Okay I want to do a quick Slay the Princess rant, specifically about the Damsel. Prepare for yapping.
I often see quite a bit of art making Damsel have a more 'realistic' body shape. This is nothing new obviously, people do it for all sorts of characters, and I'm all for it. Got an issue with a harmful stereotype in games? Change it yourself. Great! However, I think doing this with Damsel specifically is missing the point just a little.
Yes, she is absolutely a stereotypical 'damsel in distress', like early Princess Peach or Zelda; a flat, hollow character who only exists in the narrative to get 'saved' by the hero, and whose only likeable qualities are that she is kind and pretty and A Girl™. She's the friendliest of the Princesses, she has the daintiest physique, she has the biggest eyes and, at the risk of being crass, she has the biggest tits. (Proportionately, at least. Obviously Apotheosis has a bigger chest than her, She is the size of a mountain.) She is a living plot device, a beautiful McGuffin for you to save.
But I think we're forgetting, that is basically half of Slay the Princess' whole deal? The exploration and subversion of narrative tropes, particularly when it comes to fairy tales. The core gameplay loop revolves around how you as a person chose to interact with that kind of narrative. If you choose to treat this like a generic Princess-in-a-Tower fantasy, the game, and in-universe the Princess, will react and change accordingly.
And that is not a justification, that is the intended effect. Deconstructed Damsel practically beats you over the head with this idea. The moment you take a second to question how agreeable and nice she is, she immediately collapses into a two-dimensional parody of herself, without real thought or emotion. Her body is even sketchier than the rest of the game's art style, like she was drawn in two minutes by someone who didn't care enough to make her feel real.
And this is not presented as a good thing. It's treated like the quietly horrifying fate that it is. She loses all personhood; Voice of the Hero outright says that 'it feels like we're alone. Like we're the only ones here,' directly saying that Deconstructed Damsel is no longer a person.
Pristine Cut clarifies this even further with Happily Ever After, showing how she recovers from that loss of autonomy and sense of self. She has to relearn that she not only wants to leave, but is capable of having wants that don't necessarily match the wants of those around her.
The Damsel IS the Deconstructed Damsel. The only difference is whether or not you choose to stop and actually think about her, and therefore realise that there is nothing there to think about. The Damsel is unrealistic. She's a stereotype. She's a caricature of herself. And that is the point. Her character design reflects her character, which is boring, uninteresting and clichéd because it is saying something about that cliché.
I wouldn't be talking about this if it was 'Damsel gains more personhood and changes to be more realistic to show that', because yes, that makes sense, the more real the Princess acts, the more real she is perceived to be, the more real she is. And I do see art like that.
But comparatively, I see more art that 'fixes' Damsel like she's a genuine Sexy Woman Who Is Sexy™ character, and not a commentary on that trope. And just... no?? With all possible respect, did you actually play Damsel's chapters?
It's just weird to me that the Princess that people choose to change to be more 'realistic' is the one whose entire deal is being unrealistic. She is not an unreachable standard of beauty. She is a statement on how unreachable those standards are.
Also, doing this with Slay the Princess?? Yeah, not every body shape is present in the game, but it's not like there's no variation, despite the fact that technically all the women in the game are different copies of the same person. Especially when Happily Ever After (and arguably Thorn and a few others) is literally right there, with an arc centered around how she grows and changes outside of your perception of her, make her the most 'herself', the most 'real' out of all the vessels.
I don't know how to end this. It's just something that annoys me.
