Things I learned from actually interacting with the STP fandom:
Since literally all the characters have traits common in neurodivergent people, headcanons of the sort are pretty much universal in this fandom, and they all make sense!
This fandom is generally more accepting of differing opinions and headcanons than most, though there are of course exceptions (read: a vocal minority of rude people the majority don't approve of at all).
We can literally refer to the same Voices with different pronouns in a conversation and nobody fights, that's actually freaking amazing. I've had a conversation where me and some others were talking about the same Voice and used three different sets of pronouns. No arguing. Brilliant. I love this.
The game apparently has a pretty strong British following. I can't imagine why lmao.
I used to think the fandom was excessively horny but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wholesome convos we've had. Guess the lewd stuff is more limited to fic and streamer reactions than I thought lmao.
There's quite a few members that have a surprising amount of common interests with me outside of STP. Some of them even inspired me to start a new playthrough of Miitopia with the STP cast!
Overall I'm mad at myself for not interacting with them sooner lmao, this is legit the best fandom I've ever been in.
I have a bit of a confession to make regarding my STP voices designs.
While it is still true I can't draw birds, that's not the reason I draw them as anime boys instead. The reason is because I love turning anything into anime characters.
I remember when everyone was doing it in almost every fandom. I loved that. When everyone in the real world made fun of me for my love of anime, the internet was the place I could be myself.
But it's not cool to do that anymore. In fact, I've seen people in fandom tags (including a few in this fandom) mock people that do that. Whenever I see that, I feel like I have to try to justify myself.
I'm sorry for lying to you all like that. I really am a coward, aren't I?
But I don't want to be a coward anymore. Even though it's hard.
So I wrote this apology and confession to get it all off my chest. I hope at least someone understands.
I still feel really out of place in this fandom and I don't know if others are okay with me being so different.
My waifu is Adversary despite the fact that I'm asexual
I'm attached to the Voices yet don't find any of them attractive
I'm not really interested in shipping the Voices with each other because I see them as like family to me (but I don't disapprove of others doing it)
I don't like picking fights with my opinions and try to let everyone know their thoughts are also valid
I draw the Voices as human anime boys (but I love everyone's designs)
I am asexual but I won't deny the existence of some sexual themes (I just choose to personally ignore them in favour of romance)
Some Vessels I feel get treatments from the fandom that don't exactly match up with how I personally feel about them (but I don't want to pick fights like I said)
I dunno, I feel like I stand out too far from the crowd, and I'm scared to interact with others because of all that. I don't want to upset or disappoint them.
I decided that regardless of the poll results, this is something I will be posting.
If it results in a yes, this will serve as an explanation for my weird fixation and why I will continue to post about them for the way I see them.
If it results in a no, this will be my last post about them, and will explain and apologise for my obsession.
Flash back to sometime in 2023, my boyfriend messaged me on Discord and invited me to watch him play a demo of a horror-romance visual novel.
I watched it and saw him pick his decisions, and instantly fell in love with the game.
I looked at the other paths we didn't get online and I decided I had to at least see the full version when it came out.
I even had a waifu picked out (it was, and still is, The Adversary).
Now at the time, I wasn't too focused on the Voices. I liked Contrarian and thought Stubborn was based, but I didn't really dwell on them too much. I was more focused on the different versions of the Princess.
Later that year, the full game came out and me and my boyfriend were hype. We got into a Discord call, and he streamed the game. I was fascinated by all the routes we went through. All the Princesses, all the Voices, and all the moments with the Shifting Mound.
At that point, I was starting to see the appeal of the Voices and even yelled in excitement when Contrarian showed up in The Fury, like "Hey! It's our old friend!" I found myself seeing their points of view more than most people would have their first time playing.
My boyfriend played, and I watched intensely like it was a movie at the cinema. I hadn't figured out what made the Voices so appealing to me yet, until we got to the ending. Literally, the moment the Voice of the Hero showed up, I finally understood.
Him, and the other Voices, felt like a connection deeper than the romance we had with the Princess. They felt like family to me. And that's why I love them.
I looked up the other routes online and eventually bought the game for myself so I could explore it. It's one of the few games I've managed to 100% complete. I started posting about it on Tumblr and now my blog is filled with nothing but my brainrot.
Why, though? That's... complicated. During November of 2023, I had gotten a different game I was hyped for all year, but because the controls focused on moving your body, and I was out of shape, I could only do a little bit of it the day I got it, and then I got sick and couldn't play it for a while.
And then things got really ugly for me.
My Internet had decided to fizzle out to the point that it was cutting out by the minute and when it did decide to connect in a semi-stable way, it was so bad I could only watch videos at a maximum of 480p. Yes, that bad.
Not to mention I was suffering from stress coming from my real life family, preparations for Christmas and money troubles.
I needed something to cling to. Anything to cling to. And as if I could hear them in my own head, the Voices were there when I needed them.
That's when I started posting about them. I was just getting my thoughts out there, and before you knew it, I had become a regular poster in this wonderfully weird community. And it was so much nicer than other communities I'd been part of.
Thinking about them and sharing my thought about them helped me get through a hard time, and if you've seen my posts, you know just how hard this time has been for me even recently.
I hope you can forgive me for being so selfish. Regardless of the poll results, I will still continue to love the Voices.
I think my current comfort characters (the Voices from STP) might actually be working better than any other comfort characters I've ever had.
How much? The Voice of the Paranoid's mantra helped me calm down from a panic attack today. Yes, seriously.
Explanation under the cut. Read at your own risk.
The stress of so many things piling up on me became very overwhelming shortly after I woke up. I began to feel an aching pain in my chest, and the rest of my body going numb. My breathing fluctuated between not working at all and only being able to come in shallow bursts. I felt an overwhelming urge to curl up into a ball, and I felt like I was going to die.
I needed something to help myself breathe. Anything. I tried finding a rhythm to follow, but nothing was working.
That is until four words popped into my head.
Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves.
Following that, I was able to keep my breathing at a consistent rhythm and help myself recover.
So yeah, I think I picked the right characters as a source of comfort. As crazy as it sounds.
I've been feeling a bit insecure about my Hunted headcanons because I feel like they're not "feral" enough for the fandom. He is still the most feral of the Voices, of course, but I feel like it's just not as extreme as others have made him out to be and that makes me worry it isn't good enough. But if I go more extreme, it'd be forcing it.
