#moment of clarity stp

[gentle-death-envoy]

Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves.

[ngc7009]

Can I humbly request a Nightmare or a Moment of Clarity?

They're some of my fave princesses and I'd love to see your take on em

absolutely, here you go

[evenworsefreak]

Alternate take on Moment of Clarity

[saffitaffi]

The Moment of Clarity because she’s low key kinda hot

[starry-teacup]

recently been thinking about a post I saw pointing out that the primary theme of the nightmare is neglect. she's been left alone down there and told she's a monster and can do nothing but internalize that.

but anyways it's interesting how the two ways to get the moment of clarity are by either running or staying with her.

In running, you come face to face with the damage you have done, and in rejection or denial of your culpability you turn tail and refuse to reap what you sown. It makes her lash out and you are swallowed by her pain for refusing to acknowledge it or your responsibility in it as you reinforce once again that she is a thing to be escaped from.

In staying, however, you recognize what you have done. You see that you hurt her, and seek to remedy it by remaining down here to keep her company- but in your attempt to heal her, you miscalculate just exactly how great her suffering was, and in thinking that it was a thing that you could fix or even bear, you unknowingly dove into the depths with her. You thought her sadness was a shallow creek, and jumped into an ocean of her loneliness and drowned in it.

Either way, you are mocked for your misunderstanding of what it means to be abandoned and to ache as the princess does, and you are forced to realize the entirety of your transgressions the hard way.

rip hero

[toon-topaz]

Good ol animation practice

[nuttersincorporated]

In The Moment of Clarity all the Voices are there and they are all broken. The Narrator tells you to ignore them.

You can ask the Narrator why you shouldn’t listen to them. Maybe the Voices need to be heard. Maybe you are helping them.

However, if you do ask the Narrator that, it’s the Cold who answers to say you are wrong. He tells you that you always give them (the other Voices) too much space. He thinks it’s why you always lose.

The thing is, you don’t get the choice to stop listening in this route. You don’t get to make any choices. You refused to slay or save the Princess and ended up accidently giving away your ability to make choices.

The Voices talk and talk and talk. You can’t stop them. You can’t do anything other than move forward and let her out.

This fragment of the Shifting Mound has all of your will. All she wants is to be free.

LET HER OUT

In the Razor (the only other route where you end up with all the Voices) by the end everyone is talking all at once. It’s overwhelming and unhelpful so you do what the Cold advises in the Moment of Clarity; you silence them.

Again, YOU don’t get a choice in this… but this time the Long Quiet does.

They have decided that this needs to end. The Princess has become a murder monster and neither of you can grow further while remaining trapped in this cycle. So, they silence Voices and Narrator, and then they deal with her.

In both routes, YOU lose all choice, gain all the Voices and press the only option given to you while the Shifting Mound or Long Quiet do the thing that route has moulded them to do.

[salty-an-disco]

Always fucking breaks me T^T

And he says it so flatly too, like “Why are we even doing this? Why are you making us go through all this hell? Is it even worth it?”

He’s so tired and worn out. If the Tower is us giving up on Hero—our agency—then The Moment of Clarity is us wearing him so thin that there’s simply no more choices to make anymore.

Wait, actually–

This might just literally be Hero blocking our choices. After all–

[pyxehastoomanyinterests]

egats!!!! more stp doodles!!! who could’ve seen this coming/sarc

zoom-ins under the cut

@cantdanceflynn

[aquapede]

a million stitches from a million microscopic wounds you've inflicted on everyone you've ever met with every muscle you've ever moved and every word you've ever spoken.

[bees-buzzy-blog]

Hey, I've been doing some color edits of Slay the Princess!!!!! I'll probably do more so I'll reblog with additions as I do that :)

[gentle-death-envoy]

"She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt."

[ngc7009]

Moment of Clarity for @alchemists-wife you guys really love scary ladies, huh (understandable, they’re gorgeous)

[cookies-super-secret-blog]

Ooh did I share my nightmare hot take with you all? No? Well! Here goes!

The visions of death we see under Nightmare's mask are the things the narrator witnessed that drove him to make this construct and try to kill death. Because the long quiet, for all its dying, doesn't have a complex understanding and subsequent fear of death. The flinchier voices only seem to be concerned about the princess killing them. Not anything else. She is their understanding of death, and its a very narrow one by nessecity of the construct. This could not be our nightmare we're seeing. The narrator, however, does. He has a deep fear of death, its one of the only defining things we actually know about the echo. This is also the only time the narrator stops narrating without being bullied by the voices or overtaken by the princess. It's just too much for him, and his fear of death.

And like, it makes Moment of Clarity a good companion route to Razor's, since they both are the only ones with chapter 4s (pre-pristine cut i haven't played it yet cause its not out). While the Razor narrows TLQ's understanding of death into this tunnel vision of surviving being skewered, the Moment of Clarity is when TLQ has the breadth of what death is and can and will be. And since TLQ understands it as what it is, change, you take her hand where a knife used to sit, and accept that it should, and will, happen.

[saffitaffi]

Nightmare animation

[voice-of-the-tired]

this. this entire sequence from the nightmare -> moment of clarity...

"Like a creeping mold, the complete reality of your existence threads its way through your mind. Birth, death, birth again. Decay and bloom. A million stitches from a million microscopic wounds you've inflicted on everyone you've ever met with every muscle you moved and with ever word you've spoken."

"Your existence hurts them."

"A lonely soul in a room by itself weeping. It lives for eighty years and then it's gone. And then it's there again."

"A reprieve. A good life. Love, children, a steady career. Recognition from your peers. Here one moment, gone the next. The worms have found their orifices." (this line has no right being this good)

"Diagnosis. It forgets everything it is. Anger. Rage. Distance. Poverty. The lonely soul is lonely again. Love turns to mockery, It die. It is reborn. Worse. Lonelier."

"This is all too much. I… can't keep going."

idk what exactly it means, but it feels like the narrator is speaking from the heart about how he feels towards death and all... but this time it's a lot more sympathetic towards the princess for some reason?? why

i just can't figure out what exactly this means, but together with the fact the nightmare/moc "desires only companionship but the only thing she knows is how to hurt" and the narrator's constant dehumanisation of the princess thorough the entire game... it hits hard. seeing it again for the second time made me feel a lot of indescribable things.