let the narrators say fuck

Love equals obedience in both Loved and The Stanley Parable. When we are obedient, the narrators praise us and reward us. Completing Loved while following the instructions results in a user-friendly monochrome platform where we are told we are loved in the end and validated for who we said we were. In a similar manner, in The Stanley Parable (I managed to get to this part but didn’t complete it and instead watched a video playthrough), if we actually play an entire four hours of the ridiculous baby and puppy game, we are told by what is presented to us as a higher divine power that we are loved.

In The Stanley Parable, we even learn that the narrator is in fact not omnipotent or even omniscient for that matter and just as desperate to scrabble for power as we are - at times he’s reduced to begging for us to cooperate so that his story isn’t completely derailed. We’re supposed to consider him as a sort of teammate on other occasions, such as in the adventure line end where even the supposedly all-knowing narrator is stumped on where to lead us next.

But then, just why on Earth do these narrators have to be so spiteful when we decide we don’t want to obey them? Love isn’t typically considered such a conditional thing. Immediately upon failure to obey, we’re told we’re disgusting or or ugly creatures, and face immense vitriolic rebuke whenever we decide to question their authority. In Loved’s case, the game visuals itself begins to twist into something much more challenging and hostile to navigate. In The Stanley Parable, the narrator begins to mock Stanley, or even the player controlling Stanley and not just Stanley himself, as the narrator doesn’t have any other power over him otherwise besides adding or altering facets to the game setting itself. I thought you wanted to work with Stanley! What makes these narrators so insecure over their power that they have to convince themselves that their enforcing of their will is a form of their love to us, and our direct obedience the only valid reciprocation of that love? Doesn’t sound like a healthy give and take relationship to me. It’s also good to know that the fact that reading the nearly demeaning praise in Loved gave off an incredible dom/sub vibe was to be expected, complete with the entire “aftercare” portion reassuring us that we did a good job given Brice’s own deconstruction of consent and aftercare within the context of video games.

In both of these games, these narrators exhibit a sort of inferiority complex. The only power they can exert on others is power over us, the player, and yet the game mechanics of an even higher power (the creator of Loved, or perhaps what was suggested to be the female narrator in the museum ending of The Stanley Parable) still somehow give us the leeway to be directly disobedient to the narrator that was supposedly put in charge of our actions. As a result, these narrators begin to become characters themselves, frustrated by our rebellion and lashing out at us, the players. Sometimes it’s amusing, running around and doing the exact opposite only to rile them up. Other times, we’re given a dead end and we actually do regret not having listened in the first place.

Still, it’s an interesting and deliberate choice to knock down the narrator a peg and give them a different role by making them more humanoid by allowing us to try and break the leash they want to keep a desperate hold on us with. Most video game players have come to expect not being able to control some parts of their play experience, to challenge them - what’s the fun in something you have omnipotence in? I bet these video game narrators didn’t see this exact same downgrade coming though. At times I swear I can even feel these fictional narrators seething behind the screen, barely holding in their urge to cuss me out.