#2K... almost

[biracy]

Actually my own post. People are soooo fixated on whether or not they can "reclaim" xyz slur that they completely fail to consider whether or not they're in a social setting wherein slinging slurs around like candy is actually appropriate. Like it doesn't actually matter if "ummmm I can reclaim" if someone is like "hey this is a public Discord server can you stop saying 'faggot' every other message" because you're still making people uncomfortable by refusing to stop being an edgelord for two seconds. You are not "owning the straights" you're making other gay people uncomfortable and acting like that's political activism

[grantwilson]

we are discussing our childhood passions on the dash tonight

[elfboypussy]

sass master astarion

screenshot paintover! bg is just from said screenshot lmao. total time: 10h

[petrichorvoices]

AROMANTICISM. YOU AGREE. REBLOG

[lilyw-catears]

A collection of life series/hermitcraft text post thingies that I made at 3 am

[eldestsiblingsyndrome]

real world vs action movie characters in never stop blowing up

[lovebunnie]

when caitlyn asked jayce 'viktor is at the center of this, isnt he?' and jayce had a flicker of a memory of viktor smiling down at him. what the hell was that about.

[restingsword]

while i’m sure it’s certainly cool to be chosen by a deity for worship/devotion, i think there’s something beautiful about choosing them instead. having little to no signs from a deity, but seeing them and saying “yes. yes. yes. you are the one i want to devote myself to. work on myself for. be a part of your life as you are mine.” as a practitioner and then setting forth. i personally feel like we don’t have many options in life, so it’s nice to be the one to decide.

[fallowtail]

Big fan of the Hetty Scuttle

[tiffycat]

Long time no timberkon

[bethccassidy]

Alex holding on to Henry for dear life

[immult]

unfathomable sex appeal.

[midnighthybrid1]

Saw this 2k celebration DTIYS by @rorydrawsandwrites , based on her Puppeteer Gangle AU (very creepy stuff, I’ve only recently started reading into it but it’s pretty interesting 👀).

Congrats on the 2k followers broski! That’s pretty friggin awesome!

[virescent-v]

Subconsciously Green-Eyed

Summary: Jealousy? Emily's never heard of it.

A/N: So...I tried to challenge myself to do a 500 word drabble. I didn't make it. LMAO. But lucky for ya'll you get two fics from me within 24 hours! There's no warnings to this one; there's no smut.

Word Count: 983

Emily cast her glance back and forth across the table. It wasn’t unlike her team to joke and lighten the mood during debriefs, but something about this instance was getting under her skin. 

She eyeballed the table, looking intently at each person present trying to figure out what was bothering her. It was the usual group of people; Tara, Penelope, JJ, Luke, and Dave. But there was also a new addition to the table. 

A young, attractive agent from New York. A bright mind in the Cyber Division office, if she were to go by what your section chief said. You were down in DC helping out on the case they were currently working on. Everyone on the team was besotted with you already after only having known you for two days. 

You were a bright light in the otherwise bleak office. You were average in height, but loud in personality. Your optimism rivaled that of Penelope, as did your technological savviness, and your humor meshed well with both Tara and Luke. You were confident and extroverted without being cocky and knowledgeable without being a know-it-all. 

Everyone was captivated by you, trying to work closely with you over the past couple of days. You had knowledge that seeped into various topics that made you an asset at the round table. More importantly, you were creative with directions to take the case that opened up a few different leads that impressed everyone, including Emily. 

As Emily continued surveying the table, you were in the middle of a funny story from your first New York case and everyone around it had their eyes on you. You were leaning lightly into Penelope’s personal space, your hand on her arm, sharing a quick giggle at something techy. You made sure to make eye contact with everyone around the table, keeping everyone’s attention on you. It felt natural, the way you worked the small crowd, and Emily could tell that each member was enamored with you. 

She noticed that Tara and Luke’s eyes were more heavily focused on you than the others, something dark and gleaming. Watching them watch you, their eyes trailing sneakily but lazily over your body, Emily could feel something swelling inside of her. Something unnamed, something she hadn’t felt before. 

As she was internally cataloging whatever feelings were swirling inside her, she didn’t notice the room clear out leaving only herself and you. 

You noticed Emily’s distraction during the past few minutes, especially as the team made their way out and she stayed behind. Her gaze was directed at the table top, but it looked befuddled, distant. 

“Agent Prentiss?” When you didn’t receive any response, you timidly walked around the table and gently put your hand on her arm. You spoke quietly, not wanting to scare her out of her reverie. “Emily?” 

Regardless of your trying to be soft spoken, Emily still startled, jumping a little. “Wha- oh. Sorry, I was in another world.” 

You laughed lightly, breaking the tension a bit. “I could tell. Is everything okay?” 

Emily cleared her throat, still unsure of how to name the emotions rippling inside her. “Oh, ye-yeah. It’s nothing. Just a lot on my mind.” She looked around, finally registering that the team had left. “Are you enjoying DC?” 

You tilted your head a little at her, your eyes softening. “I am. It’s a nice change of pace from New York,” you stepped a little closer to the section chief. “I really like the team. Everyone’s, uh, great.” 

Emily had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Go figure you enjoyed the attention of her agents. She figured you probably noticed the glances that some of them were throwing your way, your personality clinging to the admiration. “I can tell,” she said with just a hint of something venomous. 

Your head tilted a little further as you scrutinized her. You were not as proficient in profiling, but you weren’t blind. You leaned back on the table and crossed your arms over your chest, regarding Emily with a hint of amusement. “Agent Prentiss, are you jealous of my newly budding relationships with your team?” 

“Jeal-? Jealous? No, no. Why, why would I be jealous?” 

Emily felt her face flush, confused by the emotions rushing through her. Was it jealousy? But why would she be jealous of her team showing you attention? 

“It doesn’t take a profiler to spot jealousy.” You walked closer to her, close enough that you could feel her body heat. “You’re stuttering over your words when you’re normally very well spoken. Your hands are clenched at your sides right now.” You trailed your hands over Emily’s hands, loosening them. You trailed your hands up her arms, keeping your eyes on Emily and her reactions. 

As your hands brushed her shoulders, Emily’s breath caught. “I can feel your muscles, you’re pretty tense right now.” Your hands continued north, brushing the underside of her jaw. “You’ve been clenching your teeth and frowning with narrowed eyes since you noticed Luke and Tara checking me out.” You trailed your thumb over her lower lip, which she had pulled between her teeth at your movements. “So, yeah, I’m not a profiler, Agent Prentiss, but all signs point to jealousy,” you said, arching your eyebrow. 

Emily slowly released a breath, gently closing her eyes in a way to relax herself. “Maybe I am jealous,” she whispered. 

You watched as Emily steeled herself, confidence lighting up her eyes. You grinned fondly as you gently shook your head, opening your body language as Emily prepared herself. 

“I think,” she started, her hands landing on your hips. “To avoid all further jealousy, I should beat Tara and Luke to the punch.” She took a deep breath. “Want to get dinner with me tonight?” 

You couldn’t suppress the teasing smile that broke out across your face. “Why, Agent Prentiss, I thought you’d never ask.” 

[apple-onigiri]

hi can you talk more about your reading of siffrin and loop's relationship please. I'm so curious 👀

(omg hii i love your analyses)

well i guess now i gotta huh!! the demons (the people on my computer) are telling me to do it, do it, do it, so here it is!! most of it below a cut! because this ended up being really really long!

so! self-love and self-hatred play a big role in isat in general. the whole story is kind of about accepting that you are capable of being loved, and not, in fact, inherently repulsive so maybe you should open up, siffrin. imagine that. and i'd argue these themes crystallize into their final form with sif and loop and how they interact :) my ants. my mentally ill ants

(this sidesteps the curious meta element of how both the narration of siffrin to himself and loop addressing siffrin as they talk uses second person. it's very interesting but this is already gonna be long enough)

looking at all their interactions, especially through the lens of knowing who loop actually is, gives a pretty good idea of loop's attitude towards another version of themselves, and, by extension, their own self (this is a bit confusing because there are Too Many Siffrins Here)

the long and short is the resentment they feel towards themselves - because loop never went through the realization they're not unlovable - is externalized and often taken out on siffrin.

they are very condescending with how they interact with him. he's just a silly little stardust! so stupid, so naive! knows so little about literally everything. awww, let me help you out, stardust, before you hurt yourself.

on my first playthrough i actually initially distrusted loop a lot because of this. i saw it as the last thing siffrin would need when they already put themselves down so heavily; how they call themselves "stupid" multiple times for any and all mistakes they make and how unforgiving they are to themselves (especially the key hidden in the classroom exemplifies this). but with the knowledge of siffrin and loop starting out as the same person, it makes a stark amount of sense. when you have a mindset similar to siffrin's and loop's, no one will ever be more critical of you than you yourself.

it sometimes feels like loop's forgetting they're not talking to themselves internally and that this is a whole separate being they're talking to that they can't just externalize their own self-hatred onto, enough that they have to backtrack and apologize because hurting yourself in a way that resembles hurting someone else makes you think twice about what you're doing to yourself. there's a healthy dose of regret there, and guilt that they said something you can't easily erase from the mind of the person you said it to.

there is still care in loop's behavior. conversely to the previous statement, nothing will make you more sympathetic to your own plight than literally seeing it from an outsider's perspective and being able to acknowledge that you need help (sidenote, but kinda twisted of the universe to grant loop's wish in the most roundabout way possible. you want someone to help you? okay! help yourself! your other self, but hey, it counts, right?)

(cut here because this is getting out of control and i can't let it appear in unabridged form on anyone's dash, especially on mobile)

as acts go on and quests progress, loop gets these moments of honesty and empathy for siffrin more often. they obviously have been helping before but you know what i mean, don't you. those moments where loop's facade drops and we get a feeling that this isn't them acting, this is their true... shades, lol. examples!!

aftermath of touch therapy! of course they'd know what the root problem here is and how to best help. this is something acutely familiar to them and they're able to tell what siffrin needs to stop spiraling. and!! siffrin reciprocates this! haven't talked ab him and his attitude towards loop specifically a lot but this too is important. i'm rapidly becoming ill btw

forgetting the party's names upon waking up on the meadow and calling loop! it happened to loop before so seeing it happen to another version of you must make one feel... complicated. they patiently remind siffrin each name and make sure they're fine.

honestly, throughout the entirety of the story, but especially by the end of act 4, they find it very crucial to make sure they reassure siffrin they're there for him, that he's not alone in this. they know where feeling completely alone leads.

okay i can't take it anymore i gotta talk about this.

loop so doesn't want siffrin to use the dagger on themselves. it's genuinely heartbreaking to see their distress about the idea

they even try to dissuade siffrin from it later on, when you first attempt to use it, and are very very upset still afterwards

they care about siffrin!! they don't want to see him hurt! they don't want siffrin to befall the same awful fate they met where self-destruction melts into the natural state of being and you just spiral spiral spiral! they don't hate him, and seeing them fall so far from okay that they're fine with stabbing themselves to save time in a time loop where literally no time is wasted because it loops back anyway is awful for them.

this is where loop transforms from the voice in your head pointing out your deepest flaws to one that can tell what you're doing is self-destructive and bad for you and you really, really should stop. the, pardon my wording, tug on your stomach, like the one you get when you're standing over the ledge and looking down. and when you get the stupid thought how easy it would be to fall, your brain reacts by jolting you away. loop is the jolt.

loop is the inner instincts of siffrin personified at many points of the story. sometimes they're hurtful towards him as instincts of a self-destructive person are wont to do, which is justified with them just wanting that other version of themselves to Be Better, Get Better. and sometimes, it's self-preservation they depict; feeling at home with your self and expressing empathy towards yourself and your own awful situation.

when act 5 comes, loop is clearly crushed about not being able to help siffrin out, about not being able to get them out of their despair.

then, just like he's done with everyone else, siffrin rejects loop too. when siffrin shuns loop here, it's out of anger for being kept in the dark, yes, but it's also a rejection of any positive thoughts they might have about themselves.

siffrin's rejection of loop isn't only rejecting one last person they're close to like they did with their family members. it's a rejection of any and all instincts to care for himself and his well-being. it's the same thing that allows him to use crafts with no cooldowns. it's the same thing as memory of emptiness that lets him loop to the point where he died and just keep going. it's what lets mal du pays take form.

this refusal of loop's help is, in my opinion, the ultimate act of self-hatred in isat.

okay depression time over act6 twohats happy times yayy!!!

after a little bit because loop is - kinda justifiably - upset at how their suffering amounted to nothing and now this siffrin gets their happy ending. and they don't!! how is that fair? we have to keep in mind a lot of what we've learned was news to loop too. they spent so long in the loops, not knowing why, to the point where they begged the universe to get them out and help them.

their roles from act 5 essentially swap here. here loop is the one self-destructing and rejecting any help at all, and projecting the hell out of themselves onto siffrin, just like siffrin did in the "friendquests" in act 5.

so i haven't talked a lot about siffrin's outlook on loop before now (when his psyche is not literally split into tiny pieces, that is) but my little pet theory is that, just like they really hate repeating their lines, being all fake, and only do so because they feel they have to, they're often annoyed by loop because they can kind of sense the front they put out. if you hate the way you pretend, these feelings are most likely gonna transpose to another version of you doing the same thing.

but in this fight, the siffrin in it is not the one still trapped in the time loops. this is a siffrin tentatively learning that maybe it's okay to not hate yourself. so, just like act 5 is the greatest act of self-hatred, the ending of this fight is the ultimate act of self-love and self-acceptance, regardless of how it ends but with some caveats to both outcomes.

if siffrin wins, he refuses to hurt loop, stating outright that they don't hate themselves enough to do so. he won't do it even if loop is literally begging for it.

if loop wins, they cannot bring themselves to hurt siffrin. they feel too much empathy towards them. it's impossible to hate him - and themselves - the same after seeing the struggle from outwards.

regardless, they both exhibit the kind of care only you yourself can give yourself after fighting tooth and nail to prove to your own self-esteem that you're worth it. siffrin wouldn't be satisfied with killing loop because it would mean a rejection of some fragment of themselves.

siffrin went through a capital-C Change due to the loops (the theme of change in isat is another thing i could write on and on about), and part of that Change was having a version of you, your past self, still stuck in how they used to be and the situation that made them so. a healthy type of growth means changing for the better, yes, but also learning to love and respect who you used to be. if you met your younger self, would you resent them? or would you want them to know that all their struggles weren't for nothing? Change means leaving something behind but not forsaking it, letting it rot and fester unacknowledged

(insert rant about how isa's Change was actually kind of partial because he decided to completely sever ties with who he used to be instead of being appreciative of the aspects of himself he seems to still like, like being smart, and him resorting to hiding it instead WE DON'T HAVE THE TIME RIGHT NOW ASK ME LATER IF U WANNA but tl;dr actshually isa Change doesn't need to be full-on destruction because the eggshell is still there the Change God told me okay enough of this)

this. this is love. self-love given form. to me.

"you matter. your suffering mattered. it helped me become who i am right now. nothing was in vain. it hurt, and might still hurt for a long time - but it was never for nothing." that's what i got from this scene.

anywayyyyy i warned you!!! that this would be long!! if you let me yap! it's yap central over here. if you got all the way down here, thank you for enduring. have a cupcake :)🧁

[oh-no-its-bird]

Chasing shadows chapter 7...save me chasing shadows chapter 7.......orochimaru and kid Kakashi interaction...oughhg...