SOME BIRDIES IN DRESSES

WAIT omg the Voice of the Smitten as an aromantic who overcompensates. He's not in love with the Princess. He's in love with the idea of loving the Princess, because that's what he's "supposed" to do. He wants so badly to make it work and be in a conventional romantic relationship, and he really does want her to be happy, but he holds the traditional idea that an important part of masculinity is protecting a woman and providing for her and being both her knight in shining armor and her devoted husband. He expresses love weirdly because that's his idea of what love is "supposed" to look like. He doesn't understand romance, but he's fixated on the storybook projection of it, allegory of the cave style, so he leans strongly into that archetype and gets it all wrong. I really think the Smitten just doesn't want to be alone. Poor boy, unlearning heteronormativity and embracing relationship anarchy would've saved you

The Restless(Stanley) and The Curious(Bucket)

Species Swap STP

---

God women

The patterns under his eyes give off a small glow, but not enough to actually light up the area around them. They're barely visible in dark rooms.

sleepover!

after such a beach party you have to rest, so...

yes i decided to make another reblog chain — sleepover party! rules are the same, draw Narry, Stan or anyone you want on the sleepover! :)

Wish we had more of these two :( I love them <3

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!

PLEASE READ!!! I DON'T POST STUFF LIKE THIS AND THIS IS SERIOUS TO ME! ELON MUSK IS TRYING TO DUMP THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF WASTE WATER INTO THE LAGUNA MADRE IN SOUTH TEXAS!!!

The Laguna Madre is a beautiful ecosystem that houses so many species of wild life and many migratory species of shore birds go there to eat and rest. Its all thanks to the sea grass that grows there, and after the big freeze of Texas in 2021, it is slowly making its recovery and now it's in danger again!

(Black Skimmer with chicks shown here)

If Elon continues with this disguising act, nitrogen and hydrogen rich waste will be dumped and plankton and algae will begin to overpopulate and create a cloud of themselves over the sea grass causing it to not get the sunlight it needs to photosynthesize. It will basically be suffocated by the overpopulation of microorganisms and die out and so many species of animals will lose that shelter they need to feed, breed and even escape dangers like predators. This grass also feeds the endangered green sea turtle and was even given the name "Turtle Grass" for its huge importance to these creatures.

(Green Sea Turtle grazing) Not only that, but the South Padre Island is one of the largest ports in America and has many shrimping and fishing companies that rely on the environment to make a minimum wage. And once the water gets polluted, so many people can get sick or worse if they eat the fish and shrimp that have been exposed to it!

(South Texas Shrimping Boats) This is serious! And if you or someone you know lives in Texas there is a way you can make a comment and state how you DON'T WANT LITERAL SLUDGE IN THE OCEAN! IT WILL HURT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AND ANIMALS AND THE VAST AND DIVERSE ECOSYTEM THEY LIVE IN!

You can find the link here:

PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN! WE CAN'T LET MUSK DO THIS!!!

do you ever become obsessed with a character and you just go "of fucking course its that one" at yourself because you are so incredibly predictable

this is a permanent list of palestinians with vetted fundraisers that have reached out to me to boost them, if you've reached out to me and you're not on here please message me again. this list will be linked in my about page and regularly updated.

Rescue Mahmoud's Family: A Call to Escape Gaza's Devastation @mahmoodeltibi - vetted by el-shab-hussein, family of 15. €10,261 raised of €60,000 goal

Standing with a Family Escaping the Horrors of War in Gaza. Help Tamer get his family of 4 out of Gaza @tameraldeeb - Vetted by ibtisams, 90-ghost, el-shab-hussein, as well as being #191 on the vetted fundraisers google doc. €17,887 raised of €40,000 goal

Help Dina and her children survive through the war. Dina is a widowed mother with a 7 year old, a 5 year old and a newborn trying to reach safety. @dina179 - vetted by ibtisams. $4,146 CAD raised of $20,000 goal

Yousef Hussein is trying to get his nieces out of gaza after the death of their mother and father. boosted by 90-ghost. $8,412 raised of $50,000 goal

shahed @shahednhall is trying to get her family (her sisters are sick with hepatitis C) through rafah crossing in the next weeks opening period. she is number 224 on the vetted list of vetted fundraisers by nabulsi and el-shab-hussein. $17,267 raised of $50,000 goal

inspired by boop day, reblog this post if its ok for people to send you random asks and interact on your posts with no judgement. i want to talk to people.