- Adaptational Displacement: This game and START AGAIN: A Prologue are based on a series of webcomics that ran from 2017 to 2020. While it is hosted on insertdisc5's website, anyone who only played the games know little of the webcomics' existence.
- Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The lesson imparted by the game is that you might have a reason why you treat people like garbage, but a reason is not an excuse. However, quite a few players took the game's story as an allegory for mental illness instead of the intended message. These players have applied different interpretations to what Siffrin represents, such as complex PTSD note or autism note . But regardless of the potential diagnosis, the lack of communication and understanding for Siffrin's situation is something that people with mental health issues deal with frequently.
- Cry for the Devil: The King is shown to suffer the same tragedy as Siffrin, in which they both were forcefully cut off from their home country and left unable to remember it by forces outside of their control, with said forces going as far as to kill anyone to tries to resist them. This drives him such levels of desperation that he abandons his morality to prevent it happening again once he's taken in to another country that he grows to love as much as he did his previous. Even after he proves himself to be irredeemable, his tragedy still looms over him, and his defeat where he gets to remember his country just before being frozen by his own attack is presented sympathetically.
- Diagnosed by the Audience:
- Siffrin get a lot of this from the audience, who diagnose him with lots of different mental health problems. Some of them owing to the "Groundhog Day" Loop, and some just in his inherent nature.
- He struggles with loneliness, keeping his problems to himself so as not to "burden" others. He doesn't pick up on social cues, such as Isabeau's very obvious crush on him. He doesn't that realize Odile's "we're allies at best" comment is a sarcastic joke, ending up taking her literally and basing his experiences going forward on that. He gets overwhelmed by emotions easily, but doesn't voice them because he feels like nobody else is going to get how he feels. And when eating malanga fritters for the first time, Siffrin is described as rapidly shaking his hands in a way very similar to stimming
. This has led to it being not uncommon for fans to headcanon Siffrin as autistic. - Even when he's in the King's Castle, Siffrin has difficulty controlling his emotions (especially in moments of high stress), he keeps thinking of himself as worthless and/or cracking jokes at his own expense, and he rarely lets his guard down for anybody, even before the time loops start. And after he's been looping for a while, Siffrin gets distrustful towards the world, including a sense of hopelessness for the future that drags him down to the point that he treats suicide as a big joke. They also have a massive difficulty in trusting other people, to the point it's his Fatal Flaw in the story, as Siffrin feels so isolated that had they just explained what was going on to their friends, the story would have been over a lot quicker. All of these lead to Siffrin being diagnosed by players with complex PTSD.
- He struggles with loneliness, keeping his problems to himself so as not to "burden" others. He doesn't pick up on social cues, such as Isabeau's very obvious crush on him. He doesn't that realize Odile's "we're allies at best" comment is a sarcastic joke, ending up taking her literally and basing his experiences going forward on that. He gets overwhelmed by emotions easily, but doesn't voice them because he feels like nobody else is going to get how he feels. And when eating malanga fritters for the first time, Siffrin is described as rapidly shaking his hands in a way very similar to stimming
- Bonnie displays persistent difficulty with large or unfamiliar words, even ones as phonetically-uniform as "onigiri", so they're sometimes believed to have dyslexia.
- Siffrin get a lot of this from the audience, who diagnose him with lots of different mental health problems. Some of them owing to the "Groundhog Day" Loop, and some just in his inherent nature.
- Ending Fatigue: The game is about re-running the same dungeon over and over again in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, with no variation in the room layouts or enemies to break up the tedium that's going to come with it. While numerous Anti-Frustration Features exist to speed things up and reduce the tedium, you're still going to have to go through it multiple times before you can make any sort of real progress. By around the end of Act 3, it can be pretty clear where the story is going, yet you're given no choice but to just slog through the loops, looking for the one spot you need to go to in the entire castle. It's intended to make the player feel as done with it all as Siffrin, but this is a line that the game doesn't walk very well because it's intentionally trying to bore the player to tell its story. And despite Loop being an in-universe Hint System, their hints are obtuse enough that it would just be better to look up an online walkthrough for what you should actually do because the alternative is a lot of wasted time.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Various NPCs have gotten huge attention from the fandom. Notable examples include:
- Claude, Mirabelle's roomate. Despite only talking at the very end of the game, she's beloved by the fanbase. It also helps that she has a crush on the Head Housemaiden.
- Frog Loving Kid is a good case of an extremely minor character turned Moe due to her quiet, but cute mannerisms.
- Pétronille, Bonnie's sister, despite being mentioned only by Bonnie and never appearing in the game, is also beloved by the fandom, and has many fanon designs, made by people who like to speculate.
- Game-Breaker: As Siffrin gets more powerful throughout the timeloop, he also gets more overpowered. His larger variety of known Craft types makes jackpot combos trivially easy to create, and jackpot combos are already broken on their own because they are a very powerful attack that also brings the whole team back to full health. By act 5, the game does away with any pretenses that Siffrin is any form of balanced by giving him a new moveset that reduces all random encounters to ribbons, with only the King standing a challenge to him anymore.
- The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: While it does have its silly and absurd moments, In Stars and Time is a VERY depressing game where you watch someone slowly lose their mind thanks to a time loop they can't escape from coupled with their own self-loathing. This same seriousness doesn't carry over to the fandom. They shitpost a lot about the rock that crushes Siffrin, or Loop going to the bread bank.
- Jerkass Woobie: Loop is a particularly snarky and rude character, and occasionally does Kick the Dog antics, though not without their better moments. Then it turns out they're an alternate version of Siffrin who couldn't get past the loops and gave up all hope, being forced out of their previous life to accompany this game's Siffrin. After that, they can do nothing but watch as this Siffrin gets the happy ending they couldn't as they break the loops, leaving them with no purpose. This drives them to try and kill him before finding they grew too attached to him to do so, only being able to grieve what they lost.
- Lady Mondegreen: An example originating from text. One of the Sadnesses is named Deuil, but the font causes it to be easily misread as Devil, several players not even realizing their mistake through their entire playthrough. Those who haven't picked up on the Sadnesses being named after French words (and even some of those who have) commonly refer to the enemy as Devil for simplicity.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Odile's low HP battle portrait has become very popular with fans because of the expression that she makes.
- Cat Siffrin explanation
- Why Did They Say That/Like what? Like I'm your partner, waiting at home, and when I finally get to talk to you, all you can talk about is the fun you're having with other people?!?explanation
- Moe: Bonnie. They're childlike in the best way possible.
- Moral Event Horizon: The King is definitely a bad guy from the get go, but you might start to feel sympathy and even understand where he's coming from after you've investigated more about him and learned his true motivations. It's pretty universally agreed that he killed all of that goodwill and secured himself a nice seat in hell by using the party's attempt to make peace as a chance to freeze all of them, and then slowly crushing Bonnie to death just to intimidate Siffrin.
- Player Punch: At the end of Act 3, the player is given the choice to trust the King and head to his side to dispel his curse. Due to his Tear Jerker of a backstory and willingness to give up his goals, the player is inclined to trust him. Cue Evil Laugh followed by him insulting Sif and by extension, the player, for falling for what turned out to be a case of I Surrender, Suckers! before freezing them. If that wasn't bad enough, his subsequent Moral Event Horizon crossing by crushing Bonnie to death just to intimidate Siffrin hammers in just how poor of a choice it was to trust the King.
- Realism-Induced Horror: Though the game has a fantastical premise, most of the emotional barrage the game has to offer comes in the form of Siffrin's steadily decreasing sanity as a result of his insecurities and depression. His failure to escape his problems starts prompting Siffrin to go into self-imposed isolation and use extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms that makes all their problems even worse. Couple that with Chronic Self-Deprecation and severe loneliness, and Siffrin starts heavily disassociating, seeing their body as little more than a vessel and even engaging in Self-Harm. All of which are real problems that could happen to anyone.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: One of the core elements of the game is that you will need to loop multiple times in order to progress, with even the main page asking how many loops it takes to save Vaugarde and defeat the King. A few players have taken this as a call to action to beat the game using the smallest amount of loops possible. Doing so requires a lot of planning and forethought, while only looping when it is absolutely necessary to do so.Answer
- Shocking Moments: The start of Act 5, where Siffrin alienates all of his friends and goes into The House alone, is generally agreed to be pretty hard to watch.
- Stress-Relieving Gameplay: The King betraying Siffrin and the player then killing Bonnie in a particularly cruel manner is bound to anger players to the point of choosing to return straight to his boss fight as soon as possible to beat him senseless.
- Tear Dryer: The Mal du Pays fight is utterly depressing, and even more so that Siffrin is unable to overcome it on his own and almost loses himself. In come his friends with the most hype and positive soundtrack in the entire game, showing they have not given up on him despite his concerns.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Both the player and Siffrin, since they can get fed up with the looping routine so much so that it ultimately leads to ACT 5's beginning, where Siffrin and (possibly) The Player is tired to the point that it really shows. This trope was intended as a tool to communicate Siffrin's increasing apathy and distress, though the game's still seen as engaging to Eastern RPG fans.
- That One Achievement:
- "Behind The Scenes" is pretty difficult because you have to get every single conversation with Loop, and a lot of those can be missed. One of them ("HOLD UP! ME! I WANT TO CHAT!") even relies on RNG, since it's very tricky and can be blocked if you show the Silver Coin on some occasions in Act IV, so it's generally easier to save-scum than to wait for RNG to do something.
- "*reloads dagger* House's haunted" is also pretty hard because it also relies on RNG. Again, it's generally easier to save-scum than it is to wait for RNG to do something.
- "1000 ways to die" is disliked by some fans not necessarily because of its difficulty, or the fact that it's time consuming, but because it requires you make Siffrin commit Suicide with the dagger.
- "OP" is short for "Overpowered" and it's obtained by getting every character to their maximum level all in one loop. It's not hard to do, just extremely tedious, since you'll have to do a lot of Level Grinding against the same enemies over and over with no break.
- That One Level: Act 3 requires a very large number of loops in order to see everything you need to see, talk to everyone you need to talk to, and otherwise pass all the event flags to progress the story to Act 4. Not only do you have to find out where the King is from, but you have to go through Vaugarde and the House multiple times to find everything. A few of these even require going down routes which don't progress the loop, which may require a lot of backtracking and/or forced loops to find. It's going to take quite a while, especially if you're trying to do it without a guide.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: While all main characters have their pronouns displayed in their profiles, the fact that Siffrin doesn't see himself as a man is less obvious to casual fans, since it's only mentioned a couple times in-game.
- The Woobie: Dear goodness, does Siffrin go through trauma in this game. Not only does he have external conflict (the loops and everything that happens within), but also internal conflict (deep insecurities). Both external and internal mix together to create an incredibly hard-to-play-through experience that may make some take a break.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/InStarsAndTime
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