there's a fine line between being wary of manipulation and becoming completely paranoid because you get very close to the realisation that pretty much all human interaction involves doing things we hope will lead to a result we like
this post is about a lot of things. it's about my ex saying it was manipulative to talk to them in a cute voice because that influenced their emotions. it's also about someone on this webbed site saying being funny is "engagement farming". like yeah every single conversation you have is going to be "manipulative" if your standard for that is "did something with the goal of eliciting a response". if that bothers you go live in a hut in the forest and speak only to the trees. I'll be over here manipulating my friends into being happy by giving them compliments
Hi sorry I was busy today but to answer your question: I fucking love clonekissing, it can be about self-love it can be about plurality it can be about looking in the mirror and going "damn what a hottie" it can be about having a partner that knows you as intimately as you know yourself without any shame it can be about seeing the existential implications and smooching about it and more or all of the above
nobody ever talks about how selfless it is to choose, over and over again, to not commit suicide. nobody ever acknowledges the tremendous sacrifice suicidal people make every time we choose not to kill ourselves. when a person who is suffering so horribly that death seems like their best option decides not to take their one way out, and to instead remain in hell, day after day, year after year, because they don’t want to hurt the people they love, they are doing something extraordinary. not killing yourself when it’s all you want to do is the purest act of love i can imagine. dying for someone is easy – you don’t have to deal with any of the consequences, you have your moment of nobility and then it’s all over. but living for someone, when the simple fact of consciousness is literal torture for you? every single suicidal person who ever made a choice to not kill themselves in a moment of misery is a goddamn hero in my eyes. wanting to die and still surviving is an act of titanic courage and self-sacrifice. we deserve more credit for it.
While we’re talking about censorship, I need everyone to stop playing this little amnesia game where we pretend not to remember what internet and fandom has looked like for the past 20 years. Weird and taboo porn has always existed, it used to be a LOT easier to access, and you won’t die if you look at it. We simply cannot continue placating the crazy mob of people who are scared of sex and love overstating harm, they’ll call you a pedophile literally no matter what, and they’ll roll around in their cognitive dissonance like a hog in mud when you point out that the other group calling you a freak and a pedo are the conservative alt right. Fucking exhausting being a fag and a pervert in 2025.
Cloning myself to have someone to do all the chores and take care of me but unfortunately she is also disabled so we wind up just hanging out on the couch together getting high and having hot clone sex
Being anti-endo baffles me actually. Wdym it’s unrealistic for the human brain to create more beings per body just cause it wasn’t caused by trauma. The human brain is so complicated I think the most unrealistic thing is expecting it to follow your rules actually.
One of the most well-known cartoon tropes in existence is someone having two invisible extra versions of themselves sitting on their shoulders arguing about the best course of action, and it's considered a highly relatable visual gag. There's an entire therapy modality based around viewing your mind as a collection of parts with jobs. Having a work persona you put on like a set of clothes for 8hrs a day is considered an almost universal experience (there's even a popular TV show about it!). A common way to describe being in a weird mood is "I don't feel like myself today".
But sure, it would be totally unrealistic for someone to just naturally have multiple separate people inside them.
When it comes to queerness, I think a lot of pluralphobia comes from the way that most singlets just do not accept that the plural things they do not understand and will likely never understand can have very large effects on our identities. They (mostly, often, generally – there are exceptions, but exceptions are not the majority) don't get what it's like to not remember what you were assigned at birth or what parts your body has, they don't get what it's like to view your body as nothing more than a flesh vessel you're not all that attached to, they don't get what it's like to have memories of an entirely different life, they don't get what it's like to not have any personal experience with growing up because you came into the world bodily an adult, they don't get what it's like to sense someone else's feelings or confuse them for your own; they don't get what it's like to have to navigate the confusing line(s) between polyamory and monogamy, or between different kinds of relationships, because you may not feel the same way tomorrow as you did today, and tomorrow's "you" might not be you at all, but someone else.
They can conceptualize these experiences as Plural Things but cannot comprehend that if a Plural Thing affects your gender, sexuality, relationships, etc., then it's also gonna be a Queer Thing nine times out of ten. When it's a Plural Thing, they can just shrug and say they don't get it. But when it's a Queer Thing? When it becomes something that challenges their understanding of queerness? When we take up space because our plurality and queerness cannot be separated into neat little boxes? That's when they throw a fit.
And I'm not surprised, because I saw the exact same thing happen to autigender people a few years ago when they blurred the lines between what was an Autism Thing and a Queer Thing. People love to talk about intersectionality and say, "we need weirder queers", but they can't handle it when someone dares to say, "This thing that affects the entirety of my life naturally affects my queerness, too, since gender/sexuality/the relationships I am or am not in with other people/my relationship with my body and what I choose to do with it/being queer is/are a part of my life."
Tough shit. You don't get us. I thought that didn't matter? Wasn't that exactly what you were claiming not too long ago, that you need to respect someone even if you don't "get" them? Now, I'm seeing so-called "inclusionists" backpedal on that, but tough shit, we're not going to silence ourselves so you can continue thinking of queerness as this neat, simple thing that never overlaps with other categories. We're here, we're queer, and we're more-than-one, too.
I'm plural and queer and those things cannot be separated. Nice to meet ya.
Another fic for @mari-lair ‘s Siffrin? More like Sif’s Out AU based on this memory exclusive to it. This one got a lil long, as I think y’all can see. Also I enjoy writing Odile. Apologies for any formatting opposed, I wrote this on my computer but had to upload on my phone.
No major CW’s beyond just “Odile questioning Siffrin’s mental health.” Enjoy!
It hadn’t been too long since that one loop. That loop where they found out just how good Siffrin was at pretending to be fine. How convenient that not long after, Odile got a skill to deal with it. Memory of Liar. It allowed her to know when Siffrin was lying (albeit not by omission, but still). Ideally, it would be a niche skill at best, one to keep on for a loop or two and forget that she had-
“Hey Odile!”
Siffrin began his usual greetings. Seems Mirabelle reminded him about the clocktower “sleepover” this time. She must be feeling nostalgic; they’d all planned to meet up at the clocktower afterwards anyways, so there was no need to send Siffrin on a quest to go talk to them all, but given how low he got, how useless he felt, it made sense for her to give him a task. Would it be too cynical to say Mirabelle was establishing a baseline? Perhaps.
“So, what will you do after?” Siffrin asked her.
After. Gems, at this rate such a thing felt laughable, but she bit her tongue well enough. What had she planned to do after this? So much time had been spent on loops and the breaking of them that leaving Dormont was starting to feel like more of an impossibility than beating the King ever had been.
“I’ll probably go back to Ka Bue,” she said. It seemed like the next most logical step. She had a home there, after all. Besides, it might be nice to get far, far away from Dormont.
“And wrap up your research?”
“Research?” Oh, right. Her fake research.
“Your research into cultures-ology?”
Had he said that last time? When was the last time Mirabelle called for a sleepover? Gems, she didn’t like this.
“Cultures-ology isn’t a field of research, Siffrin.”
“But it is the field of research you spent your life trying to create…”
“No,” she said bluntly. He looked a little put off by that, so she changed the topic the most natural way she could. “What about you? What will you do after we beat the king?” If they ever get to leave Dormont, that is.
“Come up with my own field of research.”
… huh?
Something about what he said there, it sat oddly in her gut. It felt… wrong. But how could-
Right. Memory of Liar. He was lying. Of course he was, why wouldn’t he be? She knew from the start that was likely a joke, and a joke could count as a lie, she supposed. Maybe this ability wasn’t particularly discerning. She’d have to test that too, wouldn’t she? Would it activate at anything that wasn’t true? Or would it only activate if Siffrin was actively trying to deceive?
As Siffrin walked out again, only then did it occur to her… what did the rogue intend to do when he got out? Well, a question for the others, she supposed.
------
They were back at Dormont. It wasn’t of much use, asking the others. Bonnie and Mirabelle couldn’t remember off the top of their heads, but apparently Siffrin had told Isabeau they intended to start a comedy club… That sounded considerably more likely than them going into research, but she was still inclined to double check. It was nothing wasting a whole loop over, but they’d agreed that next time they looped back to Dormont, Mirabelle would tell Siffrin about the clocktower, and Isabeau and Odile would “switch places,” so to speak. She needed to be the one to hear him, so she had to come last.
As Siffrin got up sleepily, almost tauntingly laid back, he greeted Mirabelle saying the nap was a solid 9 out of ten… The thought that their rogue was rubbing in their lack of exhaustion was illogical, something she knew all too well, but maybe she wasn’t in a particularly giving mood as she squatted in the bushes against the protest of her knee. A few more pleasantries were shared and…
“Where will you go after?”
“Oh! You know… maybe a pilgrimage? I-I suppose this all kiiiiiinda already counted as a pilgrimage, but, um… does it?” Does it if she only half remembers some of it, so much time taken over by these last few days? Or was Odile projecting here?
It didn’t matter.
“What about you though Siffrin. What will you do after?” Mirabelle asked.
Odile watched him like a hawk as he had his little smile, looking up to the sky, and, “Go on a pilgrimage too, maybe.”
“Oh! That’d be lovely,” Mirabelle said.
If only it were true.
Odile waited for them to get to the store—the store she often started at but currently housed Isabeau—forcing herself up and stumbling like a drunk from the woods, knee seizing up all the way. Mirabelle rushed over, using a bit of healing craft on her.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine, I’m fine…” Odile said, though sighed in relief at the healing craft easing the pain.
“… so?” Mirabelle said.
“He was lying. He has no intention to go on a pilgrimage.”
Mirabelle sighed but nodded. Neither of them were surprised, really?
“Can you even go on a pilgrimage if all you do is travel anyways? What’s even the difference?” Odile muttered to herself. “Ah, no use now. I have to catch up before Isabeau runs out of ways to stall.” Thankfully it was a short walk. The door was open, she simply had to linger near it.
“What will you do after?” Siffrin asked Isabeau.
Seems she was right on time.
“Eh, I’ll probably just go back to Jouvente. Not sure about rejoining the Defenders, not after they left Mira, but maybe I’ll try some clothing design?”
“Oh? I didn’t know you were interested in that. That sounds great, Isa!”
“Heh, thanks Sif. But what about you? What will you do when we beat the King?”
Assuming Isabeau did a good enough job of recapping what he said before, presumably Siffrin’s answer would be the same…
“Start a comedy club!”
… that one wasn’t true either? She’d honestly thought it might be, or at least that it was fifty fifty, but no. Almost a shame, it fit all too well. Then again, it meant more people were spared his puns…
She tuned out the rest in favor of trying to get a head start on making it to the East side of town. Siffrin tended to dawdle when left to his own devices, but still would be nice to find a way to listen in that wouldn’t be physically painful this time…
Oh right. There’s a building here, right near Bonnie. She’d basically gone blind to it, considering it no more than any other house: pointless. Though she did know the open phrase, well, the only thing of value was the “Long Thingy Thing” (as Bonnie put it), and they didn’t really need to go through the trouble of crafting a bomb at this point. That said, she did know the open phrase, so she could probably get inside, and she could hear Bonnie, but could she hear Siffrin? Then again, once Siffrin was near Bonnie, she could sneak closer.
And so she did. It went off almost disappointingly easily. Gems alive, what she wouldn’t give for something to go awry in a way that would let her dig her teeth into something again. But no, no. This was more efficient. (Everything was efficiency these days, that’s how Siffrin got so bad).
She crept closer as the two talked. Siffrin was needling Bonnie, and Bonnie was rising to the bait. Was it genuine irritation and stress, or just their mimicry of it? She wasn’t sure, maybe both. Not too long in, the question came up.
“Well what about you, Frin? What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll go to space.”
… she didn’t even need the Memory equipped to know that that was a bald-faced lie, but she supposed that confirmation was nice? Well this one was a waste of time. Best to try to slip out towards the favor tree and play her own part.
Four different answers, none of them true. Why would he hide what he intended to do after? Maybe earlier in their adventure together she would’ve assumed that it was for nefarious purposes, but if he was an assassin on the behalf of the King or anything like that, he’d probably have done something to stop them on at least one of the occasions that they killed him. Whatever happened with Euphraise usually seemed centered on him, but he always looked shocked, so it was unlikely he expected it any more than the rest of them had the first time.
So if not foul play, then why? Some charitable part of her mind wanted to say his plans were just embarrassing, but…
As they’d recently learned the hard way, their little rogue wasn’t nearly as fine as he seemed. All it took was one day of them taking the lead a bit too much for him to consider himself a useless idiot. He rarely spoke of home. Never spoke of loved ones, at least not for more than a few sentences. He’d taken losing his eye almost too well. She wouldn’t say that he was at risk of becoming a Sadness or doing something willingly stupid, but the more she thought on it, the more things painted a picture she didn’t like the look of, but couldn’t afford to look away from either.
If she didn’t know better, she could mistake him for a ghost. A spirit. Maybe even some Expression. Nothing but a being floating through to help. But she’d seen him eat, seen his blood splatter on the floor, heard his gasps and screams at hard hits. She’d seen him lose an eye. Ghosts didn’t do that. He was flesh and blood yet missing so much he seemed almost insubstantial. Was he aware of this one some level? And what could do that to a person? Gems alive, she knew he had bad memory, but maybe she should’ve been delving deeper into it. Why hadn’t she? It wasn’t like her to see something so strange, to see someone start stories over and over that never reach an end, to see him speak of things and lose his train of thought halfway through, and she just…
Never questioned this?
Gems alive, her head was pounding along with the beat of her heart, but she screwed her eyes shut and blocked the world out, determined to follow this rabbit hole down. Something was wrong here, and maybe if she could puzzle out what, if she could find the missing piece, she could somehow make him whole again and, expressions willing, maybe that’d be the key to fixing this whole mess. Maybe it’d set them free. She just had to figure out why-
“Hey, Odile, are you okay?”
She jolted, whipping her head around to see, “Gems, Siffrin. You startled me…”
“Sorry,” he said. “Thinking on your wish?”
“Hah, no, I already made that,” she said. A stupid wish to win a coin flip that came to nothing in the end. And unimportant. She had to figure out… figure out…
Had to figure out what Siffrin intended to do with his life, right? Yes, that’s what she’d been doing.
“I was just… trying to figure out what to do afterwards,” she said. Maybe it was manipulative, but if she pretended she needed suggestions, maybe he’d offer something more tangible?
“Hmm? You don’t already know? I figured you’d wrap up your research.”
No, that’s right. He already had that idea in mind, didn’t he? She let out a bitter chuckle. “I’ll let you in on a secret. There is no research, Siffrin. It was just a convenient lie to explain why I’m here.”
He looked at her with a hard to read expression. “But… huh???”
They were off balance. Good. Maybe it’d trick him into saying something real.
“Yes, yes, sorry to give the game away, but I guess I realized that if I don’t admit it now, I might never. And I wouldn’t want to actually beat the King and then have to figure out what next. Plus I figure if I have a plan for after, if I have a goal, I might be more driven to reach it. Whatever helps, yes? So, any ideas?”
He was looking at her like she’d grown a second head, clearly thrown off. “You could… actually start researching something? Or, um… aren’t you writing a book?”
“My journal? That’s just personal notes. It’d be nonsense to anyone else.”
“Oh.”
She waited but, no, they weren’t offering anything up, were they. She’d have to take the offensive.
“What about you, Siffrin? What do you plan to do after?”
“Oh, uh…” he looked around and shrugged. “I haven’t really given it much thought.”
… not a lie. Interesting…
“Oh? Why not? I mean, you’re not even from Vaugaurde, you must have joined for some reason, right?” She could list theories, but that’d likely give him an out. She was wise to his game. At least half his answers, maybe more, were just mimicking what the other person intended to do. Otherwise it’s just what they’d most likely want to hear, save for perhaps telling Bonnie they’d go to space. An interesting outlier, that one. It seemed innocuous, but maybe it was important?
No, focus now. Theorize later.
Siffrin squirmed a little and finally chuckled awkwardly, offering an awkward shrug. “I didn’t really have anything better to do…”
And gems alive, he was not lying.
“I… see.”
Maybe she should let him go, but she needed to know one more thing first…
“And after we all go our own ways, you’ll be alright, right?”
“I guess I’ll go back to how I was before.”
Not a lie, but not an answer either. “And were you happy before?”
CW: Gore, Crushing, Temporary Character Death, Guilt, Vomit.
Hurt, no comfort. Isabeau POV. Technically everyone is there but only Isabeau and Siffrin are mentioned in much depth.
I saw this post for @mari-lair ‘s “Siffrin, more like Sif’s Out” AU and immediately got possessed by angst demons. Please note this post might have spoilers for upcoming comics in that AU, though also, this story isn’t going to make much sense without it.
Also, spoilers for the base game of In Stars and Time too. You’ve been warned!
The King’s Speech washed over Isabeau for the whatever-eth time only to be cut off by Mirabelle for the whatever-eth time. As much as Isa was actually good with numbers, he’d long ago given up on counting these loops, all of them had. It’d just make you go insane. There were enough things driving them insane, including the pit in their guts—snack time had stopped filling it a long time ago, this loop they didn’t even bother.
“Flower for you,” Siffrin said, giving it to their greatest enemy like it was nothing.
It meant nothing. It was just random (at least so Isa liked to tell himself).
Mirabelle put up their Adorable Moving Shield as the King charged his attack. However many loops ago, Isabeau would’ve started buffing defenses, but they were well past the need for that… mostly. Siffrin hadn’t even gotten to level 47 this loop, and maybe they could’ve done a better job of letting him feel useful, but that was fine. It’d reset and he wouldn’t remember a thing. As much as it’d hurt the first few times they did this, it was easier on everyone just to let Siffrin stay down.
Anyways, Isabeau punched at the king with his Paper Mache gloves. There was no triumph to it anymore even as hit points got shaved off like they were fighting a Tristess. Odile followed up with Paper Alpha V. Already down a third. It wasn’t always so easy to beat him. The King’s attack washed over all of them, the majority of it bouncing harmlessly off the shield. Siffrin was almost down. It stung Isabeau’s heart to see the way Sif’s one eye looked to Bonnie, to Mirabelle, then to the rest of them, just like it had the last few times they came here, so he didn’t look. He didn’t look their way at all. No one did.
Maybe they could’ve stopped him if they had.
Isabeau instead braced himself for a blow from the King, eyes screwing shut by instinct….
“I CAN HELP!”
c r A C K
The smell of copper. A horrible drip of blood on stone as the King raised an oversized fist. The feeling of something warm and sticky sprayed on Isabeau’s legs, his torso, maybe just a bit on his face. His eyes opened before his mind could tell them it was a bad idea.
“… Sif?”
Was that Sif? It was hard to tell. There was almost no darkless left. Or any face. Or distinctly human features at all. Mostly just fabric and pulp. The hat, also no longer darkless, floated down from the King’s fist, landing in the puddle of blood and bone dust.
This…
Hah. This was probably what he looked like under the rock. The King is a rock type, after all.
A hysteric laugh at the not-funny not-a-joke escaped Isabeau’s laugh as he tried to take in what he was seeing. His hand went down to tug at the suddenly-stained fabric as though he could still pick them up. “Siffrin?”
How? How did this happen? This wasn’t supposed to happen! It never happened before! Siffrin was supposed to be knocked out! To end up hitting the floor, maybe busted up, maybe bleeding a little, but only normal battle wounds! The King couldn’t kill them until the end, right?
Right?
And, well, sure! Siffrin got the Memory of Useless Idiot. It lowered their stats, but that was fine! With Mirabelle’s Memory of Sadness, they barely needed to fight. And, yeah, they’d been trying to read those Headache Books any time the rest of them looked away for even a second, but it’d come back at snack time, right? Which they… skipped…
“ooooooh….. you must’ve known this would happen. though that look on your face…… perhaps I was mistaken…… either way, Vaugaurde will be preserved.”
They drove him to this. They all drove him to his death. They were supposed to protect him, supposed to make sure he at least lived, and now he was a splatter on the floor again-
“Siffarooni?”
Isabeau reached out once more to the pile of meat and cloth and-
START AGAIN START AGAIN PLEASE START AGAIN-
He awoke to see his hands, free of blood, hovering above grass.
[Isabeau got Memory of Helplessness! When equipped, it makes Siffrin more likely to take damage for him in battle!]
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