OuthaulDagger

They do not mean the same thing, and it makes it difficult to find one without ending up with a search full of the other. While some members of the userbase use them interchangeably, they are fundamentally NOT the same thing. I was told by a friend that this issue was previously set aside because some people do use them interchangeably, but I believe the current status of the synonym tags section indicates that a great number of authors do not.

De-Aging: a physical reduction in age, using magic or science fiction. May or may not include a mental component. A canon example would be when the pirate Jewelry Bonney turns adult characters into physical babies and toddlers.

Age Regression: a mental reduction in age, sometimes through magic or scifi, but often through normal means, most often as a psychological reaction to traumas, or as a form of play. May or may not include a physical component. Often overlaps with Age Play (both sexual and non-sexual).

May I suggest retiring the main tag (removing it from the suggested list while leaving it intact structurally), introducing 'Physical and Mental De-Aging' for those new fics that include both, and then have the individual tags canonized as their own independent tags? So suggested tags would be "De-Aging," "Age Regression," and possibly "Physical and Mental De-Aging" as a child tag of De-Aging.

This is especially frustrating since the synonyms section include tags like "Physical De-Aging" "mental disability - age regression" "baby headspace" and "Adult Physically & Mentally Transformed into a Child," all of which mean different things and seem to be clear attempts to clarify to readers that they mean one but not the other, or do mean both, but since the tagging structure insists on conflating them, they need to clarify to readers what exactly is contained within.

The fact that these various detailed freeform tags exist at all are a sign that authors are desperately trying to assert that difference to help readers find what they're looking for even if SOME people use them interchangeably.

(It's a show, a performance. Play your part, say your lines.)

But I'm also thinking about the horror of after.

So consider Celine, who, for some reason, got trapped in a time loop. And she got out. And she wanted to get out, she so desperately wanted to get out that she --

Look, she's not media illiterate.

She knows how time loops go in fiction. The nihilism, the depression, the suicide attempts that are always (always) softed by humor.

She knows now why the movies always end after the looping does. Because getting out means living with what you did to get out.

Every attempt. The normal ones where she tried to be nice to everyone, the ones where she hurt everyone around her and her girls never wanted to see her again (the words hurt but they mean nothing. how could they when they would never remember saying them, would never remember what she did?), the ones where she just did nothing and watched as the world ended.

Getting out means living with the person you became to get out.

(Celine supposes she's lucky she only has to live with killing --. Even when nothing mattered, when everything would be erased, she wouldn't have to live with knowing what it felt like to slide a blade through her daughter ward.)

(Small mercies.)

So it ends. And if the girls are weirded out that their typically stoic mentor starts crying and hugging them like they'll disappear well... the Idol Awards were a rough time for everyone, they reason.

But after, Celine thinks about who she became. About the parts of herself she didn't know existed (never wanted to know existed.) (She knows now that she's unbearably selfish.) (She knows now that, pushed far enough, she would sacrifice the entire world to Gwi-ma.) (She knows now that if needed, she could kill Mira and Zoey in less than two minutes.)

(Knows that no matter how often she claims to care for the girls equally, it isn't true.)

(But she's always known that, hasn't she?)

(She knows the quickest way to cut her own throat. The most painless way, the way that makes the loop restart the fastest.)

("Is Celine, you know, okay?" Mira asks.

Rumi gives a helpless shrug. "Has she ever been okay?"

It's supposed to come out as flippant. It doesn't. They're worried about their mentor even though she tells them that everything is fine.