ISAT LOOP BRAIN DUMP/APPRECIATION POST????

ISAT LOOP BRAIN DUMP/APPRECIATION POST????

SUPER SPOILERS FOR IN STARS AND TIME, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER, DEAR TRAVELERS, LEST YOU BECOME SPOILED. BRAVE MEN HAVE DIED HERE. NOW FLEE, THOSE OF PURE OF HEART!!!!!

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ok whores lets get to it.

GOD I love Loop from In Stars and Time, they're SUCH A WELL WRITTEN CHARACTER. Everyone in the group are such sweet hearts and Bonnie is just insensitive but he has a heart of GOLD. BUT LOOP.... Loop is the type of person who will make it worse when you're at you're lowest. If you've hit rock bottom, Loop will be there to get a pickaxe and make it deeper while calling you names. If you're bleeding out dying, Loop will pour sea salt into your wounds and call you a little bitch. BUT LOOP IS ALSO NICE?????? Although they do like fucking with Siffrin a bit, they actually give legitimally good advice and do their best to help you and I LOVE THAT.  Unlike other mean characters where they're like "haha fuck you I'm miserable now im gonna make your life worse" Loop is like "haha fuck BOTH of us, haha whiny bitch, now lets try to get out of here." 

ALSO the fact that Loop used to be Siffrin IS SO FACINATING. I just played through SASASA and the ending had me go NUTZ. At the core, SASASA siff and ISAT siff are the same, with really the main difference being that ISAT siff had Loop to help them, while SASASA siff (aka Loop) had no one but themselves. They had no one to give them a reality check, no one to say "u ok bud?" and sat in an echo chamber of their own thoughts. They were also in the loops for FAR longer than Siff. Instead of the mental world ending breakdown we saw in act 5 of ISAT, SASASA siff just... numbed it out. Just an endless cycle of hearing the same monotonous thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and dying just as much. The fact that they even forgot the gang's NAMES tell you so much. Plus, Loop was doomed to become loop from the very start. In the true ending. Considering that the wish was "I want to stay with my friends" the fact that the loop reset immediatly after killing the king is TELLING. Siffren was able to get information out of the house maiden, while Loop never even got a chance to. That means that no matter what, Loop couldn't have gathered information from the house maiden, and Siffrin most certainly couldn't have broken the cycles without asking the house maiden. That means that no matter what, Loop couldn't have broken the cycles, and was stuck in basically hell for all of eternity. That is, until (presumably after the true ending), they go to the wish tree and ask for "Anyone to help me". THAT is when Loop BECAME Loop. Loop got to help Siffrin in ISAT, and by connecting to someone who was also suffering from the cycles they were able to connect to them also. (ALSO LOOP??? WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EAT A STAR??????)

This brings me to my last point. THE PERSONALITY CHANGE. Loop's personality is VERY different from Siffrin's. I have two main theories for them. One, is that Loop suffered what I'll call "Flowey syndrome" AKA: When you've "reseted" or in this case "looped" so much that you stop seeing other people as real people, and that you and the others who aren't bound by the repeats are "the real ones". This creates a false sense of superiority, as whether you like it or not, you're going to treat those around you more poorly. Added with the fact that Loop sees Siff from the start of the cycle as well as the self hate they feel, I can SMELL the amount of RAGE. You're standing at a clone of yoursef who hasn't suffered as much as you have, is living the life you once lived, and it's UNFAIR. Loop witnessed themselves reducing their friends to just mere set pieces despite them caring about them very much, while SIFFRIN (although starting to go down the same path) gets to live what loop DEARLY missed. And the fact that SIFFRIN is the one who got out with their happy ending while their friends will NEVER see Loop as Siffrin, forever robbing their past friendships, is really the final straw that caused the Loop fight. I also seriously doubt that Loop thought Siffrin was "real" as well.  To Loop, they're just a clone to them, they are the original, and Loop is the one that supposedly deserves anything. It's a huge slight to what's fair. However, here's my second, less probable but more interesting theory. Loop not only had the deal with one, but their transformation ALSO changed their personality and soul. Not only are you dealing with all of the above, but you KNOW that you are VERY much not the person you were. It's not a semi wholesome "ah, I've changed so much over the years" type of deal, but a *HORRIFYING* realization that your very being was changed. The chemistry of your soul is forever altered.  You are no longer the person you thought you were. Where there was "happy go lucky siff", there is now "bitter, angry, sarcastic loop". Loop talks about "making a personality specifically designed to annoy you", but what if that was denial? What if "Oh god, I've CHANGED. Something is HORRIBLY wrong with me and I don't know why I'm acting this way and having these thoughts. Instead, let's pretend that I'm wearing a mask of a personality, and therefore my sense of self remains stable!!!! Yippie!!!!" But at some point, the line between the face and the mask blurs, until they become one and the same. Now the question Loop has to deal with post game is this: 

"My entire identity was based in the fact that I'm Siffrin, but they people who know me best know me as Loop and not Siffrin, and this Siffrin continues to be recognized as Siffrin. Then, if I no longer look, act, or think like Siffrin... then who am I? Who is Loop?"

maybe this is my calling to write my first au who knows.