#proctols

[shinakazami1]

TSP ramble cus it's been a while and I saw mutuals (coughs @squuote) do this today so

Curator. She just watches them but is in the game, as much of a prisoner as they are. And she decides to act like she's above them just because she spends all that time archiving, making little mockups of the game.

But that wasn't always the case.

In the original 2011 mod, she doesn't even have that. All she has is the ability to stop the machine, have some Valve (hehe) and watch Stanley fall from the window of the building. Even then, she acted highly!

So, I thought to myself - where does this pride come from? Did she make the museum herself to honour the prison she's in? Or is it sth else?

The more I thought about it, the funnier theories became.

In Warzone room, there is a 'we' used. This doesn't feel like something she would write. But it reminds me that narratively, 'we' was used before in another quite important instance of the game.

In the Demo, Narrator says that he made the game with proctors and refined them. We don't see any real mentions of them beside that dialogue but Curators presence does point to a fact Narrator points out multiple times in the game that someone else controls it.

He made the game though, right? He should know it - after all, he says that it's his story, his work!

This kinda goes back to Curator. Narrator disappears in all versions of her endings when we know he can talk during black screens. He seems like a man who would want to stay and give his last words and comments about Stanley's demise. He's done it before i.e. The Games Ending.

Ok but how all this wraps up to Curator?

While she doesn't seem present in the Demo, she seems to. Be concious of what Stanley and Narrator do in the game and since she's left in a part that seems to be all about the real escape, I do feel this is a parallel to the Escape Pod Ending. Because here, we have a Player - since she talks to us directly - and a Female Narrator, as the poster in the Pod wants.

It seems as if she was in a similar position to the Narrator - she is stuck, wants to move on like him at the end of UD and to be done with it all.

But in the Bucket Version, they change sides. He never before had mentioned that want while she only made it about you.

It seems as if they used to be Proctols and lost the ability to really change the game in the way they want to.

And both silently grief that lack of real power over a story and project they might have loved, through Stanley's pain.

That's why 2011 version is different. That's why Stanley himself kills himself in it.

Because it's the last time they really had power over the whole thing.

[shinakazami1]

Proctols (AKA game devs) and Narrator in my AUs :

- Fernator: since he's the closest to the original, he calls them just like in the demo - proctols. They only worked with him actively only in the Demo, later leaving him to work on TSP and TSPUD on his own. He at least thinks so. Fernie doesn't realise he was made by them and has no contact.

- Jester: they're called the higher ups. He knows he was made by them, already for the 2011 mod yet he doesn't remember everything (memory alternation is a theme in that Parable). To contact them, he has to ride the elevator and do a specific sequence. They give him ability to change nearly everything about the Parable, with the only requirement that it's supposed to look close to the original.

- Rain: he calls them the commissioners. He was made for TSPUD version and he's the only one who plays the role of the Narrator but doesn't exactly feel like him. He contacts them through a red telephone and while he can make alternations but only once Stanley went through the original version of specific ending.