In Stars and Time, you play as Siffrin, a nonbinary rogue within a party of heroes just before they face the main villain known as the King. Siffrin is set up as a support character for Mirabelle, a housemaiden for the religion of Change, and the hero who has been exploring the land, gathering all the people within the party, and leading the charge against the King and saving the world. However, upon the final day when the party reaches the King’s castle, Siffrin learns that they can loop to the start of the day and is the only one who remembers anything before the loop. Siffrin uses their newfound power to guide the group through the traps and enemies in the castle to help them defeat the king, but this takes numerous loops to achieve this, and Siffrin continues to try various means of saving the world. On top of each loop, Siffrin would hold conversations with their party members, and during one such conversation before their party reaches the castle, decides to hang out with Mirabelle to talk about her dilemma.
As a housemaiden of Change, Mirabelle has a duty to her faith, a faith that she loves and believes in immensely. However, as part of her belief, she is needed to undergo changes to herself, which is normally fine with her as she enjoys trying new things, although there is one part of her that she doesn’t want to change.
“ I’m not. . . Interested in that dating stuff.”
As part of her faith, Mirabelle feels pressured into needing to date someone to be a good housemaiden, needing to love a person romantically, as it is believed to be the best way of changing oneself. To Mirabelle, the idea of loving someone romantically and to “Do things with them” makes her uncomfortable, as well as a mistake.
“And it makes me feel like a mistake”
“That I must be broken for not being able to want these things. B-because everyone else can.”
Within this discussion, two parts of Mirabelle’s identity conflict with each other: the first being her faith, whereas the other is her sexuality. To Mirabelle, for her to follow her faith, she would need to move past her sexuality, but to keep her sexuality would mean not changing and not following her faith. This conflict is a major point of insecurity for her, and makes her question her own identity as a housemaiden, causing her to doubt whether or not she is truly the hero that everyone deserves.
After Mirabelle laid out her struggles, Siffrin mentions how they too are not interested in doing things with people as well, to which Mirabelle was relieved to know that she was not the only one. Furthermore, Siffrin mentioned an alternative in which Mirabelle enacts change by breaking the social norms and choosing not to change. While initially rejecting the idea, not believing that is how change works, Mirabelle comes to welcome the idea, which not only brings her comfort and joy, but also gives her a newfound confidence in herself.
2 replies on “An Exploration of Identity Within The Game, In Stars and Time”
In this post you use “sexuality” to describe Mirabelle’s (and Siffrin’s) lack of interest in dating people and “doing things” with them. Based on your description however, the game doesn’t seem to be making a bold claim that what Mirabelle is experiencing is related to sexuality. Don’t get me wrong—I understand the subtext is communicating an asexual and aromantic experience, but I do think that it might be valuable to explore Mirabelle’s change-based faith without the category of sexuality at all.
When in conversation you and the game frame sexuality as something that is unchanging, which is why Mirabelle’s feelings are in conflict with her faith. Accepting sexuality as a category in this situation inadvertently creates a new dichotomy between Mirabelle and Siffrin and “everyone else” who can date and “do things”. Her resolution of choosing not to change in order to challenge the norms around her does offer an interesting perspective on how challenging societal norms can bring about change. But this resolution also ignores the other ways that people can experience change within important (non-sexual, non-romantic) relationships. Even in her interaction with Siffrin, Mirabelle is vulnerable with another person who helps her realize that her feelings are real and valid, encouraging her to accept herself as she is. This resolves her internal conflict and offers players another way to understand the connection between change and human relationships.
This commentary feels a little nitpicky, but this game is ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rated T for Teens. It can handle more scrutiny because it has an older audience that could benefit from a more nuanced understanding of Mirabelle’s experiences and asexuality/aromanticism, especially if the goal is to offer that kind of representation.
Interesting analysis! I think that the breakdown of sexuality, or what can be perceived as sexuality to be good points when thinking about representations of asexuality, or at least rejection of more romantic/sexual items. I think that this sort of storytelling is especially potent in the context of video games given the scripts that often play out within them. Firstly, I like how that not referencing sexuality explicitly seems to lend to two possible readings that I think have validity. The first one comes from a reading of sexuality like you discuss, but I think there’s an additional element of simply not conforming to human ideas of sexuality/relation that can be really compelling in games with non human characters. Especially ones that play with the length of time and time loops. I think it allows the sense of eternity to open up a bit more when the characters don’t conform to normal human desires.
I think it is also interesting in the sense that it breaks the tropes seen in so many other video games, especially JRPGs/rpgs in general. So many mechanics are tied to relations with the player character, often in a romantic way in order to increase in power or advance the story (fire emblem and Baldur’s Gate are the ones that come to mind) and I I like how this seems to resist that.