear a mask, you have to stay home - society doesn't perceive that as care; it perceives it as a threat to its autonomy.

So your anti-vax neighbours who flat-out refused to wear masks - they're not crazy. They're just very fragile, emotionally vulnerable creatures.

When this divine being, capable of destroying us with a snap of her fingers, says she forgives us for everything that happened before - what's the Contrarian's reaction?

"Ugh, that's so annoying. Does she think she's somehow so much better than us? We have to do something about her, literally anything! I'm not letting this go."

Speaking of boomerangs, by the way - what we can do in this situation is throw the knife straight at her eye. And then the Princess burns the world, you, herself, and everything around you. Well... what conclusion can we draw from this lesson?.. Sure, neither you nor she is a being that can truly be destroyed for good, but the Narrator and all the voices have long since been reduced to ash. Only the two of you are left. Just sitting here together now. It's even... kind of awkward, honestly.

Speaking of boomerangs

Nihilism:

The decision to throw the knife at the Princess's eye was, so to speak, a gesture of bare nihilism, for lack of a better term. Because by that point, none of us present could clearly remember why we even wanted to do this in the first place, or what she'd done to deserve it. Except, maybe, sometimes pure nihilism is the last outpost of a radical declaration of one's own selfhood - one that, by that point, sits beyond any meaning at all. Because what else was there left to do, once there was nothing else left to do?

An alternative option, suggested by the Contrarian earlier, is to turn around and jump into the void. Except there's a pretty serious problem with that. This texture, the one that shows through the stars every time the environment generated inside the construct disappears, is the same texture we see in the scenes where we cross to the other side of the mirror, and in the place called the Long Quiet, where we talk with the vessels - the princesses we've brought to the Shifting Mound.

Long Quiet:

The Long Quiet is a space. But it's also your name, and that's not a coincidence. Because you exist inside yourself, strange as that sounds. Then again:

Humans also seem to exist inside their own heads while also being themselves?

You are both the entity and the space in which that entity exists, at the same time. So jumping into the void to escape the Princess is roughly the same as emigrating to another country to escape your own depression. God forbid. No - you can't outrun yourself.

If you strip away all the gameplay wrapping from the "Tower" route, it becomes an allegory for how our own mind, fleeing from both chaos and order, ends up single-handedly creating its own worst tyrants. Because the paradox here is that blind, fanatical submission and this irrational, destructive protest are two sides of the exact same coin.

Long Quiet - both us and the place we exist in

But let's dig a little deeper into this. Just, like, an inch deeper, literally. The Long Quiet, which is both us and the place we exist in. This whole massive, cosmic conflict between slavery and rebellion never actually happened with anyone external. Princess Apotheosis grew to the size of a planet, tore through space, and dominated our body only because we ourselves manifested her that way - and it's worth remembering that with the princesses, it's always happened exactly like this. That said, even here, I can't push this idea too hard. If I go so far as to claim that a victim of an abusive relationship can't leave it precisely because, instead of fighting the abuser, they're fighting their own mental image of the abuser inside their head - that's not far off from victim-blaming.

So there's no convenient answer to the question of Submission that this route is actually exploring, no matter which angle you look at it from. Struggle, and the constant redistribution of power, is woven into human nature at the most fundamental level of every story we tell. If we want to ease our own part in this, we're going to have to look for answers somewhere else. If you'll allow it, let's go looking for another fourth option, one that works for everyone.

In the system that's been laid out in front of us, there are no external forces. Except for one. Remember we talked about the three levels of the protagonist? The Voices, the character themselves, and the player. The player is the third level of the protagonist, and that's exactly the level where consciousness lives - and with it, the will to actually make a choice. If we weren't here right now, nothing would change. The game's own structure - the code that makes up the fabric of its world - would stay static and unchanging.

And the game knows this. If, while inside the Long Quiet - a space outside material reality - you refuse to go back to the constructs, and instead choose to wait an eternity alongside the Shifting Mound, this entity doesn't argue with you. Fine, she says. You're putting our "I" and "you" away in a little box for safekeeping. What happens to you when you walk away from that box? You go be yourself in some other, outside world, and do other things. I'll wait until you come back. And she closes the game.

The game reminds you that the will is in your hands, and only in your hands lies the chance to explore which emotional piece will actually answer the question of how to break out of the cycle of oppression and the constant redistribution of power. And somewhere inside all of that sits an emotion that can only be described as.... We'll continue next time.

Some of my screenshots will have Ukrainian text on them; sorry about that.

Right now, you're reading a Slay the Princess essay, but that's not the point. Do you automatically trust the information you're reading here? Almost always, if that question comes up, the answer is no, because the fact that the question was raised forces you to evaluate the information more critically. But people are social creatures, and that's exactly why critical thinking isn't a complete answer to this question. Maybe you've known me for a while, and you're used to personally trusting the information I give you. Or maybe you and I belong to the same echo chamber, "the same bubble," so you're ready to skip the fact-checking part with your fingers crossed. Or maybe you've been hurt enough times that life has taught you not to trust anyone. The truth is, no matter which camp you belong to, the question of trust will always be exhausting - no matter how critical we are, someone will still get trust or distrust from us automatically, without any checks. And the mechanisms by which we hand out these automatic reactions are dictated by prior experience and, like any survival mechanism, aim to minimise harm.

It's no surprise that in Slay The Princess, the Witch route and its continuation, Thorn, are probably the most popular ones among fans. Because I haven't met a single person yet who doesn't have some kind of trust-related trauma, though of course that might just be my bubble talking. Either that, or it's because the Witch is the closest thing this game has to a catgirl, and Thorn has the closest thing to gooner content you can find in this game. Yes, I am talking about kiss now. 

• Chapter 1 - "This is the malt Princess that lay in the house that Jack built." - nursery rhyme

There are a few ways to end up on the Witch route, but in every one of them, the Narrator convinces us to kill the princess right after we've started freeing her. Maybe the Narrator talked us into it, or maybe the option not to stab the princess in the back is literally unavailable to us, since the game won't let us repeat the same route twice - either way, from the Princess's perspective, this looks like a dirty betrayal. And after a vicious fight, you both lie there bleeding out, watching the life drain out of each other. How romantic. And it genuinely hurts her, because she'd just trusted us, only to get a knife in the back a second later. 

>"After all this time alone, I thought I'd finally found a friend. But you were just another monster, weren't you?" 

\"After all this time alone, I thought I'd finally found a friend. But you were just another monster, weren't you?\" 

- a line that hurts me to hear every single time. Sorry, Princess, it's all for science. But subjectively, my favourite way to get onto this route is to go down to the basement without the knife, change your mind halfway through and run back up for it, then come back down to find just an arm left on the floor where we went looking for cutlery. Because the arm is actually a trap! The princess runs up the stairs and shuts the door behind her, locking us in the basement instead. How do you like that?

Well, who's the Princess now, HERO? 

In this case, we don't die from the princess's claws, but probably just from boredom.

You know what betrayal trauma at the peak of vulnerability does to the psyche? Nothing good. From a psychological standpoint, it kicks off a whole cascade of internal processes. Trigger warning for everything horrible that exists: Slay The Princess retraumatization edition. The main result of events like this is a collapse of the presumption of trust. This might sound strange, but evolutionarily, people are social creatures, and by default, so to speak, we're supposed to trust one another. Being deceived by someone can teach you not to trust that specific person, but a knife in the back at a moment of vulnerability - that can get filed by the brain as a fundamental error in how it perceives reality. And the presumption of trust that we used to extend to new people in our lives quietly flips into its complete opposite - automatic distrust. At the same time, openness and vulnerability get tagged by the brain as dangerous behaviour, which keeps you constantly on guard. Even gestures of goodwill toward someone whose emotional baseline is distrust will be read as bait, an attempt to lure them into a trap. But we'll get to see the princess's transformations - time to see what's become of us after those last events.

• Chapter Two - "Khajiit has wares, if you have coin." - TES 5: Skyrim

The voice that shows up in our head at the start of the second chapter is special. Especially infuriating. You'll find it at the very bottom of any tier list of The Long Quiet's voices. The Opportunist. And if I had to describe its personality in short, it's the one that, in any situation, agrees with whatever will potentially bring it more benefit. In other words, sides with whoever looks stronger at any given moment. It has nothing you could call a moral compass and will happily go for deception, manipulation, or straight-up sucking up. And get ready for this guy to piss you off - he'll waffle and flip his position literally every five minutes, agreeing with whoever's the last person in the room, so to speak. Is this really who we've become now? Not necessarily. I'm going to go against everything we know about this game's world and say that what voices show up in our heads does not depend only on us.

The Princess and the Hero are two halves of a whole, both trapped, and as such, they're somewhat equal entities. If the princess becomes what we expect to see from her, then that works in the other direction too. More often than not, the voices that appear in our head aren't so much a direct result of our own actions as they are a reflection of how the princess sees us. In relationships, after all, we influence our partner, and our partner influences us. And Slay The Princess is, at the end of the day, a dating sim. And right now, the Princess sees us as a complete asshole.

As usual, we're in the woods, a little traumatised by our own death.

We walk down the path to the cabin. Inside, well, the Narrator now describes it more as a tangle of roots that just happened to take on a shape resembling a cabin. The floor is damp and earthen, and the knife is lying on a pile of mud. I hope the Princess doesn't catch tetanus when we stab her to death. I can only assume she lives in this tangle of roots now because civilised communication didn't work out for her in life, and the only thing left is to go back to primal instincts.

The mirror, by the way, yes. The Narrator is the only one who doesn't see the mirror, and the Opportunist voice is the only voice that agrees with the Narrator on this. The Opportunist is willing to go for a straight-up, textbook example of gaslighting, just to stay on the stronger side. You see a mirror? There is no mirror, and something's wrong with your head. I once ended up at an interview for a scam office without immediately clocking that it was a scam office. And there, they told me that if you want to lie skillfully, you have to believe your own lie. And then I beat their lie detector.

The princess's voice that we hear on the stairs takes second place in the rating for, uh... hotness. 

>"Something nasty finds itself on my stairs. Come on down, don't be scared. I probably won’t bite" 

You could even say she's flirting, even while calling us something nasty. What? You're asking which voice is in first place for hotness, if this one's in second? Heh...  I'm afraid we're not ready for that conversation yet, but it’s the Beast. 

And here she is in all her glory, this game's main catgirl. Well, the main one after the earlier versions of the Beast-princess were scrapped, and she turned into more of a classic medieval chimaera instead. Interestingly, the Witch and Beast routes were originally a single route during development, and only split into two later on. So some of the Beast's concepts literally became concepts for the Witch.

some of the Beast's concepts literally became concepts for the Witch.

But we'll get back to the Beast in a future essay. She huddles into the corner of a damp cave, masterfully using sarcasm and a grimly playful, sharp wit as a defence mechanism. Her tail curls upward every time the princess looks at us. And in cat body language, that means "You piss me off so much." We're back in the dialogue phase, and from here, the road forks in a few directions. Our options are: turn around and leave, attack her, attack her but sneakily, let her leave the basement, hand her the blade, or break our own spine. And if I've ever had any complaints about the writing in this game, it's that in 99% of blind playthroughs, we end up walking away with, well, a broken spine.

Like, what are the most logical steps here? Most likely, we're feeling a bit guilty after our previous interactions, so we didn't bring the blade with us going down to the basement. After exchanging some words and apologising as best we can, we learn that she can't get out of here without our help. And this isn't about the chains - it's about how the cabin itself works. We, apparently, can go in and out, while she still couldn't get out even after locking us in the basement. So, hearing about our intention to help her, she agrees to a forced, thoroughly distrustful kind of cooperation.

When two sides are forced to cooperate under conditions of paranoia and mutual fear, that's exhausting without any exaggeration. Because just imagine a potential source of danger constantly sitting within arm's reach. Your sympathetic nervous system simply won't shut up. And to function next to someone you're afraid of - well, put yourself in that situation for a second. The obvious defensive reaction isn't just staying on alert, but also adopting a predatory mode of behaviour. Opportunism and a readiness to strike first if needed. In other words, everything we don't like about the Opportunist voice. At the same time, by the way, the Opportunist actually likes this princess - he makes comments about it more than once along the way. He probably sees a kindred spirit in her. One of the phenomena of situations like this is that enemies forced to work together, under this stressful closeness, start developing an affection for each other. Like, the whole widespread narrative trope about enemies turning into lovers didn't come from nowhere.

She slips off her shackles - because nobody's cancelled the stereotype about Khajiit being great at picking locks - and heads toward us. She says, "You go first, no way I'm turning my back on you" - and we think, "Hm, fair enough. If I want to prove I can be trusted, I'll do what she's asking." Except this princess's quirk is something like "I'll go down myself, but I'll screw you over on the way as I can." Taking advantage of being behind our back, she sinks her claws into our shoulders and drags us down with her, sending us both tumbling down the stairs.

So having landed at the bottom, we both end up lying next to each other with broken spines, unable to get up, looking into each other's eyes. This route seems to have a recurring motif of dying while looking into each other's eyes. Again, with the eyes. I hope it was worth it, PRINCESS.

I hope it was worth it, PRINCESS.

A spinal fracture is when the integrity of one or more vertebrae is broken. According to WHO global statistics... NO, stop, we are NOT doing this. There has to be some limit to how irrelevant these lyrical digressions get. What were we saying about being ready to strike first? The princess is now a creature that expects betrayal, and so wants to betray first, before she herself gets betrayed. If, in response to expecting betrayal, you're constantly getting your own strike ready, that betrayal turns into a self-perpetuating story, and with that kind of cyclical concentration of betrayal, it's very hard to survive to... a win. In a situation where there's this much bad blood between us, distrust becomes something that feeds itself. The princess sabotages herself.

Let's replay this situation and swap the pieces around. And by that, of course, I mean we now firmly refuse to go up the stairs first, and instead send the princess up there. She has nothing to counter with, since she needs us to get out of here. If we both just stand around here, nothing's going to move forward. She even sniffs our neck. And says we smell like a scumbag, but not like a liar. Wait, you can smell lies now?

I have my doubts, seeing how flushed your cheeks got, PRINCESS.

I have my doubts, seeing how flushed your cheeks got, PRINCESS.

Especially since this sequence happens no matter whether we're planning to stab her in the back or actually go upstairs.

Once she's up top, she turns around to smile at you. Very sweet - looks like we're finally building some trust. But something catches her attention. And she comically flicks her gaze back and forth between the knife and us, in one of the funniest visual moments in this game.

And she comically flicks her gaze back and forth between the knife and us

Basically, this knife just instantly undid all the progress we'd made - she decides we were planning to grab it on the way past and stab her in the back. I can't help but point out how expressive this princess's sprites are, body language and all her facial expressions included. But the good news ends there. She grabs - no... oh, no, not quite. She closes us in the basement. Yeah... Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me with chicken soup with rice. Imagine being a god and getting locked in a basement twice in a row. I'd be ashamed of myself. We can beg a little to have the door opened, but I bet you can guess how well that works. I think all of this has made it pretty clear that the smallest trigger easily sends the princess spiralling down into a healthy state of mind, and she straight up admits it in her own words - we can't trust each other and never will - and, accordingly, neither of us is ever going to get out of here. And she says it like she's not even against that idea anymore.

As you might know, though I hope you don't, betrayal hurts. And against the backdrop of pain you've been through, especially if it's repeated, even giving up on hope can start to look like a valid tactic for regaining control of the situation. That's exactly what's happening with the princess - she's facing an unsolvable conflict: she needs to trust us to get out of the cabin, and at the same time, she simply can't trust us because of experience. Sure, we've only managed to deceive her once, but every plot in this game is an allegory. She's convinced the gap between her and the Hero can no longer be bridged, so she picks the option that at least gives her some level of control - namely, acting out of spite toward the Quiet, and getting her own small win through mutual defeat.

Alright, another alternative course of events is the good old honest option of just attacking her. To which, in classic dirty-fighting fashion, we get a face full of sand, and a vicious fight breaks out between you two, during which we can clearly establish that Quiet's body is indeed covered in feathers.

At least we can clearly establish that Quiet's body is indeed covered in feathers.

>I can't trust you and you can't trust me and those doubts spin and spin and spin into HATE

She says, immediately following it up with

>I know you and you're hideous! Absolutely wretched! Just like me!

If we've already established that cooperating under this kind of distrust can spark a painful but genuine affection, then, as is always the case with love, the endpoint can turn into something like its opposite. Hatred - especially, as we can see here, when self-loathing is part of the picture too.

When the princess sees that neither of you two is winning this fight, the basement's roots - which she can control, since she is a witch after all - start wrapping around and crushing you both. And this keeps going until you die under the pressure... looking into each other's eyes for the third time. Listen, Abby, Tony, dear creators of one of my favourite games. You two are doing alright, right?

If we want to get onto the Thorn route and resolve the trust issues that have come up in our relationship, the only correct option is to hand her the knife. Because in every version of ending up here, on the Witch route, this weapon was the instrument of our betrayal of her - directly or indirectly.

Betrayal is an action, and an action that destroys the legitimacy of communication - which is exactly why, by definition, no words can serve as an apology for betrayal. An apology can only be an action, and in this case, handing over the knife carries several meanings at once. It's not just a voluntary handover of the power gained through betrayal, but also handing the actual instrument of it into the betrayed person's hands. There's a saying that words don't fly away like a sparrow once spoken, and honestly, that's complete nonsense - words are pliable; they can be interpreted in more than one way, and with enough manipulative skill, their meaning can later be completely changed or twisted. Not to mention the physiological side of this whole question and its effect. What physiological side, you ask - well, of course I have a whole answer prepared for that. Betrayal belongs to the category of trauma with a clear trigger - the betrayer - that the brain memorises. It marks these traumatic triggers with autonomic states: visceral spasms, changes in heart rhythm, a cortisol spike. And all these somatic markers activate on encountering the trigger a fraction of a second BEFORE the prefrontal cortex even finishes forming a conscious thought. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux wrote that these sensory threat signals travel directly from the thalamus to the amygdala in 12–15 milliseconds, completely bypassing the cerebral cortex. Now try to purely verbally convince someone in whom that process has just been triggered by you specifically. Processing someone's words is a process that takes longer than transmitting that signal. That's why victims of betrayal judge the sincerity of an apology more by the material or social cost of the betrayer's later actions - as something lasting, something that can at least partially rewrite the traumatic signals. It's also worth keeping in mind that even this kind of rewriting is usually a long process, and requires consistency.

Still here? Alright, alright, let's get back to the game. The voices in our head aren't sure about the decision to hand the blade over to the princess - even the Hero voice, who almost always sympathises with whichever princess we've got, says he's abstaining from this vote. Luckily for us, it's not a democracy in our head.

>"I wouldn't have done that. Why did you?"

The Princess asks, holding the knife, immediately signalling the start of a break in the cycle we've been stuck in. But, as we've already pointed out, rebuilding trust isn't just an action; it's also a process and time. So we're going to die either way now, no matter what we say. But our answer right now still determines something else - which voice is going to show up in our head in the next chapter. And... ugh. Okay, fine, I know you want to see the kiss scene. To get that, we need to trigger the Smitten voice by flirting with the princess. Princess, I see your cheeks flushing again - what are you hiding from me? Either way, suspicion immediately creeps into the princess's mind that this is once again some elaborate game to wrap her around our finger, and we get a knife in the heart. Only once we've already fallen to the floor, and life is slowly draining out of us, do we see the spite on her face turn into worry, tears welling up in her eyes.

>"Why? Why did you let me do this?"

Why? Why did you let me do this?

But you don't have the strength to answer. Or the time. Everything goes dark, and you die.

• Chapter Three - "Don't touch the purple ones - they shoot poisoned barbs" - Jumanji

You're on the path in the woods, and the Hero voice feels betrayed after we got stabbed with the knife, while the Opportunist voice is showing off its "I told you so" side. The new voice that shows up in our head, the Smitten voice - well, this is not the route where it goes through its main arc, so to speak, so there's no point breaking it down in too much detail right now, but its core quirk is, brace yourself, being smitten. But not just any ordinary kind - it's what people in villages in western Ukraine call limerence. This is a state of, let's say, even involuntary, obsessive romantic fixation on the object of one's affection, accompanied by intrusive thoughts, and generally taking up the entire space of one's mind. Almost like a form of psychosis - not in the clinical sense, but nominally, so to speak. In modern psychology, this gets classified as Obsessive Love Disorder. So the Smitten voice runs on pure emotion. And it also has traits of parataxic distortion, which is a strictly psychiatric term, where this voice warps the image of the princess to protect its own feelings. "She hates us, actually," says the Hero voice, to which the Smitten voice replies,

>"Does she? She hesitated before stabbing us to death."

Yeah, I could use that kind of optimism in my own life.

By the way, we're still on the path in the woods. Except now the trees are burned, though clearly some time has passed since the fire, since new grass has already started growing. If you've ever wondered why books bother describing the surroundings instead of just character actions and dialogue, this chapter is a great illustration of why. Fire, time passed, new growth - in good writing, the setting is always a metaphorical mirror of the events unfolding. Even if the Narrator can't see that particular mirror. And the cabin's interior just continues this metaphor. First of all, you can barely even call this thing a "cabin" anymore, since it's burned-out ruins that only vaguely resemble the shape of the structure that used to stand here. The charred wood still smells like ash, but you can also make out the fresh scent of new growth after rain. And yes - those are poppies, which pushes the metaphor a few steps further.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow... Between the crosses, row on row,

The red poppy, as you probably know, is a symbol of remembrance for those who died in World War I, and it's also quite meaningful for me personally, because it was adapted into the Ukrainian context after the war started back in 2014. Field poppy seeds can lie dormant in the soil for decades, and sprout once the soil gets aerated - which is why they started sprouting en masse on battlefields after the ground had been churned up by shelling. If poetry's your thing, I recommend the historically significant poem "In Flanders Fields," written by military doctor John McCrae in 1915. I don't know how true this is, but apparently it's the one that turned poppies into the metaphor they are today.

>In Flanders fields the poppies blow

>Between the crosses, row on row,

This whole cluster of symbols is clearly hinting at the princess's readiness for reconciliation. But as always, we do have our own choice in the matter. We can always choose to stay a jerk and wreck the progress we've made here; that's what I mean. By the way, while we were over here sniffing flowers, we didn't even notice that the knife was missing. Well, the Narrator says that's not how this works, and there's definitely a knife somewhere in this story - we'll have to go look for it.

On the stairs to the basement, now overgrown with thorny vines, we hear the Princess's voice again. Tired, this time.

"I can't get away from you, can't?"

The princess in the basement is wrapped in a tight tangle of thorny vines, and it turns out the knife is still in her hands. Interestingly, that means she got carried over into this construct along with it, and since there can't be two knives in this story, the local knife must have self-destructed. But that's just my random thoughts.

Even her tiara has turned into a thorny vine. It's almost like she wears this crown of thorns upon her liar's chair.

She wears this crown of thorns upon her liar's chair.

By the way, the game's artbook says that originally, this version of the princess was supposed to be even more cat-like than the Witch before her. But Tony was against it, so

Thank Tony for the fact that we never got a full-on, proper catgirl to romance.

If we want to fully resolve the situation we're in, we're going to have to free her from this thorny cocoon, and for that, we need the knife in our hands. All these thorns are partially our fault, if you can put it that way. It's the result of the way we handled the conflict - they represent the pain that grew out of her doubts, and what she's been feeling ever since she stabbed us in the heart. So now, the situation is that she has to take a step and trust us, just for a moment - hand us the blade so we can free her. This is an important moment, since she wants to trust us, even though it's hard for her, and it's up to our actions whether we build real trust between us on the ruins left by distrust, or destroy any hope of that irreversibly.

Regardless of whether we flirted with the princess in the previous chapter or not, her words and behaviour make it clear that she has feelings for us. This illustrates the earlier theory about affection developing in a looped situation of distrust and cooperation under distrust. So, if we talk about our intention to free her, and ask permission to take the blade before doing so - despite her doubts, she'll let us. Take notes, kids, this is called consent.

And now we're standing in front of a princess bound in thorny restraints and completely defenceless, with the blade in our hands. Opinions on what to do next are sharply divided among the voices. The Opportunist voice, being the one that actually runs on dry, rational thinking, tells us to kill her, since a chance this good probably won't come around again, while the Smitten and Hero voices, both being simps, obviously argue for freeing her.

By the way, let me pause here to ask you to like and comment. I do fairly deep research into the topic while putting these essays together (I do it for my YouTube in Ukrainian mainly, but I also translate those scripts into text essays like this), but given my job and other interesting projects, I can't keep up the nonstop stream of cheap content that algorithms love.

There's something interesting in the combination of the Opportunist, Smitten, and Hero voices that shows up in this chapter. There's a type of psychotherapy called DBT, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and I promise we won't go too deep down this particular rabbit hole. DBT frames a person's thinking as three states of mind, made up of two components - the emotional mind and the rational mind - with what's called the wise mind sitting at their intersection. I think the names speak for themselves: the rational side covers thoughts and decisions based on dry analysis and facts. The emotional side covers thinking based on intuition and impulses, and the wise mind is the state where these two extremes sync up into synergy. When emotions start getting along with analysis, so to speak.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy - States of mind

DBT is often used in couples therapy, and the therapist's job often becomes figuring out whether a client is, say, applying rational thinking to a question that actually calls for emotional thinking. For example, someone might say, "My partner says I don't spend enough time with them, but every day when I get home from work I spend an hour with my partner" - when the real question isn't about calculating shared time, but about emotional presence. And then it's the therapist's job to nudge that person into a different state of mind. So don't get me wrong, there's a place for all sides of this framework. And our voices right now are spread out across different parts of this framework. The Opportunist, who's looking for the most advantageous way out of the situation even when it's morally and emotionally awful, sits in the rational state of mind. The Smitten voice, which pushes us toward actions based on its own emotional impulses, and says flat out:

>"I'm here to feel, not to think"

Sits at the emotional pole of the framework, while the Hero voice, bless him, is generally almost always right in the middle, taking both emotions and facts into account. And the Narrator, god, where do we even put the Narrator's mindset at this point... the Narrator is in the trash bin for now.

So there she is in front of us, the Princess. Exhausted and completely defeated by the cycle of traumatisation and retraumatisation that's been going on between us, and we've taken the knife from her hands. Both of the remaining options have the potential to end this cycle. If we look at this as an analogy for relationships - WHICH IT IS - then it's either reaching a full break by inflicting an injury on this person that's probably incurable for life, or showing her that things can, in fact, be different. Or there's a third option - leaving the whole situation hanging in midair:

"I just wanted my blade back. You're on your own. [Turn around and leave.]"

But even though we're obviously experimenting with the various angles of today's topic, we're not that cruel. Let's finish this one off, for now, the jerk way, and drive the knife into her heart. Sorry, Princess, it's for science. We assumed this break would only end in trauma for the Princess, right? Well, no, it's not that simple. A gesture this cruel actually leaves scars on both people involved. Our hands get caught in the thorny vines, and the tip of the blade only manages to sink a little into her chest before stopping completely. A drop of blood runs down her chest as you... stare into each other's eyes - seriously, what is it with this route and its fixation on holding eye contact during such... inappropriate situations. If we've done something this low, then any trust in gestures of kindness aimed at us afterwards gets completely destroyed. On a subconscious level, we'll believe we don't deserve kindness or love. The princess, for her part, snaps back predictably and permanently into her state of expecting betrayal from every direction - even the visual look of her sprite instantly reverts to the form we saw on the Witch in the previous chapter.

Even the visual look of her sprite instantly reverts to the form we saw on the Witch in the previous chapter.

Obviously, the only correct option is... well, there are no correct or incorrect options in this game, but the one option where we won't feel like the worst person in the world is to free the Princess from her thorny prison. The princess handed us the knife of her own free will, after we'd done the same thing in the past. So it'd be a good idea to actually use it to free her from her binds. The princess flinches when the blade touches the vines, as if expecting it was meant for her all along. And she flinches even at the final vine being cut, as if she's still afraid of getting a knife in the heart even now.

She falls into your arms, tears streaming down her face, and the Narrator's patience starts running out over having to take part in this.

>"I can't believe you're making me describe this. I hate you"

Why are you looking at me like that? Something wrong? Expecting something?

Uh, FIIINE!

>You kiss her. And she reciprocates! Enthuuusiastically! There. You kiss. It's done. Are you happy now??

I can't believe you're making me describe this. I hate you!

Some might call the kiss between the Long Quiet and the Princess the most romantic moment, and okay, fair, there's something to that, but on top of that, in my opinion, it's also one of the funniest, considering the dialogue between the narrator and the voices that occurs.

>Ugh, FINE! You and the princess lock eyes and stare deep into each other's souls with all the roaring emotions that come from letting what once was hatred turn into pure, unbridled passion. And then, each of you closes your eyes and kisses. Words can neither describe the nuclear fire nor the oceanic depths of your connection

With all that going on, we kind of forgot that the Long Quiet looks like a bird. Given that, it's fun to imagine what exactly this era-defining kiss looked like.

Either way, all that's left is to climb the stairs back up together with the Princess, and this time the vines blocking the way part on their own in front of us. Together, hand in hand, you walk out under the stars. You ruthless murderers. We're approaching the point where we're going to meet the Shifting Mound outside the construct. So everything starts fading away around the Princess, and she feels the cold. We're standing in front of the mirror, the only real object that existed inside the construct - which is why the Narrator never saw it. We look at our own bird mug, the voices disappear, and we return to where our other half and our eldritch-horror girlfriend actually live.

>"This is a vacant place; nothing comes here except us."

So we can go back to the question of trust that started all of this. Okay, it's probably obvious to anyone by now that the Witch and Thorn routes are an allegory for how betrayal trauma paralyses the ability to trust, and activates self-protection mechanisms in a pretty harmful, toxic form - locking a relationship into an endless loop of self-defence and paranoia.

>"This one yearns for connections she feels she doesn't deserve. Even when shown compassion, she hid herself away. She will make for a cautious heart. Do not mourn her - she isn't alone anymore."

Do not mourn her - she isn't alone anymore.

But even in the ashes of the deepest distrust, healing is possible if you can find the courage not to strike back, but instead prove your intentions of reconciliation through action. Some might even say that trust rebuilt on the ruins of distrust ends up sturdier than trust that was never broken in the first place. There's truth to that, but that does NOT mean I'm encouraging you to go betray the people close to you. Someone's going to blame me for this later. But yeah. Consumption and betrayal. Scepticism and blind devotion. Rivalry and submission. Terror and longing. Pain and unfamiliarity. And at the heart of it all, an emotion that can only be described as...
HOW ABOUT we continue next time :) Thanks for reading if you actually reached this point!

She asks that I tell you to remember her. You won't.

But remember, it's all subjective and generally for fun. In actuality, absolutely everything in this game is S-tier.

I have been playing for like 35 hours since then, and even creating some of my own video essays, but it would be very interesting to look back.