Stp Long Quiet - Blog Posts

I present to you: The short quiet

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!

Suffer the cramps together

Atleast they have hot chocolate and a warm blanket.

And modern family

Love love love the way the voices are all their own distinct personalities but there's those little ways they bleed into each other that show they all come from the same person. Or god in this case.

Each voice is its own unique captured experience shaped by the circumstances that created them as much as the vessels are, they just manifest differently because The Long Quiet is not built to change and to grow, so instead of adapting himself he takes the old parts of him and tucks them away in his subconscious, listens to them and the new insights on the world they give his otherwise stationary perspective. He learns, but he is not bound by who he was before.

The voices all capture distinct reactions to the situations, but theres moments where you can see them bleed together, moments where the person they belong to shines through because they're not quite so different as they initially appear. Cold and Stubborn with their disregard for the body as an entity that needs to function the way a normal body should, Skeptic and Opportunist both analysing a situation to find the perfect time to strike back, Broken and Smitten both desperate for The Princess to see them and to make them whole even when she hurts them, Paranoid and Cheated in their suspicion and their manipulation of the construct, the list goes on.

Somewhere in the middle, all these unique perspectives bleed together in a way that makes it believable they came from the same source and I just think that's neat. I can believe Cold and Smitten are both faces of the same god because, well. Human nature is complicated, and both Cold and Smitten have that same single minded contempt for The Narrator that binds them together even when their existence seems to contradict each other.

A mind is a fascinating, spiralling thing, and nobody is able to be described in just a few sentences. The Long Quiet is opportunistic and loving, enduring in the face of hardship and broken by circumstance, the god created to kill death and just the unlucky guy who happens to be stuck on a path in the woods.

And at the center of it all, they're The Hero. The voice to which all other voices lend a piece, however small, one of the only voices who will never directly oppose The Long Quiet's decisions because within him is the capacity to make all those choices and more.

There's something beautiful about the way The Long Quiets mind unfurles throughout the routes, how it helps you understand what's going on both more and less

You are in the basement of a cabin...

Like, jeez he's scary. But hey, "looks only ever mattered so much."

It could also be that he's basically her second ever memory. Also, they're soulmates. Also, she's a badass. It's sweet that she's only ever frightened by his actions.

Also,

Owwwwwwwwww

organ failure be damned my birdie can twirl ^-^

( commissions info ! )

I haven't posted on here in a long while so here's a Slay the Princess art dump!! Mostly of The Long Quiet

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ Gore and blood

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I ain't hear no bell Princess!!!!

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

extra doodley stuff

they will be dealt with

He's the hero and the princess and the princess and the dragon

So I finally saw the first released episode of miraculous season 6 and as soon as I saw how the akumatization worked I thought

What if LQ got akumatized while still having the voices?

Cold probably wouldn't care, Broken probably wouldn't try to do anything to stop it, and everyone else would probably be trying to get Lila/Cerise/WhateverHerNameIs to leave