this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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If time is stopped for the sitter, being able to manipulate his body (tattoos) means the Djin was stretching the rules a bit.
perchance the Djin is the one telling the story? This would mean the Djin is free, unless forced to tell this story...
I think you misunderstood me. Without time passing in the body of the "sitter", he can't be tattooed. Arguably, you couldn't even manipulate the relative position of a single atom to another within his body, much less penetrate the skin with a needle.
It could be more like pens and marker on the surface, rather than needled tattoos. That might work, and still ‘count’ as tattoo for narrative purposes. But really the same problem applies with the chair situation, which is arguably harder to explain away, since he falls to the floor without the chair. Really, if his time is fully stopped, he should be hovering when chair-less.
Perhaps time isn’t really fully stopped, so he can be aware of whats going on (as it sounds like he might be). That sounds very much like a djinn thing to do.
I agree on the last bit, and also on the pens and markers. The chair thing is a gray area - I could picture time being frozen within the silhouette of the person, while gravity still applies to the object (gray area because gravitons) and it can fall, just not take any damage.
If time were slowed down for the sitter, it would seem that everything else is moving at high speed and thus any contact with the outside world would be like getting hit by a bullet. From the perspective of other people it would be as if the sitter were made of aerogel. You could just smush their bones and internal organs around with no effort at all. Since time is stopped the effect must be even more pronounced and the sitter would be obliterated by absolutely anything
That's not the premise of the story. Time is stopped for them. You can't move any object without time passing.