i’m gonna do this. because. i need someone to talk to and this is my blog and i WILL do what i want
soooo i saw a post a while back (can’t remember which one) presenting an au idea: what if siffrin and the universe swapped places, and what if the same happened to mira and the change god?
so.
i drew it!!!
i have a looooot of thoughts about this au (of gods and deities, ogad for short because i think it’s funny). i’ll put introductions + story + my thoughts + additional art under the cut. REALLY long post incoming but please listen to me ramble if you are at all interested
canon-typical trigger warnings and then some and ALL the spoilers (yes, including twohats)
apologies in advance for the weird ass formatting. i’m on browser mobile and i don’t make original posts that often
OKAY HI HI HI
so!!! let’s start with the basics: who has replaced siffrin and mira? you can see some of it in the art, but Evren and Juneau have the taken the places of the traveler and the housemaiden! who are these new casts? I’M GLAD YOU ASKED.
evren is a traveler from the forgotten island studying as much as she can about it and craft. due to this, she has a very, VERY good grip on craft. she can even use forgotten, forbidden crafts, though their use has stained her staff with a strange shade, and seems to have Changed her body in small ways…
juneau is a laidback housemaiden chosen* by the change god to deal with the king. strangely, they never seem to take anything seriously. they joke constantly about serious things, laugh at the wrong times, laugh at the wrong things… it makes them appealing to some, but unsettling and disturbing to most. (*they were really just the only one around, mira would have chosen someone much different if she had the choice. she does not tell them this.)
i haven’t really worked it out yet, but i think this whole ordeal is the result of an offhand wish, maybe while siffrin/mira was wishing for something else. maybe siffrin was teaching mira how to wish and, in an attempt to know more about her forgetful friend, thought offhandedly, i wish to know more about the universe. and the rest is history!
BUT BUNNYUUZ, i hear you cry, WHAT HAPPENS TO SIFFRIN?
hahaha. oh boy siffrin. siffrin is not doing well. their family has just been ripped from him, and they’re expected to just lie down and TAKE IT?!? of course, siffrin will ensure no harm comes to their family, but that replacement? she deserves alllllll the hurt. not on purpose. never on purpose. just small things, like nicking herself with her knife trying to gut something, or one of her spells going off course even though she was SURE she aimed it right… siffrin is always there, watching, waiting for the day she comes to dormont. waiting for that fateful wish. when they get his hands on her, oh how she will suffer.
but before that.
PREGAME SHIT. BECAUSE IT’S IMPORTANT!!!!
in case you haven’t noticed, the gods are much, MUCH more active, here. which includes…
appearing directly! siffrin likes to torment evren (and juneau, to an extent) because of an intense hatred that i’ll talk about more later when we get to dormont. which means he appears FAR more often than they ought to. and speaking of appearances…
siffrin is a stalker no one but evren can see.
the party never sees siffrin, ala loop. if he doesn’t want to appear to them, they won’t see him. and in turn, the party essentially gaslights evren (they don’t know they’re doing that but it still makes her feel crazy), because. well. THEY didn’t see him, only she did. are you sure you’re okay? do you need some medicine? here, let me heal you.
evren and juneau aren’t perfect people, either — not in that they’ve hurt anyone, but that they’re… odd. evren seems to see things, to know things, that arguably, she shouldn’t. sometimes, she’ll refer to herself in the third person/plural* and talk over herself like there are too many thoughts/voices in her head*. she does this a lot after losing her eye, but the party chalks it up to her being out of it. (*this isn’t supposed to be a plurality/DID thing. it’s just a side effect of shoving literally everything as we know it and then some into a human body + brain.)
evren seems to forget to react sometimes and is incredibly blunt in these moments, saying something to the effect of “oh. sad.” upon being told this is a thing she should feel bad about. sometimes, she’ll stare into nothing, but somehow keep up with the conversation even though she was DEFINITELY zoned out???
juneau’s not perfect, either. (gestures at their whole “laughing at death” thing). they poke at people just to see how they react, and has inappropriate reactions to things (though less so than evren, because ISAT!CG probably lived a few mortal lives, as opposed to ISAT!TU who. didn’t.)
juneau and evren seem to have this weird pseudo-rivalry, and the party can’t tell if they’re flirting or fighting. odile and isabeau have a bet on whether they’re together or hate each other. (odile, who voted “they hate each other”, ends up winning by the fact that the actual answer is closer to that.)
AND NOW, THE PARTY HAS FINALLY REACHED DORMONT!!!!
evren makes the same wish siffrin did, but her loops are much different. for one, her version of the house is much harsher (only to her), much closer to SAAPfrin’s house than ISATfrin’s. it forces her to use the dagger she carries much more often than she usually would, to remember keys and tonics and lines, to forget everything else. oh, how he delights in hurting her.
but. there is someone under the favor tree, still.
it isn’t the first loop that evren learns of her guide. it isn’t the second, or third. it’s probably somewhere close to when she’s getting frustrated with the whole thing, when she starts forgetting the location of keys. siffrin gives her loop, but loop does not treat her the same.
loop’s hatred of evren is less intense, but it’s still there. enough to make them be less helpful, more vague, more petty. they are a spiteful person by nature, and, hey, that seems to be the universe’s will – loop can only follow where the universe leads!
(i just thought of this now, but the “but who was the phone?” scene probably happens with sif in mira’s stead, telling evren how much they hate her, how much her loops go against their very being. how she should tell them, and then rid herself from them. it’s probably a lot darker than it is in canon.)
there’s multiple scenes during evren’s loops where loop’s eyes will roll back into their head, their head will loll, and a voice – a voice which echoes but has no sound, an image that is vivid yet is nothing at all – will echo in her mind.
the universe will tell her, directly, how much It hates her.
evren does escape, eventually. after not nearly as long as loop/saapfrin, but more than double the time siffrin/isatfrin went in for. (the number i have in my head is somewhere around 600 to 1,000, depending on how cruel siffrin is.)
unfortunately. siffrin had been HOPING, that all of this would make their party hate her, so he could sweep in and take her role and nobody would be any wiser. but of course. that isn’t how it goes, that’s not in the script. they never lash out at her, even when she lashes out at them. they just respond with concern and care and offers for help.
they care.
they have replaced you.
so, naturally,
(read text from bottom to top)
siffrin does NOT take this well. i don’t know what, exactly, happens, but EITHER:
a) mira manages to convince siffrin to hold off on the suicide and talk to the party first, or
b) gravity falls weirdmageddon/the apocalypse
the image above depicts option b, because it was the first one i came up with. i like option b best, so let’s talk about it!
siffrin is not taking their replacement well. his party had said they loved him, so why? why replace him so easily, unless they never truly loved him at all? siffrin tells no one about their feelings, about their growing resentment (except evren, because in his eyes (er, eye) she deserves to suffer). over the course of the party’s journey across dormont and evren’s journey through the loops, siffrin’s resentment builds into outright hatred and then malicious/homicidal intent.
siffrin will kill her and take back his rightful happy ending even if it is the last thing they do.
so. they start the apocalypse. the sky tears asunder with a strange, swirling mix of bright shades that remind one of blood and broken rotting failing, the clouds covered in shades similarly strange and painful to look at. even weirder, the actual change god comes down from wherever she resides and explains that, yes, the world’s ending, but we can fix it with the power of friendship! no, really.
so. they have a journey and have a bigfrin moment probably (maybe sif is close to the scale of the universe in form instead of taking a discreet mortal one) and everything ends in peace and rainbows.
BUT BUNYUUUUZ! you cry, WHY IS THERE A COLORED VERSION?? ISAT IS A MONOCHROME GAME!!!!
well. you see, sometime before or after siffrin reunites with the party (depending on whether you go apocalypse route or not), siffrin… breaks the wishes binding to the island and the lack of colors.
(don’t worry, juneau is SUPPOSED to look bad in color! it’s funny!)
aaaanyway! these wishes have been around for a long time, so, even though siffrin’s a god (THE god, one might say); he still gets VERY sick. so sick that mira worries they might die!! he doesn’t, though. and the first stop on the party’s new journey (now with two gods by their side and WOW how often do you say THAT sentence?) after siffrin gets better is… auroria!!! otherwise known as the forgotten island. everyone is safe and sound! including evren’s biological family, which siffrin is TOTAAALLY normal about!!! mhm!!!!!! yep!!!!!!!
don’t mention how siffrin slips out during the reunion, it’s fine. he just needed some fresh air!
anyway, after yet another confession of identity which siffrin TOTALLY doesn’t cry through, he gains a family that should’ve been theirs and a new pseudo-sister in the form of evren, and a new pseudo-sibling in the form of loop. they’re all normal about this!
(there are so many loop parallels to make here. i definitely don’t quote loop’s monologue like 17 times in the unfinished fic where sif reunites with their family.)
WHAT ABOUT MY SHIPS, BUNNYUUZ?
isabeau doesn’t fall in love with our new arrivals. maaaaybe he and juneau have a weird fling, but not an actual crush like canon isafrin.
however. he DOES still fall in love with sif!!! do with that what you will.
ANYWAY SO THAT’S ALL I HAVE FOR THIS AU RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR I KNOW THIS POST IS SO LONG!!!! I HOPE YOU LIKE MY AU. I HAVE TO PUT IT OUT THERE BECAUSE I HAVE EVREN BRAINWORMS AND I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO!!!!
PLEASE ask me about this au. i’ll answer to the best of my ability!!!
(i’ll put trivia HERE because tumblr erases the tags. and by “trivia”, i mean thoughts i have that aren’t lore-important but are still fun! you don’t have to read this part.)
(in the “siffrin stalks the party” comic evren’s eyepatch is on wrong because keeping characters on model at 4am is hard. and the person who calls for evren at the end of it is isabeau. that’s right!!! special nicknames for ogad!!!! isabeau calls evren “ev” and calls juneau “jun”, probably, i don’y know how the name is pronounced. bonnie calls evren “ren” and juneau “neau”, which juneau thinks is funny because it sounds like bonnie is always telling them off (i don’t know, i haven’t looked up how the name’s pronounced) so they let happen.)
(i can’t remember the trivia i had…. um. oh! evren is an oc i’ve had for at least a year but i forgot about her a while back. originally she comes from an isat kingdom au where the isat gods rule kingdoms (evren frost, juno, and reina kanzaki (expressions), i think). the whole “siffrin swaps places with the universe” is a concept i’ve illustrated once before, though not to this extent. in that au evren was an alcoholic… which i could probably re-incorporate. the design for that au is also where the weird star shawl comes from! which IS a separate clothing item.)
(um. um. oh, i know!! if you’ve noticed, i only refer to siffrin with he/they. that’s because i think siffrin only has “it” as one of their pronouns to make their followers not feel bad about constantly misgendering him. similarly, evren would probably be she/it if she cared/had the opportunity to explore her gender. their pronouns will probably switch sometime post-loops.)
(evren is probably an islander name. i knowww nothing came from the island and i knowwww wales probably doesn’t exist in the isatverse buuuuut. the name LITERALLY means the universe. come onnnn let me have this one thing!!!! heard somewhere that juno means change, but all i got was young/youthful, and juneau is the french version…. i guess that can mean change, in a weird, roundabout way.)
(speaking of names, mira probably helped name the human gods because sif would’ve called evren “uni” and change… well. change. i mean, they named themself “loop” when forced to pick an alias. put that thang in a forest and ask them to pick an alias and they’ll name themself tree.)
(okay now i go. i shake my brain for loose change (lore) and i hath come up empty. goodbye)
