Reading Slay the Princess: the Child, the Fascist and the Woman

Prologue

INT. THEATER - EVENING

A spotlight shines on the stage, curtains down. DIRECTOR enters stage right, dressed in black tie. A polite applause emerges from the audience.

DIRECTOR
Welcome dear members of the audience. The performance you are about to watch is something truly special, if I do say so myself. It is unlike any other piece that has graced the stage of our fine platform, and because of that I thought it appropriate to give you some context before we get started. Rather than the technical or philosophical forum that you have become accustomed to; tonight's performance is an artistic work of narrative analysis.

Audience murmurs

DIRECTOR (CONT'D)
Now, now, don't you worry. Plenty of the high quality content you are used to from us will always be present. Tonight is just a little experiment if you will. I have always found the arts to be just as important to keep the mind nimble as the sciences, as I'm sure you'll agree. Slay the Princess is a psychological horror visual novel with many thematic layers to it. It has a lot to say about the nature of trust and relationships, which is why most narrative explorations of it, have focused on those aspects. Tonight, however, we hope to give you three novel perspectives on the game.

DIRECTOR (CONT'D)
(Nervously looks around the audience)
It is vital to know that tonight's analysis will rest very firmly on the so called 'death of the author'. As I'm sure you're well aware, this simply means that we disregard any intentions the original authors may have had—or, more critically in our case, not had. Most notably, when we discuss the nature of fascist rhetoric, it is important to remember, that none of this is aimed at the original authors, as my lawyer has made me promise to remind you.

He wrings his hands nervously, though the larger-than-life smile never leaves his face.

DIRECTOR (CONT'D)
Just like the game, our exploration is of a certain cyclical nature. It aims to explore situations in a myriad of ways to 'gain many perspectives'. For the purposes we will pull material from all over the game. As such one could reasonably argue that there are many 'spoilers' in tonight's performance. However, I feel they are all placed in a sufficiently different context that they actually reveal very little about what can happen in the game—or how it can happen. Of course, it is up to you, to decide whether you are comfortable with that.

He claps his hands, visibly pleased to be done with this part

DIRECTOR (CONT'D)
With all that out of the way, we can finally start tonight's performance. Thank you for joining us, and I really hope you enjoy, this rendition of Reading Slay the Princess: the Child, the Fascist, and the Woman.

FADE OUT

Act 1: The Child

Slay the Princess is a 2023 horror adventure game developed and published by Black Tabby Games. It is a visual novel that plays heavily with themes of archetypes, and meta-narratives. One of the most prominent characters in the game is The Narrator, who not only narrates the actions you take and the world around you, but with whom you argue, and who gives and reminds you the titular task of the game: that you are here, to slay a princess. The game has a beautiful monochrome hand-drawn art style that is incredibly versatile, and lends itself excellently to all the different styles you might encounter, and the excellent music and voice acting really bring the game to life.

However, at its heart, Slay the Princess is a story about being a child in a world of adults. Though it is very much a game about adults, and is not in any way suited for children, Slay the Princess is a game where you are treated as if you were a child. The stakes and consequences are kept deliberately vague, and you soon get the idea that everyone involved is very uninterested in your understanding and agency within this story. Instead, they seem much more concerned with how to manipulate you to fit their goals. This begins early on with The Narrator. If you question him about why you're to slay the princess, he quickly becomes evasive. Look how his responses are phrased:

NARRATOR
Don't linger on the specifics. You have a job to do here. Just get in there and do what needs to be done. We're all counting on you.

There is no explanation given, no reasoning, he just appeals to authority and character.

NARRATOR
If you don't slay the princess, the world will end. This is an immutable truth, you'll just have to trust me on this.

In the parlance of rhetorics, the Narrator is operating purely on Ethos at this point in the story. He is trying to position himself as a knowledgeable and trustworthy individual. Critically, however, he does so without providing any justification for that trust. He operates on a sort of ivory-tower model, portraying very much to us that there are good reasons for making us do this, but that they would be too complicated to explain. Only he knows what is best for us. He is not interested in what we want, despite being self-convinced he knows what we should want. In other words: a parental figure.

Phrases like these evoke the curious feelings of being a child asking questions about why the world is the way that it is, and the corresponding feelings of being met with annoyance and dismissal. It reminds me very much of conversations that myself and many others have had as children:

CHILD
Why do we have to go to school?

PARENT
To learn how the world works.

CHILD
But I am not learning anything there!

PARENT
You still have to go.

CHILD
But why then?

PARENT
You'll understand when you are older.

When these sorts of conversations inevitably fail to persuade us, we move into the Pathos mode of arguing, or appeals to emotion. Suddenly the world isn't just incomprehensible, but it is dangerous. Best not talk to anyone, best not stray from your path or terrible things will befall you. If we forgo the instructions of the narrator to bring a blade with us to exert violence on the princess, who is indeed, chained up in the basement of some forlorn cabin, we are chastised by him.

NARRATOR
You're only making this more difficult. You're making a huge mistake

He tries to impress upon us, in no uncertain terms, the danger we are in.

NARRATOR
Don't let the princess fool you, it is all part of the manipulation. You're playing a dangerous game by coming here unarmed.

If we progress further without doing as he says, his scolding becomes even more intense over time.

NARRATOR
This would have been so much easier if you'd have just taken the blade like you were supposed to

VOICE OF THE HERO
Easier for whom?

NARRATOR
Easier for everyone. Look at the mess you're in.

Going further forward, the scolding turns into vague threats of the future.

NARRATOR
You won't like what happens if you do that...

Ultimately no matter how much appeals to authority or emotion the narrator makes, not once does he use any logical explanation to try to convince us. In other words, the one thing he refuses to do is to provide context and detail, and then trust us to make the right decision ourselves. In simpler terms, he refuses to respect our agency.

Become disobedient enough, and he even takes matters into his own hands:

NARRATOR
No. We won't have any of that. The stakes are too high. You can't just let her escape into the world. No. I can't just let her escape into the world.

NARRATOR (CONT'D)
As the princess approaches the bottom stair, your body steps forward and raises the blade

VOICE OF THE HERO
Wait... this isn't fair. You can't just do that!

NARRATOR
Watch me.

This eventually turns into:

NARRATOR
Stop it! Stop trying to resist me! I'm trying to get you out of here alive!

The princess is not much better in this regard, though, perhaps less so of her own volition. If we choose to engage her in conversation, something expressly discouraged by the narrator, she is often similarly evasive on her intentions, refusing to tell us more about herself:

PRINCESS
You can address me as 'your royal highness'. Or you can just call me 'princess' if 'your royal highness' is too formal.

Pause

PRINCESS (CONT'D)
I'm sorry, I've been down here so long I guess I've just forgotten. I must have a name though! Everyone has a name.

She even argues with us in a similar ethos-based mode as the narrator:

PRINCESS
What I'd do if I got out of here doesn't really matter right? At the end of the day, whatever the two of us have going on down here is about trust. Whoever sent you to slay me claimed I was a threat to the world, but they didn't tell you why. I don't trust that, and I don't think you do either, or you wouldn't have come down here to talk. So this shouldn't be about what I'd do if I got out of here, or me saying the right thing to convince you to save me.

Pause

PRINCESS (CONT'D)
So I could tell you that I'd lead a quiet life in the woods, or that I'd open an orphanage, or that I'd do any other number of 'good' things that I'm sure I think you want to hear. But you don't really know me, do you? What can my word possibly be worth in a situation like this? Like I said, it's all about trust, blind trust.

However, regardless of whether we invest more in the Narrator or in the Princess, our choices are always framed by either of their individual wants. At times, it feels like the Princess and the Narrator are almost having an indirect conversation with each other, mediated through the player. This is a deeply uncomfortable situation to be in. You know that you will ultimately have to make a decision on what to do, and yet both sides of the conflict are very open about the fact that they are withholding information from you. A situation very familiar to any child that remembers being caught between two authority figures with conflicting information, such as that between a teacher and a parent perhaps?

This evokes many unpleasant memories of being caught in the crossfire of two adults, debating the path forward for you to follow, and the feeling that you will inevitably have to disappoint one of them, no matter what you do. All this leads to feeling like you don't really have a good way to resolve the tension between the two. It is a masterful dance that the game executes very well, and, as is all too often the situation, both as a child and as an adult there are no perfect ways out of a bad situation. You were put here in this place by external forces, and you must find a way out. Despite your best efforts there are very few things you can do that will not end this tale of you with the words

NARRATOR
Everything goes dark, and you die.

Act 2: The Fascist

Slay the Princess is a 2023 horror adventure game developed and published by Black Tabby Games. It is a visual novel that plays heavily with themes of archetypes, and meta-narratives. One of the most prominent characters in the game is The Narrator, who not only narrates the actions you take and the world around you, but with whom you argue, and who gives and reminds you the titular task of the game: that you are here, to slay a princess. The game has a beautiful monochrome hand-drawn art style that is incredibly versatile, and lends itself excellently to all the different styles you might encounter, and the excellent music and voice acting really bring the game to life.

At its heart, however, Slay the Princess is a story about violent fascist whispering in your ear who will stop at nothing to get you to impose his will on the world through violence.

The Narrator of the game is very insistent and consistent on his view of the world: if you don't slay the princess, the world will end. How or why, is left conveniently vague. It is repeatedly, and unconvincingly conveyed to us:

NARRATOR
If you don't slay the princess, the world will end. This is an immutable truth, you'll just have to trust me on this.

What exactly does the narrator mean with this "end of the world"? Well, somehow he manages to answer that, too, in the least helpful way possible:

NARRATOR
I'm talking about the end of everything as we know it. No more birds, no more trees, and perhaps most problematically of all, no more people. You have to put an end to her.

Before we even meet the Princess the narrator is sure to impress upon us the danger of listening to her at all:

NARRATOR
But a word of warning- if you go in prepared to hear her out, she could easily trap you in her web of lies. And the more you listen to her honeyed words, the harder it'll be to pull yourself out.

We are told that having any kind of dialogue with "the enemy", which, let's reiterate, at this point, we have never seen or met, much less have had any reason to believe would mean us harm. This is putting us directly onto the path towards destruction. This all reeks of propaganda and dogma designed to scare us into hateful actions before we can discover that the other side is a lot more human, and thus, perhaps deserving of empathy. It is explicitly told to us that it is better if we don't know too much:

NARRATOR
I've told you everything you need to know. Going into more detail would just overcomplicate things and make an otherwise simple job more difficult. The less you know about her, the better.

This very much evokes the dehumanization of oppressed groups by fascist regimes. In his forward to psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl's book "Yes to life", Psychologist Daniel Goleman describes this very dynamic:

[Ervin] Staub [another survivor of the Nazis] studied cruelty and hatred, and he found one of the roots of such evil to be the turning away, choosing not to see or know, of bystanders. That not-knowing was read by perpetrators as a tacit approval. But if instead witnesses spoke up in protest of evil, Staub saw, it made such acts more difficult for the evildoers.

For Frankl, the "not-knowing" he encountered in postwar Vienna was regarding the Nazi death camps scattered throughout that short-lived empire, and the obliviousness of Viennese citizens to the fate of their own neighbors who were imprisoned and died in those camps. The underlying motive for not-knowing, he points out, is to escape any sense of responsibility or guilt for those crimes. People in general, he saw, had been encouraged by their authoritarian rulers not to know—a fact of life today as well.

Similarly, we are always told that knowing more will only be a liability:

NARRATOR
A warning before you go any further...

NARRATOR (CONT'D)
She will lie, she will cheat, and she will do everything in her power to stop you from slaying her. Don't believe a word she says.

As if trying to avoid being slain is somehow a dark and sinister conspiracy instead of simple self-preservation.

How exactly she will come to end the world is again left similarly vague:

NARRATOR
She just can. Believe me, I wish I could tell you more, but you'll just have to trust that what I'm saying is true and that, despite it all, you're fully up to the task that's been given to you

Similarly, even listening to our own perceptions or trusting our own intuitions is framed as dangerous:

NARRATOR (CONT'D)
But slaying the princess and saving the world is going to be much more difficult than it has to be if you're going to spend all this time second guessing yourself.

Of course, all the justifications are incredibly vapid if not outright absent. The narrator even goes as far as telling us to not consider morals in the same breath as he is making a moral assertion himself:

NARRATOR
Oh don't you start grandstanding about morals. The fate of the world is at risk right now, and the life of a mere Princess shouldn't stop you from saving us all.

The narrator is essentially giving us a version of the Trolley Problem. Though he isn't saying it out loud, his implication is that it would be better for us to Slay the Princess than let all other life die (if we accept his premise), which is a moral assertion.

This derealization and encouragement of believing dogma over one's own deductive reasoning is a popular rhetoric tool in the induction of cults. A fact that makes this hit home even harder.

Any attempt at empathy or humanization of "the enemy" is met with scorn.

VOICE OF THE HERO
Look how reasonable she's being, let's just drop the blade and talk this out.

NARRATOR
Don't you dare.

And similarly:

NARRATOR
I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish here, but I can assure you there's no reasoning with yer.

He even frames the Princess as being as manipulative as himself:

PRINCESS
Did they tell you how I'm supposed to end the world?

NARRATOR
She knows what she'd do. She's just searching for whatever answers she thinks you want to hear.

Eventually, the narrator starts telling us we are "the chosen one", the only that can save the world from certain doom:

NARRATOR
Look, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but it's because you're special. You're the only person capable of doing this. Call it a prophecy of sorts if that helps, but it is just the way things are.

This is very reminiscent of the siren call that fascism has been transmitting since its inception. Portraying one's own people as "the chosen people" by whatever power a regime wants to appeal to is a well-trodden path for authoritarians. From the Nazi ideal of the Aryan to the contemporary idea of "the great replacement", we can see that this narrative is alive and well on the very day that I write this.

The story has been and always will be the same according to the narrator: the world is about to end, and this conveniently underrepresented group of people is going to cause it if they are not stopped at all cost, preferably with violence. No matter how downtrodden and oppressed they are, such as being chained to the wall of an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods, they are still dangerous to the world as we know it.

Not just that, but it isn't merely their actions that are deemed dangerous, but their very existence that poses a threat to all that we hold dear.

This is even mentioned explicitly by the narrator If we later argue with him that she doesn't seem particularly motivated to end the world, or even sure how to do it.

NARRATOR
She doesn't have to know how to destroy the world to be capable of doing it.

What exactly makes these people so dangerous is left deliberately vague, because it is "plain for all to see." (again, according to him). It is clear that the narrator will accept nothing but violence being exerted on the princess. As he envisions it, only her total annihilation is acceptable to the world order.

Regardless of how much we try to empathize with the princess, the narrator is always there, whispering in our ear about the possible dangers. Which, often expressly through the consequences of the narrators meddling, always end with the words:

NARRATOR
Everything goes dark, and you die.

Act 3: The Woman

Slay the Princess is a 2023 horror adventure game developed and published by Black Tabby Games. It is a visual novel that plays heavily with themes of archetypes, and meta-narratives. One of the most prominent characters in the game is The Narrator, who not only narrates the actions you take and the world around you, but with whom you argue, and who gives and reminds you the titular task of the game: that you are here, to slay a princess. The game has a beautiful monochrome hand-drawn art style that is incredibly versatile, and lends itself excellently to all the different styles you might encounter, and the excellent music and voice acting really bring the game to life.

You awaken to the game in a situation that is all too familiar for many trans women. You are in a nondescript place and are told to do something that makes no sense to you. Who tells you these things? The world itself around you, here personified by a literal Narrator. This Narrator tells you that somewhere, tucked away deeply in the crevices of some damp and forsaken place is a woman that you must slay, and if you don't, it will mean the end of the world.

Why any of this is the way that it is seems very illogical to you, but you don't remember the rest of your life being any different. In fact, thinking about it, you remember very little of your life before this point at all. It is all just a gray blur of meaningless actions. You don't have goals so much as you just go places and do things. But most importantly, you know that it is dangerous to listen to your own intuition and senses. They are easily mislead by "honeyed words" and can lead to dangerous outcomes.

NARRATOR
But a word of warning- if you go in prepared to hear her out, she could easily trap you in her web of lies. And the more you listen to her honeyed words, the harder it'll be to pull yourself out.

Like you have done so many times before, you steel your resolve and go to the cabin, to do what you are supposed to, to fulfill your destiny, to do what the world asks of you, to be what the world asks you to be. But throughout all of this there is something that gnaws at the back of your mind, that this is somehow wrong. You have been instructed not to heed these thoughts, but you can't help it, they will not leave you alone.

VOICE OF THE HERO
We're not going to go through with this, right? She's a princess. We're supposed to save princesses, not slay them.

NARRATOR
Ignore him, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

You can feel that you are connected to this woman in some way, though exactly how is unclear to you. Even before you lay eyes on her, it becomes clear that there is something special about her:

PRINCESS
H-Hello? Is someone there?

VOICE OF THE HERO
It's hypnotizing. It's the kind of voice you only have to hear once to remember the rest of your life.

But the world does not want for you to recognize in her an ally:

NARRATOR
Don't let her voice fool you. It's all part of the manipulation. You're playing a dangerous game by coming here unarmed.

Something about all of this feels off to you, in more way than one. Why does the narrator have so much hatred towards the princess? When you engage her in conversation you discover that she has been chained up and stuffed in a damp and dark basement for so long that she no longer remembers the outside world:

PRINCESS
Is that why they threw me down there? But I don't want to hurt anyone. I like the world!

Pause

PRINCESS (CONT'D)
I think...

Pause

PRINCESS (CONT'D)
I don't remember much about it to be honest. I've been down there for so long.

You talk to her. Slowly you come to realize that this woman is part of you. It is the part of you that was taken from you at your birth: your femininity. Ripped from you by the world. Though you long to be reunited with her, trust returns as slowly as the roots of an uprooted tree take to regrow.

Was it really the world that imprisoned her here? Or was it you yourself? Has the voice of hatred seeped into your very soul over time? Perhaps it was the world that taught you to hate her yes, but you wonder if it was not still by your hand that she ended up there.

In return, she has also resorted to desperate deeds from time to time. This cycle of bitterness and struggles for control serve neither of you, and breaking it demands great bravery from you both.

PRINCESS
I... I want to trust you. But you're hiding something, aren't you? Why would you help me if you weren't helping yourself?

PLAYER
You're not the only one who yearns for freedom. I'm as trapped as you are. I think we need to leave together.

PRINCESS
that sounds... nice. I'm so tired of the bad blood between us. But it's hard to let it go. You've hurt me... and I've hurt you...

The willingness to heal together doesn't always come easy. Old habits have to be unlearnt, and old expectations have to be ignored until they leave by themselves,

NARRATOR
She flinches again as the last of the vines is cut away, as if, after all of that, she's still expecting you to turn on her and stab her in the heart.

Along the way there are also painful realizations to be made about yourself.

PLAYER
So what do I look like?

PRINCESS
Scary. It's... hard to describe. It's hard to look at you.

Though the work is slow and grueling at times, with time comes understanding,

PRINCESS
I don't know why you did what you did, but it's hard to be mad when you're just as stuck as I am

And eventually with understanding comes healing.

PLAYER
You're different. Your whole mood is different.

PRINCESS
I'm just trying to make the best of things.... You could always make the best of things too, if you want. We both have a chance to start over. Besides, there's something about you being here with me that feels... Right. I never wanted to be your enemy.

All the while the narrator is loathed to witness what is happening between you two:

NARRATOR
you'd do best to remember that some wounds will never heal. Some rifts can never be mended. Even in rebirth, some things never come back the same

he tries again and again to regain his hold on you, his whisperings turning into darker and darker growls as time limps forward

NARRATOR
You aren't whole. You'll never be whole again. This struggle is meaningless. Whatever you think you're doing, you will fall apart.

But he is wrong. Dead wrong. Rather than fall apart you grow ever closer together. You begin to find in her a loyal confidant

PRINCESS
That's because you aren't small, even if you act that way. We're both so much more together than we were apart. And we can be so much more still. Vast. Unfathomable.

As you begin to trust her, yourself, you realize that all that you have internalized is not you.

PLAYER
I'm sick of this guy, how do we get rid of him?

PRINCESS
We push back. It may feel like he's everywhere, but presence isn't strength. Otherwise, we would have torn us apart by now. There must be a crack in the walls of his prison. There must be a way for us to be free from him.

It becomes hard to describe your being, and yet, it feels right. Nobody is owed justification for your being.

PRINCESS
Does it matter what we call ourselves? It's just another label, and I don't think labels have ever helped us. All they do is cram us into boxes where we don't fit

As you are able to fight back the narrator's influence more and more with each passing moment, realizations about your past, present and future bring you their gifts again: first understanding, then healing.

PLAYER
None of this was ever really fair for either of us, was it?

PRINCESS
No. It really wasn't. But just because it hasn't been fair doesn't mean that it hasn't been worth it. I'm... really glad I got to know you.

Until you are finally ready to show the world your true self.

PRINCESS
This is it, I have no idea what it's going to be like out there. Not that I'm scared or anything. It's exciting, really. Anything could happen. And if it's bad then

She hesitates

PRINCESS (CONT'D)
It won't be bad. Not with you.

FADE OUT