#assassiffrin au

[quantumfeat72]

assassiffrin au index/links

links with [brackets] are to posts with full comic pages, and ones with (parentheses) are more sketchy/rambly (though most of those also have a finished drawing or two)

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[(all posts in chronological and reverse-chronological order by date of posting)]

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pre-canon: (assassination "attempt" and joining the party) (changes to sif's appearance)

act 1: [exposition monologue] [beginning friend talks] [siffrin's wish]

act 2: [meeting loop] [malanga fritters] [first king fight part 1] [first king fight part 2]

acts 2 & 3: (misc. loop talks) [odile's wish]

acts 3 & 4: (premonitions) [bonnie hangout]

post-canon: [(idea where siffrin goes back in time to before the king's wish)]

[quantumfeat72]

(previously)

breaking: local rogue injured while allegedly trying to stop the king with "logic and reason." more at 11

(edit: made another part to this scene!)

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(some miscellaneous assassiffrin au loop talks because i keep having thoughts but i can't trust myself to work on anything big rn)

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so... au where odile was right about siffrin being an assassin hired by the king to kill mirabelle? is this anything? too late i'm doing it

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i don't think siffrin in the assassiffrin au would be as open & excited about their favorite food, especially this close to their first time facing the king since they changed sides

but like. do yall ever think about how siffrin makes a face every time someone goes to touch him, even when he's trying not to, even when he actively wants to be touched, that makes isabeau go "right! touch aversion! i'll back off! sorry!!"

do you ever think about the physical evidence siffrin has that they were, at some point, loved - but without any memory of it, and without any context that would give meaning to it? do you ever wonder if bonnie is the first person they can remember hugging them, or making their favorite food? or to even know that it's a food they like, let alone their favorite?

do you think the malanga fritters would hit different, in a world where he was more aware what he'd lost? in a world where he'd been trying and failing for months to not get attached to his party? if he tasted those fritters and thought, "i don't remember being loved, but i remember what being loved feels like, and it feels like this!"

"these are the first people i can remember who have really, truly cared about me..."

"...and they're going to hate me in a few minutes"

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assassiffrin's loop! the relationship between these two is a tad more volatile than in canon, at least in the beginning

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(assassinfrin au exposition monologue!)

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assassiffrin au beginning talks!

the other major early-game difference here is that, in the week or two before the loops, siffrin's guilt and dread have been building to the point where everyone kinda knows they're not okay

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i've been trying to solidify the differences in appearance between assassiffrin & canon siffrin. there aren't many! but maybe the biggest is this star tattoo - it acts as a sort of focus for using wish craft in battle. (he still wears gloves most of the time, though, so the only people who've actually seen it are the king, the rest of their party, and, well. targets.)

another is that they have some new scars!

and this isn't so much an appearance thing, but he carries a journal with him for everything they manage to remember about their life on the island. (i hc that the king has a similar journal, so siffrin would've gotten the idea from him)

as a result of this (and him being generally more willing to talk about it), the rest of the party learned where siffrin was from long before the loops

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part of assassiffrin's bonnie hangout! he has a bit of a different fighting/teaching philosophy than canon siffrin...

(unshaded version of one of the panels under the cut because i'm proud of it and it's hard to see in the actual comic)

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ok, on the subject of "what if siffrin really was an assassin." i feel like this siffrin wouldn't make the same wish as canon siffrin, for a few reasons:

while in canon, "i love my friends" is an easy-to-acknowledge fact about themself and "i sometimes wish time would just stop and we could live like this forever" is a selfish, shameful thing they try not to think about, in this au it's very much the other way around. (isn't it selfish, to think of someone you initially intended to kill, and the people who risked everything to support her, as your friends?)

also unlike canon siffrin, he doesn't even consider at this point that continuing to travel with his friends is a possibility (after all, they're going to find out tomorrow why he first approached the group. he'll be lucky if they're still speaking to him after that)

they don't have canon siffrin's thought that there's no need to add another "save vaugarde" wish to the pile, because a. this siffrin is already aware that wish craft is a thing, so it stands to reason that another wish could strengthen it, b. they know roughly how powerful the king is and that any edge they can get might make a difference, and c. the way they see it at this point, freezing vaugarde would save it

which is also why he doesn't wish for victory, or to stop the king. he's willing to acknowledge that part of him doesn't want that. he's convinced that the king is correct - the universe led him on this path, so it must be what the universe wants. so instead of going for a small, reasonable wish, he asks the universe to change course and listen to the vaugardians' wishes

but, i hear you ask, isn't this wish actually fulfilled by the king dying? where are the horrors?? and to that i say no, it comes back to the fact that siffrin is specifically thinking of what their friends want - for mirabelle and the others to get the futures they've been fighting for - under the assumption that it doesn't overlap much with what siffrin wants

and it's a bit more complicated, here, but his friends still want to keep him in their lives

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Imagine after the loops end in assassiffrin assfrin au the party accompanies him on his redemption quest and keep having to protect him from people trying to get revenge on him.

Then Vaugarde turns on the Saviors for harboring the one half responsible for the curse.

They demand to know why and the family says "how is he supposed to atone for what they've done if they're dead?"

And then imagine Siffrin spends a lot of time learning more Wish Craft and finds a way to go back in time to stop himself from helping the king in the first place.

Buuuut of course he has a crisis because that means he'll lose his family as they are now but also he kinda did kill a bunch of people and mess up an entire country sooOoooOOoo

But theennn Isa or Odile catches wind of what Sif is trying to do and the fam manages to secretly tweak his wish so their memories are transported back with them too.

and idk they go back looking like loop or another star creature and hunt themself down to stop them from meeting/helping the king. The fam has to find him before he spirals too far.

its very late and my brain is going all over the place with this. Maybe he finds the king and is about to kill him but his past self walks in and is like uhhh and then they fight and stops him from killing their other self.

Loop is there too maybe idk and the king gets redemption too i guess?

Imagine.

ok so um. i got. a BIT carried away.

(chrono tag)

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(direct continuation of this comic from this au!)

i went back and forth for a while on whether this siffrin would know from the beginning that the king's special attack would be Like That, and the answer i finally settled on is that it's. complicated?

knowing they're in a time loop, and can try again if need be, they haven't been as careful in preparation as they might've been otherwise. he didn't really expect to win this fight on the first try, but decided to go ahead with it anyway to see if he could convince the king to stop peacefully

but they didn't quite realize the king was this powerful. and might've been expecting him to hesitate, you know, a little