Keeper of Knowledges

:O mORE???? Surely you LIE!!!!

Literally ALWAYSSSSSSS! Any time, any day, any way!

Y’all want more AU stuff? TOO BAD.

I really wannaaaaa >~< but I just do NOT have the energy or the free time ;~;

(HOLD IT TOGETHER.)

The King has been defeated, seemingly for good. Being stuck frozen in time instead of merely disappearing is something new, and it provides some much needed assurance. For just a brief moment, Isabeau feels himself relax. There’s a finality to it all now, and he stupidly convinces himself that his family coming to his rescue meant that it was all over. He really, really hoped it was finally over.

Just a glimpse at the visceral shade overtaking the land put him back in his place.

As the sky splits apart, the very Universe reckoning with a wish it cannot grant… Isabeau throws aside his last moments with his family to keep everything in one piece. He feels like he is at war with the sky itself, damning himself to an eternity of preserving his world… his friends… even as the effort tears his very being apart. Every scar, every heartache, every memory… It’s all coming undone faster than he can fix.

And yet. He still. Hangs on.

For Madame Odile. Mira. Bon Bon.

Siffrin… his heart still yearns for them and them alone. He doesn’t care that it’s because of Siffrin’s wish he’s stuck like this. He doesn’t care that he can never be the one to grant Siffrin’s wish, now. He doesn’t even care that Siffrin will never love him back…

He’ll do it for him. He’ll hold it together for all of them. So that even if he can never go free, his family can live on in a burdensome world.

Not quite! He sure gets close, though. Maybe he would’ve learned to if he hadn’t given up on fighting the King altogether, deeming him an unnecessary element of the loops.

Deciding that the King is no longer a threat is one of Isabeau’s fatal flaws.

Isabeau loses the capability to keep any of his friends’ support, especially as he loses himself in his endless pursuit to say the name of the Country… But he realizes he still has one person left that has faith that he can get stronger. Faith in his escape.

Maybe the King is being selfish, perpetuating Isabeau’s self-harming cycle for his own benefit… But then again… Isabeau really misses being touched by someone who doesn’t find him disgusting. And he really, really misses being needed…

In Stitches and Tears: The Isabeau Looping AU

So much has happened in this AU! It’s developed so much farther than I thought it would, and I figure everyone needs an easier way to access all the information rather than the tags. Not only does my AU get a name, but it also gets this MASTERPOST!

BUT WAIT! There’s gonna be a lot of spoilers for In Stars and Time, including Two Hats. If you haven’t completed the game… Whatcha doing here?! Go and finish the game, ya silly!

Okay, so this is actually a really good and important question that I felt deserved a post of its own @urban-witch101

While Siffrin is only capable of equipping one memory at a time in canon, I made it a rule that Isabeau can equip MULTIPLE. Because as we know, he’s secretly a very intelligent boi, and doesn’t forget things like Siffrin.

He cannot unequip his memories, but in the last loops, he only keeps two anyway: Memory of Bodybuilding and Memory of Home

(SPOILERS BELOW)

Great Questions with a whole lotta answers!

So Isabeau used to go through the King fight frequently, trying several different methods to defeat him and extract information. He asked a lot of questions about Wish Craft and the Lost Country (and a lot about the King’s fashion sense because he just couldn’t help himself.) He learned quite a bit early on by doing this, even if he got weird looks from the others.

There was a Bonnie event, in which Siffrin and the King started talking things out completely unprompted, much to Isabeau’s surprise. It seemed like these two had reached a truce, and it finally clicked in Isabeau’s mind for good that Siffrin and the King are a lot more similar than he could’ve ever guessed. But then Bonnie got hurt, and… While they turned out okay, Isabeau may have spent the next few loops doing nothing but looping forward and beating the King senseless in rage. He barely remembers those loops past the haze of anger, but according to Loop they were… interesting to watch.

But now, he is currently on a mission to grind through the loops and build up his EXP to get stronger. Hopefully strong enough to get him out of this. It becomes such a powerful mindset that it becomes a bit of an obsession, calculating what he needs to do during each loop to get himself as much experience as possible. Eventually, he realized something…

i ask specifically because. imagine how fucked up it would be if siffrin (The Pocketful One) felt useless because isabeau found everything, and knew where the traps were, and kept everything. you know the things siffrin is kind of good at. i assume he'd probably learn not to do that (and also that it's probably best to give the items you really don't want to break over to someone who won't accidentally break them)

i think that'd probably hurt to do to someone you love!

Yes, exactly! In this post here, he’s started hoarding the KnifeKey for himself, but this is far from the first time he’s done something like this.

Isabeau collecting things on Siffrin’s behalf becomes a bad habit he picks up for the sake of getting through the House faster, but it’s not malicious! Because he doesn’t consider Siffrin just an item-keeper or a key-finder! It has literally never occurred to him that Siffrin relies on being helpful as an affirmation of being, or else he never would’ve started hoarding.

But, of course, the damage is done and feelings are hurt. Siffrin isn’t the only one who feels the effects of this, either. The rest of the party is also noticeably downtrodden at the top of the House when they realize they barely did a single thing to help save the world.

Isabeau’s not ignorant to it forever, especially not after the key incident. He remembers to leave a few chores and secrets for the others to help discover. He really wants them to feel included and not hurt their feelings again!

Dear Lord… what have you done?

You’ve given them a superiority complex.