In Stars and Time - Mental Illness, It Can Happen To You!

Anyone who's been following me for a bit may have noticed that around the end of December 2023/start of January 2024, I became absolutely obsessed with an indie game called In Stars and Time. I wanted to spend a little time talking about why.

Before that, if you haven't played the game yet, I urge you to at least give it a try. There's a demo available, and you can purchase it on Steam, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.

Spoilers ahead, as well as content warnings for discussion of mental illness, trauma, self-harm, and other similar warnings. Any warnings will generally match those for In Stars and Time itself, which has a convenient Content Warning page (the website is a tad glitchy and may redirect you to the pre-release CW page - just click the "content warnings" link at the top of the page if that happens!)

In Stars and Time is at its core about mental health. As I believe the developer insertdisc5 has said - MENTAL ILLNESS! IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!

If you've played through the game, this is extremely obvious once you're in the final time loop, and increasingly obvious beforehand. Siffrin has a lot of trauma and they do not handle it well. But I suppose we can start by talking about the way this is represented in gameplay - Time Loops.

The elevator pitch for this game I like to give is "You're at the final dungeon of an RPG and it's shockingly hard. Luckily, turns out you can loop time until you succeed!" Gets the core idea across. It's a time loop game. If that grabs someone's attention, I always tell them to check the content warnings and take them seriously and I mean it. It won't get everyone of course, but it does handle these topics with an honesty and severity that I respect, even if it does make it a tad risky if any of the CWs do happen to be triggers for someone.

Anyways. Time Loops. How do they tie into Mental Illness?

They are Mental Illness. Or rather, they are a direct metaphor for the impacts mental illness can have on someone. Siffrin is forced to repeat the same two days over and over and over and over and over and OVER again. "I can handle this, it's no problem, I can deal with this, I don't need to tell anyone, I'm the one who is in a position to deal with this, it's not their problem!!"

When you have mental illness, you can often find yourself stuck in the same unhealthy patterns, repeating behaviors over and over again. You can tell yourself it's fine. You can tell yourself you can handle it. You can tell yourself no one needs to see you struggle. Sometimes, you can even try to convince yourself it's a strength. For a long time I told myself my autism was purely a strength, no disability to it whatsoever. That's... such a lie. There's a lot of positive to it, I wouldn't give it up, but it is undeniably disabling.

And this is what Siffrin does. They convince themself it's a strength, they don't need to tell anyone, no one needs to see them struggle. He finds himself repeating situations over and over. Where he hurt someone before, he can try to be kinder. After the ways things go wrong for him the first time, the first several times, the first DOZENS OF TIMES, he slowly bottles it all up. Every time his actions harmed others, even unintentionally, he slowly shoved it all inside himself. He tells himself it's fine. They truly believe it's fine. But they're harming themself by doing this. Every little way they've failed is a nagging destructive weight upon their mind.

I have borderline. Not diagnosed, I refuse to get diagnosed. I was diagnosed as autistic and that closed a lot of doors for me. Borderline is significantly more stigmatized. Borderline is what's called a "cluster B" personality disorder - associated with emotional volatility and sometimes "strange" emotional reactions that don't make a lot of sense to more neurotypical people. Borderline is believed to be a trauma response - possibly to abandonment, whether physically or emotionally. The way I'd describe my experience with Borderline, it's like if you cranked RSD ("Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria") up to 11 and then paired that with a tendency to lash out viciously at people. That lashing out is referred to as "splitting", a behavior where you involuntarily classify someone as "Purely Good" or "Purely Evil" and then act irrationally but accordingly. You can easily imagine how that might have negative effects.

I think in my case, my borderline is a result of my autistic meltdowns getting tangled up with the relative emotional neglect from my parents and the social abuse I faced at the hands of the internet in the early '00s. I was told so many times that "autistic kids cause their parents to divorce". The way my parents fought... wasn't too severe, tbh, but combined with everything else, you can bet 8 year old me was absolutely terrified, especially since I already felt like my parents didn't love me (they did, they just didn't express it in a way my mind comprehended).

With borderline, I have encountered so many situations where I end up splitting on someone and it just spirals from there. It's the same shit, every single time. 95% of the time? I'm splitting on myself. Telling myself I'm horrible and irredeemable and evil. The other 5%, I'll split on someone else, but it very quickly shifts into splitting on myself instead.

It's. The. Same. Shit. Every. Single. Time.

I bottle it up. I tell myself I'll do better. I do do a little better. But I always lash out at myself, harm myself, even if I don't realize it. My best coping strategies are also self-harm (namely, isolating myself until I can calm down - both separating myself to get needed space while also "punishing" myself with the very abandonment I fear and that drives my borderline).

I think I would have only gotten worse, tbh, even if I got better at hiding it, if not for the fact that I have friends who are stubborn and know when something isn't right with me and they know I'm struggling and they are very, very good at getting me to open up and be honest with how I'm doing. It's not totally on them of course. I have had to put in a ton of work towards being able to be open about my struggles. But that openness, that communication, that has strengthened my relationships and made it so much easier to handle. Having people who know what I'm going through, who are willing to give me the space while also not abandoning me... it has helped so much. I still have a long ways to go. But. I'm getting there.

Back to ISAT. Siffrin... also has incredible friends. They try so hard to be there for Siffrin. They also have their own shit going on and can't always give him what he needs. But Siffrin, unlike me, doesn't open up to them. He bottles it up. He shoves it down. He doesn't build that line of communication that makes it so much easier to cope and to heal. They have no idea what's going on with him. He keeps looping, repeating the same two days, the same mental health "incident", over and over again, just like me, just like so many who struggle with mental illness. The. Same. Shit. Every. Time. He tries to stop doing things that hurt them unintentionally, but he puts it ALL on himself in the process.

And it breaks. Him. Down.

Siffrin retains his experience and his levels with each loop. His friends do not.

As Siffrin becomes stronger, his friends start to notice something is "off" about him.

At one point, when Siffrin is at least 20 levels above them or so, they call out "wow Siffrin you seem so put together!"

Siffrin is terrified of this. They're Noticing.

At one point, Siffrin fucking snaps and destroys the tutorial enemy.

His friends are terrified of this. The bottle cracked. They don't have the communication to know what's wrong.

They all take a photo on the third floor. He smiles. It's fake.

He goes through the same. Old. Shit. And he detaches. He dissociates. He begins to not see the people around him as people, just actors in a play. They react the same way every time. How can they? He won't give them anything to work with. They don't know. How can they help, how can they do something different, if he won't let them know there's a problem?

It is subtle, but I like the implications that your level and your experience in ISAT are correlated with how much you are struggling internally. Siffrin naturally reaches a far higher level than everyone because he bottles it up. The rest... they don't remember those fights, so they lose the exp, but in a sense they're also letting the stress go? They have healthier coping mechanisms. Not always perfect, but they're not bottling it up. This isn't strictly by their choice, the analogy isn't perfect, but there is at least something there.

As you progress further, learning more and more, Siffrin gets increasingly distraught. Where at first they thought the loops were a strength, they quickly became a curse that they refused to share with anyone. This shift in perspective happens the moment they thought their struggles, their trauma, was over... and the time loops kept happening. In a sense, they're a maladaptive coping mechanism. Something ultimately harmful, but was undeniably helpful, even invaluable, in surviving a traumatic situation. But once that trauma has passed, the coping mechanisms persist, and they become objectively harmful.

Siffrin's slow breakdown is painful to watch for how familiar it is. Seeing the ways that this "coping mechanism" that once helped protect them has become such a source of harm, how that slowly wears them down as they try to free themselves of it, but they just can't figure it out. My own struggles with borderline, how my brain built up these defense mechanisms to help respond to stressful, even abusive situations, but how so immediately they became harmful and I just keep lashing out at those I care for, even as I've gotten better it still happens.

Where I have been able to heal even in part, Siffrin has not.

Yet more of the mental illness discussion becomes increasingly apparent as we learn about An Island North of Vaugarde, a country none can speak the name of, a country none can remember save that it exists and that Something Happened. A Trauma, blocked from memory.

Memory loss is an extremely common response to trauma. The brain blocking it out to protect you from the pain, some things better left unremembered.

But memory is interconnected. When one memory goes, it frays at the edges and memories connected to it become fragile as well. Memories completely unrelated to the trauma can get caught up in the crossfire. This is seen very prominently with Siffrin. Their memory is absolute shite. There are so many basic things they should remember but they just do not. It is called out repeatedly. Siffrin will get taught the name of an object, then immediately forget on the very next loop.

As we learn, Siffrin is from the Island North of Vaugarde, the island erased from everyone's memory. Something happened there. Something traumatic. Everyone knows something happened. No one knows what it is. A collective blanking of the event, of the island itself, due to a wish gone wrong, a wish to forget or to be forgotten. Siffrin was still young when the island was wiped. They seemingly barely escape with their life, washed up on the shores of Vaugarde. Their family, their home, their culture, everything, lost to some unspeakable trauma. And it spreads and affects the rest of their memory as well. They lost near everything about themself, about their life, their history. It is no wonder their memory is so fragile.

The King, the main antagonist of the game, is also from this same Island North of Vaugarde. He was older when the island was erased, when the trauma occurred. He has more of a life to build his memories on. He seems to be more aware of what actually happened, even if he cannot speak it, he cannot even bring it to mind without excruciating pain. All of his actions, his attempts to freeze Vaugarde in time, they seem to all be motivated by a desire to prevent whatever trauma happened in the Island North of Vaugarde from happening again in a place he finds so lovely and accepting.

The King, too, is coping quite poorly with his own trauma. Maybe at some point I can take a look at the King's own mental state. It may not be inaccurate to say that what he is doing is a form of abuse born of a misguided attempt to avoid the tragedies of the past. An intergenerational trauma story perhaps?

During his endless looping, Siffrin tries to build stronger bonds with his friends by helping them with their own problems. Only... he is not actually trying to help them purely for their own sake. He undeniably cares about them and does want to help, but ultimately it is an excuse for him to distract himself from his own problems. The bonds he builds with them are genuine. They truly are. But... he fails to reciprocate by opening up about his own struggles. And so he is unable to move forward, he is unable to actually be helped by them because he doesn't allow them to. He is still not ready to admit he needs help, he is still not ready to accept that help.

He does care for them, truly. He's just... giving, but refusing to let himself take. Because in giving, he can ignore what he needs to take from those relationships. All relationships are both give and take, and they are so much more than that, but both are undeniably at least aspects of most if not all relationships. I can't tell you how many times I've done similar. I always, always need to be the helper, the one who fixes thing, the one who tries to make things better. When I need help (which... is constant currently - at this point in my life I am being beaten down by a brutal job market while I have bills to pay and little way to pay them), my pride is wounded severely. This does not diminish the ways in which I am able to help others, that desire to help is genuine, but it is also a way for me to either ignore the things I need to take, or a way to "repent" for taking at all.

It all culminates in act 5. Siffrin has tried everything he can think of to escape his loops, his maladaptive coping mechanisms from the trauma of going up against the King. And he just. Can't. Do it. Anymore. He's bottled it all up. The bottle is shattering.

He goes to do his usual thing. He tries to help his friends, to distract from his problems, but he's stopped seeing them as people. He won't let himself fully connect with them. He just. Wants it to be over.

And he snaps. He lashes out. He attacks them for all of their problems, their burdens that he brought onto himself, loading himself down even more while refusing to let them carry any of his own burden.

Of course they are freaked out. They don't know what's happening. He's become so suddenly cruel, like he's a completely different person. They don't know if they can trust him to keep it together in the fight against the King. So they resolve to leave him behind - they aren't abandoning him, they aren't abandoning me, but they have bigger issues right now, and they don't have the ability to help me him right now and they need space and they will be back for me him they WILL.

But Siffrin only hears that they are leaving me him behind.

So Siffrin goes off on his own. To ascend the house, solo. To confront the King, his trauma, by himself.

And it nearly kills him. Not just his trauma, but all of the self loathing that has been building inside him with everything he's bottled up, everything he's refused to share.

His friend arrive at the last moment. They stop the King. But Siffrin... Siffrin is too far gone. He has nothing but hatred for himself, for those he feels abandoned him, for his own failure to solve my his own damn issues.

And he explodes. The true climax of ISAT... Siffrin is the final boss, and you play as him. You have two choices - lash out at your friends, your family, for abandoning you, or harm yourself, cut yourself, kill yourself, destroy everything you so despise because you are everything wrong with the world.

"Tell us! Tell us what's wrong!"

Despite everything, they don't give up on Siffrin. They don't give up on me.

They heal themselves, or they heal you, depending on what you choose. And they push. They press. They want to know what's wrong. They want to help.

Siffrin tries to bottle it all up again, loop back to the start, pretend it never happened.

But that won't solve anything.

They won't let you. They won't let me. They won't let Siffrin.

Tell them what's wrong. Share your burdens. They can handle it. They can help.

No one can do it on their own. They couldn't do it without you. Why should you be any different? Let them shoulder your burdens with you. You can figure it out together.

You want to stay with them!

And they won't leave! Maybe for a time, but they'll always be your friends, your family! The parting is temporary!

They are not abandoning you. It will all be ok. Even seeing you now, at your absolute worst, your lowest point, all they want is to help you.

When all is said and done, they let you know that they will be holding you accountable for the way you lashed out at them... but that's for another day. For now, you need support. You deserve support. Because you're you.

In the end, when Siffrin has finally opened up to them, they also lost their iconic hat. They always hid beneath it before, in combination with their cloak, to stay somewhat closed off from the others. With the loss of the hat, one of their remaining possessions from the Island North of Vaugarde, they are beginning to move on from their trauma and they are beginning to open up. They still have the cloak, their home will always be a part of them, but it will not do to let themself stay chained to it, and it will not do to hide away and refuse to be vulnerable with those who care for them.

I want to close by talking about Loop. Loop is an enigmatic figure who aids you throughout the game, the only one who knows that you are Looping, the only one who knows what happens in each Loop. They've been an invaluable source of aid, but they've also always been a little sketchy. A little too mischievous, a little too knowledgeable, and coming across as somewhat manipulative.

If you do the right things throughout the game (namely, examining a silver coin Siffrin has had since their time on the Island North of Vaugarde, once to remember a traumatic incident and once again in front of Loop), you can return to Loop in the epilogue and they will still be there. And you can learn their true identity.

In another time, in the same timeline as the prologue, Start Again Start Again Start Again, Siffrin failed to escape the loops. They made a wish - not to stay with their friends, but for someone to HELP THEM.

And so, in a cruel twist of fate, Siffrin was made to help Siffrin. This original Siffrin became Loop and was destined to help the next Siffrin escape the loops for good.

Why can that me escape, get help, start to heal, while I can't? While I'm stuck suffering for all eternity?

Bitterness. Envy. Anger.

Why can those other people with the same mental illness as me heal while I can't.

How dare they.

A final, secret boss against Loop. Win or lose, it doesn't matter. You're able to get through to them. They're not a lost cause. Because you're not a lost cause. You escaped thanks to them. They can do it too. You'll be there for them until they're ready.

I don't have much to say that the game doesn't already say. By the time of act 5, this has all become explicitly textual. I just hope that I have been able to impart why this game had such a huge impact on me. I will never forget it. It is easily one of my favorite games of all time.

Thank you so much, @insertdisc5. You've made something truly incredible. I have rarely, if ever, felt so seen in such a painful and personal way. Some of the most horrible things Siffrin said in act 5 are things I have said to myself, to my friends, word for fucking word.

And even at Siffrin's lowest point, his friends still love him, they still care for him, they just want to help.

You are never unforgivable. You can always improve. You just need to be willing to open yourself up to those who care for you, let them share in your burdens just as you share in theirs. And if you fuck up? That's ok. You can get yourself back together. You just can't give up. You have to keep trying.