#this siffrin just uses the time loop to torture others

[false-savior]

horrorfrin… idk

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[faislittlewhiteraven]

Been thinking this a while but

You ever think about why the House and King in SASASAaP is so much worse than it is in ISaT?

Like, at first I put it down to just 'different timelines/different worlds' but the more I think about it, the more I've realized it is very much the same world and King and the difference specifically lies with the two game's respective Siffrins.

Why the House is so different: In Act 5 of ISaT when Sif 2.0 is running around losing his mind, the House very clearly warps around him. At first this seems to be just Sif's perception of events but when the friends come to rescue him, they bring up that the rooms were warped around, which means that Sif's Wish Craft doesn't just warp time but also space. Because ISaT Sif on some level didn't want the loops to end, the House grew longer, pathways stopped making sense, they were lead to every room of the house where they had any kind of precious memory with their family (but notably not the rock trap room) etc...

And clearly the same thing is happening to the House in SASASAaP, the difference is Loop/OG's mindset: They want to get through the house as fast as possible without 'distractions' like the very helpful Hidden Library they don't know exists but at the same time they dread the king (dread their friends dying over and over and over) so the path is short and free of bosses (including those 'Nostalgia' star crest Sadnesses), but full of time consuming and tricky puzzles to delay them -even just a bit longer- from what they see as the inevitable end. ...Also the path no longer requires the Keyknife and OG Sif gets outright angry at the Change Statue when the others pray at it so make of that what you will.

Ok, so the Houses are affected by Sif's mental state, but what about the King? The King is a totally different kettle of fish. He very much is not effected by the respective Sifs' Wish Craft but he can pick up on it. And well, how does he react in ISaT when he realizes Siffrin 2.0 is using Wish Craft?

... *Thinks about a hand, squeezing*

So yeah. My theory for why the King is so much worse, especially in the Perfect Route in Start Again is simple: Loop/OG Sif had been looping so long that their reek of Wish Craft's sweet smell was basically covering the whole party and the King, not knowing who to torture directly, responds by trying to kill them all especially horribly, especially on the 'Perfect' route where Sif likely continues hiding their looper status even as they are dying. ...Trying to mentally break them just as he tries to break Siffrin 2.0 in ISaT.

...Which is also why he doesn't auto kill everyone in the 'True' route - because that's the route Sif gives up pretending they're not a mess, meaning the King can identify that Sif is the Wish Crafter by the party's concern for them and their lack of reaction (much like the King did in ISaT), can see that Siffrin is already breaking, and thus being the 'merciful ruler' he is, decides to toy with them a bit, only going for the killing blow when he gets lower on health and starts getting concerned he might lose (which in turn means most of his attention in the fight was on the clearly not ok Sif, the party likely noticed and that's probably why Isabeau was able to jump in and block the King's fatal attack in time).

So um. YEAH. That's my thoughts on SASASAaP's King; he's the exact same as ISaT's King the only difference is that by the time OG Sif reached him the first time, they'd already looped a horrific amount of times and reeked so strong of Wish Craft that the King never even entertained the 'talk them down' facade and went straight for the kill/'torture them into submission' option every time.

Not sure these details matter too much really but I figure it might be helpful to all the Loop lovers out there making wonderful fanfics to consider (circumstances Odile can theorise about if Loop ever gives her enough hints to try, perhaps?) so... yeah. Hope my thoughts were interesting and would like to hear your thoughts on the stuff I didn't manage to figure out like the skill differences between the two parties, and various people frozen in the House having different pronouns and things (currently going with: Loop/OG Sif is not really listening to anything and is possibly misremembering details they don't care about for the later but the former is very much 'I know this is probably because refined mechanics but what if-?!' area for me and I'd love to see in-setting reasoning for it) <3

Edit: Realized I forgot to mention a thing: A sweet scent is never brought up in SASASAaP probably because that might've been a later addition to the plot but I like to think it's more because everyone in the prologue is just so used to it at this point that the party are putting it down to being part of the 'King altered' House while OG Siffrin is completely numb to it at this point, and the King's not interested in talking so... yeah. No one brings it up. ...Might also explain why Bonnie doesn't offer the Melanga fritters: the sweet scent could potentially alter the taste (and also they're not 100% sure Sif likes them) so instead they offer sweets like the candy and Palmiers that would be less effected, the burnt samosas which are 'already bad' and the fish head which probably tastes so strong that Bonnie's less worried about it's taste being masked. But that's just my spitballing for excuses so hope that's helpful for anyone wanting to use this info? XD

[sitten1115]

My brain decided to focus on this prompt I put in the isat genfic meme while I was at work today

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/isatgenmeme/requests

The original prompt I wrote:

Siffrin is an escaped experiment from a secret shady lab studying “impossible” Craft. They don’t remember much details from their time in the lab (traumatic memory loss), including what kind of “impossible” Craft they’re supposed to be capable of.

Details:

-Siffrin was kidnapped not too long after the Island disappeared. A lot of people from the Island were because it was very easy to make them disappear without consequences.

-The experiments involved parasitic organisms known for having weird Craft interactions that don’t normally infect humans.

-Siffrin doesn’t currently remember that part but once he finds out, he isn’t sure if he’s actually Siffrin, or just a parasite puppeting their body.

-Siffrin can do Time Craft naturally as a result of the experiments, but they weren’t ever told what the experiment was about because he was just a test subject.

-They’re immune to the normal spread of the Kings curse but not to tears.

-Make up the Time is actual Time Craft here, though a similar effect could be done without Time Craft.

-Siffrin develops their own version of Slow (inspired by Odiles) that is also Time Craft.

-The loops are a result of Siffrins ignorance of their own abilities, with the power to go back being triggered by that first death.

-Siffrin escaped the lab because of the Kings curse, but he doesn’t remember that day well.

Variables

-The King may or may not be another experiment, depends on what feels most narratively compelling.

-The specific kind of parasite can vary as long as it’s a kind that normally controls the host (for the identity angst)

This idea is inspired by a character in Bug Fables but no knowledge of that is necessary. Also any variations on this idea are absolutely welcome even separate from the prompt. Siffrin as something not completely human is very fun.

The new stuff I thought of today:

escape, facility frozen after obstacle course testing

end of Kingquest

Siffrin manages to unfreeze everyone and free Bonnie before collapsing from the exertion. The King freezes the others again and decides to torture Siffrin to teach the lesson instead. starts with breaking arms and legs, then tears out their guts, pulled out with the guts is the Craftworm which is attached to the outside of the intestines.

switch to a split pov with italics for the worm, which suddenly can’t see and yet feels like everything is too bright, feels cold and exposed. Feels like something was ripped from its head.

Siffrin notices the lack of pain in his lower half (spinal cord damage from where the worm was attached there) and an emptiness in their head. They also see the worm and vaguely hear the King remark about it. Burnt sugar smell gets very strong

Euphrasie has a lot of missing person reports in her office, she was looking into how a lot of people went missing from infirmaries with similar symptoms ~15 years ago. None of the missing people had anyone ever step forward looking for them, the only real records of them were the medical records. All of them were suffering from amnesia and had been found lost at sea or washed up ashore. Euphrasie is half islander and felt some connection to the missing persons despite not knowing them.

-Wishcraft gave them the energy to be able to properly rewind, without the wishcraft they’d only be able to go back maybe an hour

-technically the worm is the one using the Time craft, but both of their minds are so reliant on each other at this point that their desires are the same

-The worm technically never dies, using the craft when the host is dead is instinctive for them

-The worm basically lives in the body cavity, but has a strong attachment to the intestines for nutrient exchange and also is attached to the spinal cord to form a mental connection to the host

-The end of Kingquest is what makes them aware of the whole 2 of them thing as they remember both watching the King hold his guts and being manhandled with no proper senses.

-Craftworms usually rely on their hosts senses but the worm itself does have simple eyes that can tell light/dark and can feel touch and temperature

-They were able to undo the party being frozen because they were freaking out and managed to heal it out of the desperation to save Bonnie but this also burned them out

-Siffrin has scars from the lab including vivisection scars (from the researchers giving the worm itself a checkup)

-hospital trauma because of how similar things would be to stuff that happened in the lab

-if the scars and trauma weren’t discovered by the party because of the eye incident, they’ll be discovered when Siffrin passes out from the craft exhaustion

-Mal du Pays has an exposed body cavity because the craftworm is part of the mental issues for both of them

-the worms aren’t usually mentally codependent on their host but they also aren’t supposed to be able to use humans as a host

-obstacle courses were one of the more enjoyable tests for Siffrin, the faster they were the more likely to get a treat

-malnourished in the lab because the researchers didn’t take into account quite how much energy their craftworms needed, this wasn’t fixed until after Siffrin was ~20 years old

-He was allowed to keep his cloak and dagger because it’s important for someone to have a way to channel their craft and they were having a meltdown when the cloak and hat were first taken away

-Siffrin has issues with thermoregulation which is also part of why the cloak was allowed

-Some of the researchers pushed the importance of enrichment so Siffrin was given access to reading material which helped him pick his name

[lovova]

SPOILERS for In Stars and Time below, just a rant about Siffrin and all the stuff that's happened to him (that I currently know about).

The things that's fascinating about Siffrin is that the time loop is the just LATEST thing that's happened to him. It's not his first big magical event, it's not the first time his whole life has been ruined and ripped away from him by forces out of his control, it's not the first time the gods have seemingly isolated him for the fun of it, if they even noticed it was happening to him at all.

And the first time it happened? Taught Siffrin through their whole life that you DONT TALK ABOUT IT.

Siffrin was out in the water as a kid trying to mess with his parents when the whole island suddenly got buried in a magical 'forget everything about us' spell (or I'm guessing 'wish') and Siffrin literally couldn't remember how to get back. He was a kid. He went to the mainland and couldn't remember anything about himself, because everything about their identity was connected to the island. Even TRYING to remember hurt him, physically.

And the same for telling others about it. Trying to explain what happened to him to other people not only hurt him physically, it hurt THEM physically, causing debilitating headaches to anyone who'd listen and causing the universe to literally rewrite itself and them to sabotage Siffrin's attempts to fix a problem they could barely understand.

And he's just been alone since that happened, in a robe that literally grows with him since childhood, struggling to connect to people when he's trying to develop a personality and identity that won't be forcibly erased minute by minute by the memory stuff. And mostly failing.

AND THATS JUST BEFORE THE TIMELOOP STUFF.

So, yeah, of course Siffrin would literally rather die hundreds of times than just tell anyone what's wrong. That's been trained into him his whole life: they DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE PROBLEM. The problem HURTS OTHER PEOPLE. The act of reaching out LITERALLY HURTS OTHERS and then is sabotaged and erased by the universe anyway.

And, as misguided as it was, the literal only four people Siffrin did reach out to throughout the timeloops all punished him for it. Loop tried to help him through traumatizing him and it didn't work. The head housemaiden had a breakdown instead of helping them. The king tortured him for trying to connect. The Change God LAUGHED AT THEM.

(Can you imagine the restraint and defeatism it takes to quietly watch your friends worship a god that literally reveled in your suffering?)

Fuck, dudes, Siffrin has always been actively punished for asking for help. The dude has been in a lifelong abusive relationship with EXISTING and there's nowhere to hide.

[moonshere]

Another day another ISAT live posting, some more thoughts and potential spoilers

Man man man where to even BEGIN! God this game gets more and more heart wrenching by the minute!!

to be clear, I’m currently at Act 3 I think? I tried to help everyone all at once so I did one full run with no skips to get all the info I needed, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what every else’s pov of Siffrin is like. At the moment my Siffrin is over lvl 60, so he managed to one-shot a lot of the enemies.

How does it look to everyone else? Your friend, the cheeky, pun-loving, trap and puzzle master. Who’s known more for their speed, killing enemies faster than anyone else. And while exploring they don’t look around, they just take the keys in the correct order and manage to choose the correct path every single time.

I noticed that some interactions you can make your friends notice that you’re acting suspiciously. So far I only got Odile to comment on it (and get interrupted rip) and Isabeau to say they will talk later about it. But I’m REALLY hoping there’s a way to get Siffrin’s friends to actually confront him before a loop end so he can actually freaking open up!!!

On that note, I know that I’ve only been talking about Siffrin (I can’t help myself ajdbhsbs they’re my absolute fav and consume my every thought!) I ADORE all the other characters too!!!

Mirabelle is soooooo freaking cute!! (I’ll be honest her character design is one of the reasons that made me want to play the game aidhisns) I’m so so so happy that she’s someone who’s aroace and adores romantic novels!!! There really isn’t that many aroace characters out there, especially one I relate to. But her!!!! It made me so happy!! I loved the scene between her and Siffrin (and that they’re ALSO ace and maybe alloromantic?? Demi??? I’m still unsure haha) their friendship means everything to me!! I also love the subtle way they confirmed she has anxiety! I’m kinda half wondering where she used to live before the House of Change considering how much she talked about how the headmaiden taught her everything

Odile is also so cool!! Finding out that she was only looking for half of her heritage, trying to find somewhere she belongs was something I did not expect but expands so much on her character. At first I thought she was just gonna be the Adult of the group, wise, knows what she’s doing, distant and Too Cool. But this was genuinely so good cuz it showed that Odile is just as unsure as everyone else. Hell, she and Siffrin turned out to have so much in common!! Finding a place to belong but finding nothing but yourself. I loved it so much!

little Bonnie!! They are so stinking cute I would absolutely die for them!! I like how- in a turn on how kids in video games are always put in incredibly dangerous situations and adults let them just cuz they are determined to help- Bonnie is always the one the group wants to protect the most. Even though they wanna help (and they do!! Their heals are lifesaving frfr) it’s always within the limit of their own safety. I also loved their hang out, the hug was so sweet!! Seriously, if anything happened to them I would cry

And lastly Isabeau!! He's so sweet!! i love how much he looks out for Siffrin! I’m not sure if it was a scripted event or that I managed to raise enough sus points for him to notice, but I love how when he noticed that Siffrin isn’t doing ok, he decided to postpone the confession just so he can properly focus later on Siffren’s own mental state! Also also! After looking at the romance novels once again, I almost screamed when Siffren said they were aware!!! They know that Isabeau likes them!! (And their self deprecating comment once again,,,,) Seriously, what torture it must be to see him almost confess over and over and fail everytime!! I definitely want to go back to the ending one more time to see if he ever manages to say it (but man is the king fight long,,,) His hang out was also sweet!! I think also a possible nod to what Siffrin’s home town is? If related to the stars?? But either way, the full on picnic afterwards was so cute!!

I just had to do a full run with them all together once again without any looping cuz Siffrin said so, all the new cutscenes with them together was just the sweetest!! The woodcutting one, the hair brushing, all of it is so soft!! the ending scene where they said they were a family just 🥹🥹🥹🥹 I can’t I can’t this game is too good!! I think the worst part of this though, is seeing Siffrin hoping, despite himself, that maybe, maybe, this time might be it. That all he needed was to be safe, to be happy, to be loved

And it still wasn’t enough