Stp Shifting Mound - Blog Posts

sometimes i wonder if shifty's hands get hurt from some of the princesses' qualities

extra doodley stuff

to me this is what slay the princess is really all about. not about grand concepts of life and death, not about some distant cosmic concepts, it's about a very specific thing about our lives and how we deal with them.

it's about the fear that the things that happened to you shaped you in a way that made you worse and you need to fix and undo them, the fear that if this bad thing didn't happen to you, you would be better, and how, no: there is no judgement to be made on your experiences or how they shaped you. your experience do not worsen or better you, they just change you, and that change is important and good because it makes you more complete and fleshed out as a person.

you can bring such a huge variety of difference princesses to the shifting mound, parts of her who have experienced a huge range of emotions and events, from tragedy and pain to happiness and love and everything in between, princesses with a huge range of personalities and character, and she sees value in every single one of them. no matter how dark, painful, horrible a chapter it is, no matter what awful things have happened to them, no matter what kind of princess it is or how cruel or horrible she is or what she's done, she can find value in them, because they add to her, and complete her.

she can find beauty and meaning and substance in the vicious razor, appreciate her joyfulness, she sees the vengeful and petty witch as righteous because her bitterness from the betrayal she experiences formed in her an idea of right and wrong, she describes the terrifying nightmare as tender because she sees her inner sadness and sensitivity, she describes the vicious and vengeful wraith as 'driven' because she sees her power of will and determination.

she does not make any moral judgements on either the 'good' or 'bad' princesses, she sees their experiences and the traits and understanding of the world they add to her.

the important thing to her is to have experiences and perspectives that flesh her out and add to her, they let her grow and gain substance and understanding. she has nothing bad to say about any of them, and the only 'bad' thing she has to say isnt a bad thing it all, it's not having much to say at all about a damsel who has little experiences and little to offer her, and it's not a sentiment she ever expresses on her own.

and i mean, it says it right here at the start of the game right, 'there are no wrong decisions, there are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings'. and then this line from the ending where you return to th stranger:

this applies to TLQ too. tlq is stillness so he doesnt change as the shifting mound does, but he also has parts of himself and his character as represented by the voices, and all of them serve their purpose. all of them have value. they are not bad or good, they are not better or worse, they just are.

and like, to me where this actively applies to real life isn't this that you should seek out negative or bad experiences, or that you should actively suffer to build character or anything so extreme. it's a way to understand the bad things that already did happen and the pain and trauma you did experience, and a way to understand the pain and trauma that sometimes is inevitable as just a part of any life experience, because the most important and valuable thing to a person is to have any kinds of life experiences, positive or negative. and in the case of the negative, you are shaped and changed by it, but you are not worsened, you just become more. it carve texture around your heart.

I'm going to do it, I'll out all the brilliant, profound notes on my half-assed, tired and pretentious ramble.

But first, a much-needed bit of context. I was vaguely aware of some of these, and I am guilty of focusing more on the voices myself. This is because I can do a bad drawing of an aspect of an amorphous bird man and it looks a lot better than if I mess up drawing a woman. I don't draw humans well.

Everestgale's tags:

Some extra things in other reblogs, I can see them all and others should too, these perspectives have shaped my own:

By the way, I like the Shifting Mound more than any other character in the game. Have done for a while, I hadn't considered misogyny being a problem before this post.

Oh, for sure. That route is why I assign colours to the voices in my art. It's fun to imagine them with unique designs.

I shan't say directly what I think they'd look like properly, though, because I want to imply it.

Absolutely bizarre to me that the Princess doesn't get more love; she's amazing and charming in pretty much every iteration, and I wish I could shut those voices up half the time because they make things worse or take ages.

Do you guys think the reason so much fanart exists for the voices is not because of them being great characters (all the characters in STP are), but instead because we spend more time in our own heads than we ever will with a version of the princess?

I get it. They're inherently relatable because they reflect our previous actions through any route and set the tone of each chapter. They bicker with us and are able to see every option we take.

But, maybe the princesses are underrated. As in, she's always an outsider. How quickly would she be more beloved if the voices would shut up and let us do our stuff, or if they were seperate from us?

How then would we judge the impulsive contrarian, the weak-willed hero or the depressed cold? Would we appreciate paranoid were he more than a life support?

Ask yourself that, and ponder it awhile. Don't say it to anyone. Just an hour of your independent thoughts, clear of little voices.