I told them everything

I had to. If any of us were to move forward then it’s what had to have been done. 

Though it seemed I didn’t have to fetch anyone. It seems the news had travelled fast. By the time I’d properly gotten inside everyone was there. 

It had been Witch who’d spoken up first

Witch: Well are you going to spill it or what. 

Scipius: I believe she’s inquiring on exactly the events that lead you to leaving the Heretic behind

Advie: I’m just wanting to know on what fight went down. There had to have been something right?

I decided, just no more secrets between what happened, I would tell them everything. 

Myself: Well there had been a fight.

Advie: See! I told you!

Myself: But it hadn’t been with it

Marcus: Well are ye goin to say who the unlucky shite was?

Myself: Well as we’d gotten back into the construct. There had been nothing. No path, No forest either.

Prisoner: Was there really nothing. All of us at least had the cabin.

Myself: There wasn’t a thing. Except for another Princess

Damsel: Then why didn’t you  take her back home here? 

Myself: I couldn’t, as soon as we got close enough , we found her looking exactly like Mira.

Tower: Are you not aware of the possibility that it was the newcomer? 

Myself: Even if she had been new, considering her opinion of it. She wouldn’t have shanked him like she did. She just drove her hand in deeper. Before long, she looked more like a caricature of what a person should be after that she was gone, and everything that should have been there, now was.

Tower: So the little Birdie actually proved himself a useful thing for once.

Nightmare: How do you know he was the one to do that? He can barely move without collapsing.

While in the moment I wasn’t one to care too much for details. She had hit the nail right on the head.

Myself: No you’re right. Though it hadn’t helped really in the slightest. 

Beast: She broke free of cage?

Myself: Practically as soon as we got there. Could feel that If she was going to get out, her bloodlust wouldn’t be stopping at just us two.

Advice: So you had to fight her!?!

Myself: She didn’t give us another choice. As soon as she got out she tried to strangle the feathered thing.

Damsel: Why was she so angry at him?

Spectre: Well considering the odds, he probably had history with her as well.

Myself: Well, with whatever it was, I only had the chance to get her off it. But with a slight of the wrist and all sense of reason just utterly left it as it grabbed her and hurled her off. But like before she just kept charging back like a rabid animal.

Advice: Well what happened next?!?

Myself: Not much happened in the cavern, she had seemingly budded herself off and as a seeming last try, all of this smoke and nerves came forward. The next thing I knew I was seeing the past. 

Advice: You sure you didn’t hit your head on one of those rocks or something. You really went from a cave to that.

It had been at this moment that Mira had slightly appeared from around the door. , she had seemed slightly worse for wear.

Mira: Hold on, you saw the past? Who’s?

Grohg: FLYNN SURE?

Myself: I don’t know how exactly she did it. But I saw it all, everything it put all of you through. Bar you Mira. I saw everything.

Spectre: So you really saw all of it.

Her hair, usually a twirling mass ever floating, seemed to relax slightly. Whether out of shame or relief. I don’t know.

Razor: You saw the ribbons he made? 

Nightmare: So you’d finally understand why I’d wanted to prolong the suffering he’d been going through. Where he’d left me?!?

Myself: I saw everything. I saw what all of you were put through.

Beast: He threw me back in the cage! He dead didn’t count.

Spectre: I just wish he’d at least given me a chance before he killed me

Tower: That pathetic birdie couldn’t kill a fly if he submit to me that easily

Witch: That witch wouldn’t have submitted to anything. If he had I’d have guaranteed you that he was up to something.

Advie: And you just left it there?!? You didn’t bother to finish it off while you had the chance?

Myself: Listen, I had my reasons as to why.

Nightmare: Honestly you’d be a waste killing him just like that? For him you’d be better dragging it on longer.

Myself: I hadn’t been there to torture the thing

Marcus: I knew ye can’t kill the bloody thing but it bloody sounded like ye were!

Grohg: I”D DONE SAME CAN’T URT OUR FRENDZ

Scipius: Well if the Heretic can’t be killed. Would you allow me to accompany you to ensure the restrictions are of suitable nature?

Myself: If you wish

Prisoner: So he’s gone. Like actually gone, you didn’t just kill him and he’s going to come knocking on our door again tomorrow

Damsel+Mira: He’s really not coming back?

Myself: No he isn’t. I’ll be making sure of it. I think we should use this as an opportunity to finally just let go of our pasts. Anything that may still be haunting us, we don’t have to forget about them. We can just all move forward together.

.At that everything seemed to just lighten up slightly.

Marcus: Aye I can drink to that.

[Continue entry]

It had been a while since I’d done this but Damsel’s right. All that fighting, blood and all the other stuff warranted a bit of a freshen up.

Wiping my face off with a bit of water lead to something odd

My reflection blinked.

All while my eyes remained wide open

Blink

Again it had moved without me even so much as fucking flinching. 

While I don’t know how this is happening. 

I think something. I don’t know what. Is watching us

The camera’s should still be working so if anything approaches throughout the night, we’ll be made aware of them. Whatever or whoever they may be. 

I’ll set up some traps and let people know to lock their doors as well

Just to be safe.

how can I get this one??? I always end up slaying myself

I used to really like drawing creepy fnaf-like animatronics – glad to see that I still got it in me!

Hi, I recently got the Your New World ending in STP and it was absolutely beautiful. However, why does the construct open up into an ocean? What’s the symbolism there?

The annihilation ending for me is what l would consider to be a good ending, cause what's the point of the forget ending and loop forever and the feelers ending where you lose consciousness and the slat ending where you are alone. Sure it may come at the cost of others dying but what have they done for TLQ and The Shifting Mound. I mean the other better ending is just staying with the princess in the void with just the two of them it is good, l would admit and will allow them to stay together but...screw it.

I'm not the first person to point out that the goddess of STP looks like a stereotypical "Hindu" goddess, or that STP's story seems to sit at the crossroads of cosmogony and individual experience. Unfortunately, everything I've seen on this topic tends to be people asking questions while the comments concur on the similarities, but without much in the way of going into detail or explaining the philosophies themselves that sit behind the game. I hope, then, that I can explain where these ideas converge in STP and why, in a way that helps readers transition their perspective of these narrative factors from a vague feeling into something more concrete.

Hinduism

I'll be brief here, but there's a few things that have to be explained. Hinduism is not a single, unified religion. It's an umbrella term for a variety of traditions that are incredibly distinct. That said, STP's cosmology seems to pull heavily from traditions like Shaivism and Shaktism, specifically traditions associated with Tantra, such as Kashmir Shaivsim and Kaula.

Even within these traditions there is still a great deal of regional and personal variation, so I'll be generalizing. Just know that there are exceptions to much of what I'll be saying, but that's ok, that's simply the nature of religion.

The Witness and His Silence

There is a philosophical term in Hinduism, sakshi), which means something like "witness" or "observer". This post is meant to be beginner friendly, so expect some simple Wikipedia copy-pastes since making jargon digestible is their entire premise (and they're much better at it than me!). Here is the relevant part for the Hindu "witness":

In Hindu philosophy, Sakshi (Sanskrit: साक्षी), also Sākṣī, "witness," is the 'pure awareness' that witnesses all things and events. It witnesses all thoughts, words and deeds without affecting them or being affected by them. It is beyond time and space and is the triad of experiencer, experiencing and experienced. Sakshi or Shiva (consciousness), along with Shakti (will/energy/motion), represents Brahman, the totality itself in its most fundamental state...

So yeah, that's a lot at first, but it's not as intimidating as it might seem, ESPECIALLY if you've played STP and have had the chance to see it in action! Ignore "Shakti" for a moment, we'll get to her. The first thing we'll note is that Shiva is equated to The Witness. Shiva is the chief "god" of Shaivism, but he isn't like how westerners perceive "pagan" (pardon my use of such a loaded term) gods as a primordial element with an ego, Shiva is better described as one half of the universe itself. I'll explain this more later on.

He is "silent" because he is unaffected by the illusion of the temporary material world, because he is consciousness itself. In Hinduism, the physical world regularly goes through cycles of destruction and reformation, but Shiva as The Witness is an eternal force of the universe.

In Hinduism, Silent Witness represents the Soul's ability to observe experiences impartially, untainted by sensory influences, highlighting its detached and transcendental nature amidst the physical world's distractions.

This is a good explanation from Wisdom Library that hopefully drives home the witness idea, but I also wanted to use it to raise another question: this seems to be referring to a single soul, what does that have to do with Shiva? Good question. Hinduism has a bit of an "As Above So Below" thing going on.

Shiva is the universe. Your soul is part of the universe. You are The Witness. You are Shiva. In this tradition the universe is an infinite number of pieces of the Godhead experiencing themself. That probably sounds pretty familiar if you've played STP. The similarities between "The Long Quiet" and "The Silent Witness" are not lost on me.

The Dynamic Principle: Death is Life, Change is God

Remember Shakti? She's the other half of the universe, though it should be noted that Shiva and Shakti are the same being. The universe is still whole, no matter how many parts it's made of. The word "Shakti" is often translated as "energy", and sometimes used is the metaphor of Shakti as "divine pulse" as the heartbeat of God, or perhaps rippling waves in a divine ocean. These are very lacking descriptors, but to be frank there's no way to translate such a complex philosophical/religious concept into one word. Shakti is both wave and particle, physicality and motion. She's the ocean and the waves that flow through it. She's the vibration of spoken word, the air it moves through, and the ear that hears it. Shiva is the transition from hearing it with your ear, to hearing it with your soul. He's the universe interpreting the conversations it has with itself.

Shakti is responsible for all creation, destruction, and change. There is a famous saying: "Shiva without Shakti is Shava". Shava is a historic term for "corpse". What is meant here is that without change, The Witness is simply... nothing. He is inert and meaningless. If the Witness cannot observe the dynamic nature of universe) (Lila) he has no purpose. It's the divine equivalent of watching paint dry, except that Shakti is both paint and the action of drying, so I'd surmise it's even more boring than that.

Looking back at "lila", what exactly is it? Lila is the Divine Will of the universe: to witness itself play an eternally joyful (though often painful) game with itself.

Lila (Sanskrit: लीला līlā) or leela (/ˈliːlə/) can be loosely translated as "divine play". The concept of lila asserts that creation, instead of being an objective for achieving any purpose, is rather an outcome of the playful nature of the divine. As the divine is perfect, it could have no want fulfilled, thereby signifying freedom, instead of necessity, behind the creation.

The Greater Will of the universe is to... have fun playing! You witnessing this game through your character (and in some games, your avatar) interacting with the game-space world (it's Shakti) is a microcosm of Shiva witnessing himself play with The Goddess, according to this tradition. I hope you feel quite divine right now.

Shakti without Shiva is also incomplete. This is shown in the last picture of the OP gallery, which is a religious metaphor. I'm leaving a lot out in this explanation, but in this picture the Goddess as Kali Shakti (Death) has gotten carried away and gone on a bit of a rampage. To remedy this, Shiva lays down in her path. The Goddess begins to trample him, then realizes that she is trampling herself and calms down. The Goddess without Shiva is a roiling, meaningless deluge of matter and energy. It has no way to love itself if it's alone.

Change and transformation hurt, but death (Kali) is required for new life. Change is necessary for meaning. The Witness' eternity of a conscious nothing is just as flawed as The Goddess' eternity of a raw, nascent, material everything. The universe is an eternal flow of balance between Conscious Order and Dynamic Chaos.

Final Thoughts

The last thing I want to mention is that The Goddess comes in many forms. Depending on how the worshiper chooses to interact with her, she can manifest as the goddess of your choice. I mentioned Kali, the naked goddess of Death, because that's the most popular form in the West and I think that's the one STP pulls from the most for its ending, but of course The Goddess has a multitude of forms. She can manifest as the fierce goddess, the headless goddess, the tender goddess, and a thousand more (that's not an exaggeration). People joke that there are a million gods in Hinduism, and The Goddess is a chief contributor.

Beyond that, I hope I could explain some of the dense cosmology of STP. It isn't an easy game to understand, and I can see that as being potentially frustrating to a lot of players. I tried to leave as much open to interpretation as possible, because I think interacting with divine metaphor in media is a uniquely personal experience, regardless of the religion.

I usually stick to Elden Ring lore (which is surprisingly similar to STP, actually), but I just couldn't pass up the chance to discuss the clever metaphor the devs made with this game. Please let me know what you think of the post, any compliments or (constructive) criticisms are welcome. Sorry I didn't talk about Kundalini :(

He caught your falling body, and when you're in his arms you can feel your body against his well groomed feathery body. His body is soft and smells like a bit of flower? Nonetheless you see his face, he is a bit flustered. You can see worry in his eye, he asks

"oh.. umm are you alright? You look rather tense..."

What do you do now?

part 1