I think I cracked it! I think I figured out my STP fan princess line! A thing literally no one else cares about except me! I cracked it!
Ok, so, context: Slay the Princess is written in a way that is both very encouraging of fan OCs, and at the same time makes making good fan OCs pretty difficult. It's encouraging because, like, there are hundreds if not thousands (if not millions, billions, even perhaps infinite) of different vessels making up the Shifting Mound, and the game shows you, like, 24 or so (more if you count all the vessels that have a handful of different forms). So it is heavily implied there are many more vessels we never meet in the game as is - and thus potentially countless princesses out there.
But! Part of what makes the canon vessels so interesting is how well they're written. They all feel distinctly like (a version of) The Princess, but with different parts of her personality taking the forefront as she changes in reaction to how you the Player view her. Each vessel is its own character and also a facet of the Princess herself, and, most importantly, each vessel is part of a reflective pair. The Damsel and the Prisoner, the Adversary and the Tower, the Nightmare and the Spectre, the Witch and the Beast, and the Razor and the Stranger. These pairs have to be different enough from each other to feel distinct, yet share a common element, because each of these ten chapter 2 princesses can turn into one of two chapter 3 princeses, one of which is shared with their corresponding pair.
Or, in short - to make one fan princess and really get her right, you actually have to make five: her, one evolution of her, her corresponding half of a thematic pair, said half's evolution, AND a shared evolution that shows how these two different princesses share a thematic connection. Two chapter 2 princesses, their two solo evolutions, and their DNA digivolution. AND they have to feel distinct from the princesses we already have, AND they have to have some sort of horror element (all the princesses have one - it's a horror/romance, after all!), AND they still have to feel recognizable as a version of The Princess. It's a very difficult needle to thread!
But I think I might have figured out how to thread it, at least well enough for fanart purposes!
Our themed pair is Sacrifice and Desire, aka the vampire and fairy princess lines.
We start with The Revenant, which is an old-timey term for vampires that's specifically supposed to conjur up a less glamorous, more corpse-like image. You may have seen my first attempt at this before, I dunno, she hasn't changed too much since then. You get her route by killing the princess, finding out your reward is shit, and, rather than killing yourself to escape, try to resurrect the princess by giving her your blood in a blind panic - I mean, her death made the universe disappear, surely it's not COMPLETELY far fetched that you could bring her back with a hackneyed dark ritual, right? She actually DOES start to revive (creature of perception and all), but not before you bleed out.
Chapter 2 rolls around, and you find the Revenant in the basement as a withered (yet awake and aware) corpse with a large hole where her heart should be. You cannot slay her without bringing her back first (she needs a heart to stab), and so the Narrator reluctantly lets you do so. Sure enough, she rises and regains some of her youth, while also gaining some of your features - her long, Nosferatu-esque talons have scattered scales much like your own bird-talon hands (and begin to grow darker in color the more she drinks your blood), her arm band things have ruffs that look like your feathers, her hair is jet black, her eyes are glowing circles of light much like your own, and her dress is a dark grey like the Nightmare's. This doubles as both a fun thematic thing (she takes on your characteristics as she takes on your blood) and makes her feel like those old Roman vampires that could turn into owls and harpy-like monsters - a STP vampire princess should throw us some curveballs the way their catgirl Witch did, I feel.
The Revenant is quiet and, to some degree, timid, mimicking your movements and only saying words that you've spoken to her first. She follows you attentively, and flinches back when you express displeasure - she's dependent on you in a way that even the Damsel might blush at, and much more openly terrified of you turning on her. She's also very sickly, losing strength quite often if you don't let her have a bit more of your blood. She's given up a great deal of her confidence in order to rely on your whims...
...but she's not a complete patsy. When she drinks, she doesn't stop until you tell her to, and will gladly drink you dry if given the chance (giving you Chapter 3: the Parasite), though she will stop when you tell her not to. If, however, you refuse to ever feed her again after that first revival, she begins to grow visibly irritated, before eventually setting on you in a fury and draining you by force (giving you Chapter 3: The Leech). You have to navigate a delicate balance where you both give up a little to help each other without letting one or the other take too much for you two to both escape the cabin together.
The Leech has flipped the script entirely, no longer waiting for you to sacrifice on her behalf and instead actively trying to drag you down so she can drain you dry. I think her cabin would be a swamp with blood for water - and yet she still prefers to drink yours straight from the tap, greedy thing. You can willingly give her your blood, and perhaps in a moment of remorse she'll stop before you're fatally wounded and try to help you out, only for her own bloated body to sink while you float up and out into the Long Quiet. You can try to fight her, maybe winning, maybe getting dragged down. Or you can lure her to the water's edge and drag her, wriggling with protest, out of the cabin and into the outside world, finally doing what you wish you did before you got into this whole mess.
We'll cover The Parasite eventually, but let's look at the corresponding half of this pair first. You get The Fairy route by deciding to leverage the princess's imprisonment for some favors - she's a monarch, so she must have jewels, right? And land? A title, ooo, you'd like a title very much, can you be hero of the land, is that a title they're allowed to give out? Eventually your demands get so obnoxious that the princess, furious that you'd exploit her like this, strangles you with her own shackle, telling you as the light leaves your eyes that "The only thing you should have wanted was to let me out!"
The Fairy is a little pixie, with a short bob of hair, antenna that form part of her tiara (with a little jeweled string connective them to a shiny star-shaped gem in the center), wasp wings, and thin, clawed insect feet. She claims to have the ability to grant wishes, but can only do them for others, and so begs for you to wish you and her free of this whole situation.
You can, of course, fuck around a bit and wish for some needless personal shit for yourself (disgusting both the Narrator and the Princess with your shallow materialism), but do it too much and the princess may decide escaping with you isn't an acceptable deal for her anymore and instead twist your wishes to punish you, until eventually you end up wishing for your own death and going to Chapter 3: The Parasite. If you wish her and yourself free, you'll end up outside the cabin, and promptly get drawn back into the Long Quiet.
If, however, you decide to get more answers about this whole situation before you go, you can push to do so, only for the Fairy to find her powers aren't strong enough to reveal such a thing. Both of you are alarmed by that, and decide to try something sneaky by wishing that she was strong enough to do so, leading to Chapter 3: The Wish.
The Wish is more of a Fair Folk style fairy princess, with four arms (evoking the Shifting Mound, as many Chapter 3 princesses do), antlers, and a taller, more imposing physique. Inside her enchanted fairyland cabin, she and you do everything you can to believe your way into seeing through the construct, tapping into those nascent godly powers that you've been cut off from. It doesn't work, but, much like the Apotheosis and the Networked Wild, you get admirably close before you're sucked back into the Long Quiet!
The Parasite, being the shared Chapter 3 of both the Revenant and the fairy, finds a middle ground between "corpsey vampire" and "waspy fairy," namely a mosquito-ish vampire. Furious at her capitivity and your domineering actions that led to this chapter, she decides to give you a taste of your own medicine by not only drinking your blood, but forcing you to destroy the cabin under threat of pain. Tear apart her shackle, break the doors, smash the whole place until she's free! You can either find some catharsis in destroying your shared prison, try to rebel and take control of the situation, or refuse to engage and force her to drain you only to grab her proboscis and, like you would with a mosquito, force her to drink until she bursts. Either way, you both end up in the Long Quiet, though perhaps not in a great state.
Since each chapter 2 princess has a voice for the Long Quiet that goes with it, I should mention the ones that would go for the two here. The Revenant would net you The Voice of the Penitent, who vacillates between bemoaning how sinful you are for having killed the princess, and demanding that you make it up to her no matter what it takes - kinda like if the Broken and the Smitten were blended together with a heaping dose of Catholic guilt. The Fairy would give you The Voice of the Greedy, who's obsessed with improving your material state in this world at any cost - akin to the Opportunist, except focused less on survival and more on opulence. I haven't figured out what voice mixes you'd get for the Chapter 3s yet, but that'd be fun to figure out later down the line.
I think design-wise the girls have a long way to go still - getting the visual style right is VERY HARD, and they all look too much like characters I'd make instead of STP style characters (I mean, understandably so) at the moment. But I think I cracked it. I think this is workable.
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