Not all is as it seems

20th May, 2025

Tonight, I flirted with a cute boy in order to get private access to an ethernet connection. I did this so I could set up a semi-elaborate instant messaging room over said ethernet connection in order to hide my identity while having a conversation with a woman who was about to get abducted by the pseudo-government, to find out exactly what she knew and whether I should warn her about it. Unfortunately, she started drinking everyone's alcohol and also eyeballs, so the guy in the next room over busted down the door and shot her in the head to the tune of Escape by Rupert Holmes.

Luckily it turns out she was made of water, so this didn't do very much except piss her off. Further shenanigans ensued.

If it didn't become obvious at some point, all of this occured as part of a tabletop roleplaying game.

I really like Parselings. It's a ttrpg with a very cool, very soft magic system, the tagline of which is "Your words are what define you." Many of the occupants of this setting are known as Parselings, people with magical tattoos of the words that define who they are, and which they can mutually combine together into sentences that alter reality.

I could gush for hours about the mechanical aspects of this game, or even just the world and the lore of it. I'm lucky enough to personally know the guy who designed it - he's the gm of the session I'm in. Being that close to the source of the setting gives me plenty of access to the behind-the-scenes of how it works, although he's also very on board with the players taking the reins at times.

The thing I'm here to briefly muse about though, is how strange of a world it would be, if your defining characteristics were printed on your skin.

My current character has a few interesting ones.

Mask. Toxic. Disregard. Double. Switch. Code.

If you can't tell from that, she's an incredibly manipulative and duplicitous character. I think I would break on the spot if I was told definitively that those were the words that defined me - either that, or go some kind of temporarily insane in trying to accept or deny it.

Vivian revels in it, though. She knows who she is, and has no problem making use of those traits. She's an interesting character to roleplay - at once giving me total freedom to act in whatever way benefits her, changing motives on a whim... but also requiring me to quash much of my own inclination towards positive or generous actions unless I can justify their benefit to myself. She's still human, is slowly forming some attachments... but she doesn't show it. She tries not even to feel it.

This is something interesting about Parselings: Despite how mutable the human psyche is, how often we change as people, there's no known instance of a person's words changing after they manifest.

This isn't an oversight in the setting. It's how the magic works. You do not define your words... you are defined by them.

When your first word manifests, it becomes your Aspect - the most core part of your being. From then on, any significant action or emotional shift that contradicts that word causes the magic to writhe and destabilise, risking it becoming totally uncontrollable in a process known as Incoherency; the total erasure of you, and the husk of your body now occupied by some other thing, a being intent on embodying and ultimately consuming the concept that used to define you, whatever it was.

A Parseling fundamentally cannot change who they are, not without ceasing to exist. Incoherency is viewed as a total loss of humanity, but have you really been human at all since the moment you lost the ability to change? Isn't that what defines us as people, whoever else we are?

If you're at all like me, you probably begin to understand why I adore this setting so much. There's so many interesting ways to play with this concept.

I don't really know what my words would be, although I have spent time musing about it. The interesting thing is that other people's perceptions influence them when they appear - they're not universal truth, merely a reflection of the ripples you leave on the world. Your own perceptions matter too, but we all know how inaccurate self-perception can be.

I do think I know a few of the words that would appear on the people around me.

Kind. Stubborn. Joy. Intent. Gift. Discern. Care. Depth. Innocence.

Have fun figuring out who's who. :3

On that note, I am gonna go see what some of those goofballs are up to. Maybe I ramble about Parselings some more some time.

Goodnight folks!

and remember: Clear your browser history after committing corporate espionage~

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