#dasner speaks

[dasnercaret]

SAY IT, BRIGHT ONE!

It's truly terrible!! Someone by the name of Party Rock has learned time craft and is freezing all of Vauguarde in time! If I'm going to stop him, I'll need help in finding the orbs! Huh? Oh, where is he tonight? Well

[dasnercaret]

∞!!

call the chants inside

we will wait for this

[dasnercaret]

in your winged au, do they chirp sometimes? or have bird vocalizations? when siffrin gets preened- properly preened- in the first time in ages would he just melt into a puddle with contented chirrs? (im . super normal about wing aus.)

siffrin puddle extraordinaire!! i think he's so badly touch starved that the moment someone (that isn't loop, because loop is different) touches his wings he turns into a puddle of happy chirps and vocalizations. he's completely out of it for like an hour straight after the preening, and especially with his entire family's hands on him (come on they wouldn't let him get away with anything less after the mess his wings have become) he is NOT thinking coherently he is the most disjointed happy puddle of a bird hybrid you have ever seen in your LIFE

isabeau hugs with both his arms and his wings btw. instant siffrin KO

i think in general they chirp or make bird noises fairly often, though it does differ from person to person - odile and siffrin chirp the least, bonnie chirps a lot, and isabeau and mirabelle are somewhere in between. i like to imagine they use it as a form of communication as well - isabeau whistles and holds out his arm and siffrin immediately perches on it, for example.

[dasnercaret]

okay genuine question isat fandom: why the FUCK is isabeau SO HARD to DRAW god DAMN

[dasnercaret]

eaning into here to just add that personally i think the most narratively satisfying ending would be loopsif going back to their own timeline and loop being forced to live on in the future that was originally denied to them. also part of loop's whole thing is struggling to let go, and while i think it would horrendously hurt i do think loop needs to learn to. Live. with their family. learn to be human again without the crutch of a much more stable loopsif with them. they need to be able to connect with their family and not just themselves but more mentally stable, and given the au they would stick semi-permanently with loopsif if they had the choice (there's an entire comic that demonstrates this point). also if loop disappeared in canon, loopsif probably should too i feel.

also the thought of siffrin just disappearing from his (successful) timeline makes me horrendously sad :( the rest of his family would search tirelessly for him once they realize what he's done. would he be living with isabeau by that point? would isabeau be forced to reckon with an empty room and house and life? would he have told his family? would they be okay with it? loopsif has his own life outside of the loops now. he can't just abandon that without reservations or impacts on the people around him (assuming loop time passes semi-normally and loopsif wouldn't just get plopped back in his own timeline a few minutes after making his wish)

how did stardust end up in loopsif's timeline in the first place? i'm assuming this is post twohats canon, did he make a wish later on to see loop again? to be able to help loop in their original timeline? mostly i'm curious if stardust knew what they were getting into lmao

...also if loopsif DOES get out of their time loops eventually... would he go back to his normal timeline, or would he be stuck there forever?

...would loop still be there in stardust's timeline?

(sorry if it's a lot of questions or it's too spoilery for the au or you haven't thought that far ahead yet. lol)

1: Yes i think that this was a very intentional decision made by ISAT Siffrin. He'd be very cautious about Wishcraft and its rituals after the events of the game, so Stardust's presence is planned out (somewhat)

I'm thinking that its been many years since the loops and most of the party has settled down in their homes across the world (and its not like they dont make time to see each other). ISAT Siffrin gets melancholy and wonders... if they could have prevented Loop from becoming- well-- Loop.

The idea took root and then well here they are

Stardust made this Wish with returning back home in mind too

2: What would be more narratively satisfying for you? what kind of ending would give the right flavor of catharsis? NSFNFfgn ok I know thats a cop-out kind of answer but this AU definitely has a multiple endings sort of thing going on

(...i do think that it'd be a sort of Steven Universe kind of ending where Steven re-fuses with his gem half sort of thing, Stardust and Loop fusing together or ISAT Siffrin and SASASAP Siffrin)

[dasnercaret]

how ISAT makes you feel like going home

so one of my friends said to me "the first time i played (isat) was when i was home sick, i felt like it had curative properties. analyse that mr playstyle 😎" and i took it as a fucking challenge. i've never written an (tumblr-posted) analysis essay before and i'm going into this with a bunch of haphazardly folded ideas and NO OUTLINE fuck it we ball

so to begin with: DORMONT.

isat, as a whole, is extremely a traditional rpg setup. which unfortunately i know little to nothing about, so forgive me in advance if i put my foot in my mouth regarding traditional rpg mechanics. but like many games, you start at a home base, at home. and the whole vibes of the place honestly serve to only emphasize the safe / at home / storybook atmosphere isat cultivates. you wake up in a field, sleepy and tired. your dear friend mirabelle leans over you and tells you to wake up, because you're going to beat the king tomorrow! and you laugh and you're sleepy but eventually you start playing. eventually, you push yourself up and wander around and meet the townsfolk and your party.

now, the player doesn't know the party. they've just opened the game! they don't know these characters. siffrin does though, and it shows in the interactions he has with each one of them. mirabelle teases siffrin about the quality of his nap. isabeau puns with siffrin. odile smiles at him. bonnie... looks away, because of backstory you don't have yet, because you're leaping into this story at its very end. but siffrin knows.

(...)

siffrin knows. which informs his narration, of course, and overall it gives the sense of - you're watching a story already known, with characters who already love each other. like walking into a family home midway through a dinner party, to know and be known in turn.

(you know where you are. you're home!)

siffrin provides some exposition of course, enough to catch the player up and let them know the basics of the world you've set foot into. these people are here because they have natural ties, connections to the land they've been born or raised in or are travelling through. you all are here to defeat the king, who is the epitome of a traditional storybook villain, the big bad evil you defeat at the end of the fairytale. he's just the generically evil guy, with no focus given to the atrocities he must have committed and been willing to commit in order to get where he is. there's no need to be scared of him, not really. (yet.) he's evil, but in the way a storybook villain is evil. all the sharp edges defanged, sanded away, all the humanity and dimensionality and violence inherent in his character compressed into a set of scribbles on the page, words on a screen. it's not personal. it's not.... scary. not to you, and not to siffrin, who's already been floating above it all.

(the rest is under a cut! spoilers for The Entire Rest Of The Game)

similarly, the exposition is in the form of little childlike drawings, emphasizing the same nostalgia it draws on - fairytales, fables, those stories where the heroes collect the magic sword and slay the dragon and save the princess. you know these stories, consciously or not. you love these stories, (probably), and it all serves to emphasize the familiarity with which you step into dormont. heroic stories are extremely common in the stories we love today, from the old classic prince charming to (somewhat) more modern legend of zelda, and no doubt many people picking up isat have a similar passing familiarity with the overarching story of rpgs. (i in fact was the exception, but that's a whole other essay)

the townspeople definitely do not help this vibe as well. they are practically one and all kind, steady people, precisely the sort of common folk you'd want to save in a story where nothing hurts and everyone is safe and loved. they're happy to gift you a flower or a pan au chocolat and cheer you on in your quest, certain of your victory and at least certain of their continued happiness even if you fail. simple, easy, familiar, comforting in the way redwall is comforting or an old set of childhood fairytales is comforting. there's no real judgement, no anger at you for potentially failing and (almost) none of the gross ugly real emotions that would be present in a more 'realistic' story. simple, easy, familiar, comforting.

(You like knowing what happens next!)

so. i think we all know that isat at its core is a game about homesickness. god's sakes mal du pays is literally right there. the central conflict of this game, beneath the overlaying fluff of an rpg archetype and an evil to defeat, is about siffrin not being able to go home while the rest of his party get to do so. and even at this very early stage (approximately act 1 and i would argue a bit into act 2) you can start to see the cracks. siffrin is shown alone, tagging along with the party because he had "nothing else to do" (read: nowhere else to go.) he laughs and pals and jokes with the party, but like before, like always, he merely mirrors them. he makes puns with isabeau because isabeau likes puns, and siffrin liked making him laugh so much so that he adopted puns into a part of his personality. he comforts mirabelle about her future, jokes with odile about her research, and always, always, avoids talking about himself. when they ask where he's going to go after their journey is over, his answer is always a mirror of their own - pilgrimage, research, travel, comedy. when he makes a wish at the favor tree, there's no option to wish for himself.

because the thing is, right. siffrin never thinks of himself. the only options instead are to wish for his family - his home, his only living and real connections in his life, the people surrounding him that really make dormont feel like a real home and not just another friendly place in vaugaurde he's passing through. cause the townsfolk are nice, sure, they're friendly, sure, but - they don't know him. they're not important enough for him to literally rewrite his personality for them. it's his party instead, that he laughs and jokes with and is known with, even if superficially. he wants to be allowed to go home, to stay home. he's been homeless both literally and figuratively for so long that he's beyond desperate to be allowed to keep what little he's found for himself.

(You want to stay with them!)

except - what happens when you beat the game? what happens when you finish the rpg, when you reach the end of the book, when you grow up and leave this set of children's fairytales behind?

you put it down, right? you go home, right? you go back to your home, you go back to travelling, you go back to your family.

what do you do when you don't get to go home? when dormont and the clocktower and the house are the closest you will ever get to home, are the last moment you will ever have being home before it's ripped away from you forever? (ripped away from you just like before - )

you'd want to stay, right? forever and ever and ever?

siffrin is a character who has a very bad time letting go. just like the king, he wants to have, desperately, enough to kill himself a hundred times over for it. and, through the timeloop, he can pull you, the player, and himself and his hapless party along through the timeloop, repeating the same two comforting days over and over and over and over.

and perhaps after a few loops of settling in you, too, can understand why he would want to do this. it's nice, isn't it? knowing what will happen? knowing that these people will always love you? knowing that you can always get the flower, always get the drawing, always get the pan au chocolat, always beat the tutorial kid and get the jackpot? that the townsfolk will always smile at you, that your party - your family, your home - will never know what you've done?

it's not enough, isn't it?

(Dormont, unchanging! Dormont, stagnating!)

no matter how hard siffrin tries to cling to the past turned present to stave off his inevitable future, he is still human. under the fairytale setting and pretty lights, even under his own desire to stay with them, he needs that human connection. he needs something to change, to give way. needs to be seen, to be known, to be loved for himself and not because he's learned the perfect pretty words and actions to trick them into loving him. you, the player, the person driving siffrin, can understand this frustration perfectly as well - you need something to change. you need something to give way, because you can't keep doing this. because you can't hear the same lines over and over and over anymore. you can't do the same thing over and over anymore. you're not happy. siffrin's not happy. something needs to change.

i finished isat over the course of about four days, playing about 12-14 hours per day. during that time, i experienced possibly the most deeply intensely felt emotion i have ever experienced. to this day when i look back on my first playthrough of isat, the sheer depth and fury of that emotion takes my breath away.

and it was frustration. just like siffrin, i was trapped. i couldn't look away, because i loved these characters, because i loved their story, because i wanted them to keep going and going and living and i wanted to keep living alongside them. but i couldn't keep going like this. i couldn't do the same thing over and over and over. i needed something to change, but both siffrin and i were desperately, agonizingly trapped in the same few days. the same places, the same faces, the same lines said rote until i was zoning out through every dialogue interaction, only pausing when i needed to make sure that i hadn't missed something new.

because i loved these characters. i loved how homely they felt. i loved them, i loved them, i -

needed them to be real. to change, to grow, to have their future returned to them. i needed to see them go home, not trapped in this same endless time-frozen loop. i had been trapped at home too long, and the cabin fever was eating me alive. my desire to be allowed to keep playing (to stay in the timeloop) was duking it out with my desire to see them change beyond what they were allowed to change in the span of just two days. i wanted to see bonnie grow up, to see isabeau change into someone else, to see odile come to terms with her half-vaugardian nature, to see mirabelle learn to accept her sexuality (or lack thereof). i wanted them to remember us as family.

ah, isat, absolute king of getting in my head and making me think like siffrin.

back to dormont. in the end, dormont only changes permanently in act 6, after the time loop breaks. the only time the townsfolk ever change, ever coherently move to different places and act differently (act 5 is similar, but i would argue that's because siffrin changes, dormont still doesn't really meaningfully change) is after the loops.

and it's fitting, isn't it? by this point in the game, you could recite dormont backwards and forwards. but by this point in the game, you are well aware that you need to give them back a future. their future. the one they wished for in the first place. they've been trapped in their fairy tale wonderland for long enough. they deserve to go home, truly home, to go forward and live their lives and keep moving on. to allow them to change, to grow.

to allow yourself to change, to grow. to allow yourself to go home, to admit that you want to keep your home you have now, to keep the family you've built from blood and death and tears and stars.

(You want to stay with them!)

to leave dormont. to leave this fairytale behind, and keep living.

[dasnercaret]

8,9,10,15,17

8. squints. opens up isat to check.

....only 57!?!

9. i would wish for my lawn to be mowed because it's crazy overgrown! it sucks!! there's probably ticks and other bugs in there!!! it's all scruffy now (expertly dodges the question for the third time)

10. the universe assumes that i want my lawn to be Dead because if it dies i never have to mow it again. i end up with a big patch of yellow dead grass

15. sigh. siffrin...? he might be fun. i don't really like isabeau and mirabelle... (i've already answered odile and bonnie to this question i believe) i'm sorry... they just don't seem like people i would like all that much.......

(worth noting: i like them in that they're good characters they just seem like they would be A Lot to hang out with. isabeau is very tall and very loud. mirabelle is filled with anxiety and loves romance. i historically get along with Neither of these personality types)

17. of course <3 i proceed to get my ass beat by a preteen

[dasnercaret]

12, 19, 20, 25 for the isat ask game?

12. I'M BASIC i LOVE the observatory room on the 3rd floor. yknow the one with the massive circular window looking into the sky i love it i love it it's so pretty i want to stay there forever

19. jamais vu! there are other fics i love for sure (like yours 😉) but this one... this one. something about it

20. i have a personal headcanon that i've barely shared anywhere but i like to think that odile is actually a pretty good artist! she draws little landscapes and sketches of places she's been in her notebook alongside with writing notes about them. she has a tiny little travel palette of colors and just paints some places. i've been planning on doing some example notebook pages for her actually

25. the one right outside the meadow where siffrin wakes up, the first one you see in-game. piou piou!

[dasnercaret]

GOD DUDE THEY'RE SUCH A GOOD KID THEY'RE SUCH A GOOD FUCKING KID THEY'RE TRYING SO HARD AND THEY LOVE SO MUCH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHGH

i find it so so interesting the things that you can learn about a parent/caregiver just by knowing their kid...

when siffrin doesn't flinch away from bonnie's touch, bonnie says "good kid, good kid. you didn't even jump that time! good job, you did such a good job.” now we know what kind of langauge nille uses to praise bonnie!

bonnie doesn't actually argue all that much about not being allowed to fight - they make their opinion known, but then focus on being a good snack leader. i think they are used to having their point of view taken into consideration! a kid who doesn't dare complain at all might have very strict and stubborn caregivers, while a kid who throws a fit might have caregivers who pay more attention to emotions than logic, or care less about their child's feelings and more about how those feelings affect them. but bonnie trusts that the adults around them will listen to them, and then make a reasonable decision, even if it's not the one they wanted.

bonnie's fairly level-headed in general, actually. they get really upset sometimes, obviously, but it's about things that are really upsetting? otherwise.. if they're not confronted about the death convo, they're able to set it aside and focus on cheering everyone up with snacks. even though they're mad at siffrin, they have some chill convos with him. pretty good emotional regulation skills all things considered! they're often able to choose to be calm and cheerful, but they feel safe expressing sadness and anger, too, so they're not just sitting there repressing everything either!

i just get really emo about what a good job nille must have done raising them 😭

[dasnercaret]

*bursts through window*

Hey, could you answer 4 and 15 for the isat ask game, please?

MY WINDOW (said in the same tone as the cabbage seller from A:TLA yelling MY CABBAGES)

4. .... siffrin

15. surprisingly, not siffrin! knowing myself and my blunt nature i'd probably upset him very quickly by accidentally saying something or other. i do care about him lots though. hmm... i think odile would be really fun to hang out with! i tend to get along very well with older women and i'm sure she has plenty of awesome stories from her travels.

[dasnercaret]

how do you intro post

hello everyone, dasner here!

Pronouns: she/her, any

Boundaries: DO NOT REPOST OR TRACE MY ART. using it as a pfp or banner is completely fine, as long as you credit me!

Tags: dasner art! tag for any general posts where i talk is dasner speaks, and tag for asks is, well. i'm a straightforward person what can i say (it's asks). i also have an ISAT AU! it's currently mainly under wings au or in wings and stars!

interests: currently hyperfixated on In Stars and Time, previously a DSMP fanartist. there's a bit of The Stanley Parable (TSP) and Clock 0ut (C0) thrown in as well

other: feel free to ask me about whatever! i love getting asks it's enriching for me in my enclosure. requests, thoughts, character interaction ideas, that cool recipe for casserole you found the other day...

[dasnercaret]

13, 14, and most importantly, 25

13. oh boy. i mean everything from the loop fight is absolutely fantastic but "This is worse than forgetting!!!!!! I wish I could forget, stardust!!!!!!!" sticks in my mind for reasons i will not get into <3

14. "pretty... TREE-mendous tree!"

25. i like the one by the favor tree too! the one south of isabeau, it's a fun little guy

[dasnercaret]

w- who's the hat man, pillow. who's the

actually i dont make art for myself. i make art so that i can see “#OUGH” and “#AUGHW” and “#WAAAH” in my notifications

[dasnercaret]

15, 16, 17

15. this time i'm gonna go with bonnie! i LOVE kids big fan of kids. i think bonnie would be a delightfully rambunctious bundle of joy to hang out with and i'm sure i'd get roped into something silly. wonderful day

16. Yes. i'm not a good fisher by any means but i love fishing

17. Yes. i would lose immediately or tie it because i don't remember what hands they throw. i would then tell them that they throw the same signs predictably every single time and probably break their game irreparably as a result

[dasnercaret]

okay after reading the abolish croissants wish i do have to come back and ask for #10 as well

funny answer: the boulanger gets nuked from existence, alongside the rest of all french baked goods (the universe hears that i wish croissants to be eradicated and assumes i mean all vaguely croissant-like stuff instead of Just Croissants). my party and i go into the house and i immediately get crushed like a pancake, and that's that for our journey LOL

[dasnercaret]

1, 6, 9, 22 for the ask game? :3

1. siffrin x2 but also while i'm here loop is fantastic too, big fan of the loop

6. hey, i'm you, i failed. don't be me. do better. please

9. i would wish for all mosquitoes to be deleted from existence forever (dodges the question again /silly)

22. oh this one's really interesting - i think i'd probably be a paper type mainly! with a few scissors attacks though, as a treat. i think i'd probably have pretty straightforward names (i tend to be a fairly straightforward person), and they'd be named something along the lines of

generic paper attack called 'Color Burst', deals decent paper damage to one enemy

generic scissors attack called 'Ki-ken-tai-ichi', deals big scissors damage to one enemy with a very high crit chance

aoe paper attack called "Song and Strike," deals paper damage to all enemies with a chance of debuffing them (slowing them down).

also i would have a katana. i make the rules and i say i have a katana