Off brand Satan

Save Earth / Save Grace.

I made a stupid meme while reading the book.

After being trapped in the dark for who knows how long, during the 15th skip the player finally starts to see the skip button room beginning to be reclaimed by nature.

It’s the first bright, warm, comforting feeling the player has gotten in a while, especially considering the fact that The Narrator’s crazed ramblings of “the end is never the end” happen not too long before this skip. It’s a breath of fresh air FINALLY feeling a sense of hope through the terrible experience Stanley and the player have been put through so far. 

Even though The Narrator seems to be gone, the room is flooded with natural light, open to the outside world for the first time in thousands of years. The Player is led to believe that the next skip will have the room looking even more lush and comforting. So they press the button again.

And are met with arguably the most terrifying skip of the entire bunch. 

There’s no more light, no more greenery, only darkness as the room falls in on itself. Inhuman, unidentifiable noises drone on in the background, noises that were later found to be some semblance of The Narrator’s being still calling out to Stanley for help. He’s long gone, but in a way he’s also still trapped there. It’s simply horrifying. 

The Stanley Parable Indiebox Complete Manual

Here it is, finally! The entirety of the Stanley Parable Manual from the limited released Indiebox set! I didn't want to bend any of the pages so I took some of the pictures at angles, but otherwise it should still be perfectly readable! I've had quite a few people ask me to post this and I just now got around to doing so, sorry guys </3 I don't like handling the manual because I don't want to ruin it on accident lsdkjffsdkjl

The bucket is the only thing Stanley can control. Quite literally. It is the only object we are allowed to pick up. That is what is comforting about it: it gives the person holding it a feeling that they are in control of something in a world where they have no control at all. It was also created so Stanley would be less lonely.

(Worth mentioning that Stanley is the one in control of the bucket, not the player. We can't compel Stanley to get go of the bucket, and in the bucket escape pod ending *he is the one to iniciate an action and trigger a cutscene*, Stanley *is* his own person, at least in relation to the Bucket.)

The bucket is an inanimate object, hollow, a container "to carry water from one room to another." It mirrors Stanley, who is a vessel for the player, he carries us from room to room too, and yet the Narrator is so attached to *him* (not the player!!) Thought the game we are given a few clues about why the Narrator created the Parable, he wants someone who will listen to him and won't be able to interrupt him, he wants to tell a story where he can be in control. This is confirmed in the stanlurines ending, a confirmation that the Narrator *created Stanley* because he was lonely and needed companionship, (and the word companionship is also used for the bucket too, I belive).

Stanley by this reading is basically the Narrator's reassurance bucket. The way Stanley feels about the bucket, the Narrator feels about Stanley, which also explain his jealousy and hatred for the thing, it exemplifies just how *pathetic* he looks to an outside observer, dedicating his life to a fictional character, a bundle of pixels, a facsimile of a human and yet nothing but a dead thing. The bucket also takes up Stanley's attention away from the Narrator, which he can't have because attention is something the Narrator craves and the specific reason why he created Stanley in the first place.

BUT! THAT'S NOT IT! For you see the Narrator is also a fictional character himself, yet another Dead Thing that the creators of the game cared for enough to bring him to life.

Why do we tell stories? Think of the oldest stories you can think of, stories about gods and heroes. Mythology, religion. When faced with a hostile world where we can't control much of anything, the human's first instinct is to Make Up A Guy about it. We create stories, belief systems, narratives, frameworks of reality, to make sense out of a life we don't have all that much power to impact. Now I don't mean to read into the creators' minds, but as a writer myself I think this is the underlying subconscious motivation for at least 90% of all storytelling, and I think that they must have known this, for them to be able to project it into the game itself as a core theme.

So really what you have here is an onion of fictions layered upon each other. Isn't that super fucking cool.

"Oh Stanley! But we have all of the eternity at our hands! The end is NEVER!"

Full sketchbook spread below

The Confusion (FanArt)

A totally normal and not ominous doodle…I promise.