#I can fuck up and it DOESNT MATTER FUCK YEAH

[protectorcraft]

mutual liked the gripe post which reminded me to write it. okay hi im pyxis and im gonna talk about a trope the isat community falls back on a lot in writing that bugs me okay thanks

this is gonna be long and probably annoying so im putting it under a cut. open at ur own risk. heavy spoiler warning thanks.

okay. how do i start this. a thing ive seen in quite a few fics and theories, and its that the islanders are directly- and purposefully- responsible for their own disappearance. usually i see it framed as "the islanders made themselves disappear/attempted to wish away knowledge of wishcraft because it was dangerous" and like. hm! i dont think so.

take this with a grain of salt as ur local cracker but considering the framing of the island's disappearance- abrupt, sudden, disastrous- something everyone was talking about- the disappearance definitely falls more in line with the metaphor of some sort of disaster or, as is a significant theme in the game, colonialism/imperialism and the subjugation of cultures.

this was- 100%- not the islander's faults, and blaming them completely misses the point of the matter.

while people can say wishcraft is dangerous- and really, it is, there's no getting around it- it also seems like it was an important piece of the Island's culture and based off the few islanders we meet, probably used fairly regularly in day to day life. siffrin, for example, literally uses it on the regular without even realizing it. the knowledge of how to do it properly is probably pretty ingrained into the average Islander's brain. to them, it's just a fact of life! i mean, literally all the scriptures we see on wishcraft (and astronomy) ingame are written in the Islander language. they were The Experts on this stuff. (not to mention that this proves the knowledge was in the general public's grasp, even if it required knowledge of their language to learn about)

so it just doesnt make sense that they'd wish something so important to them away like that- sure there was probably discourse amongst them about the dangers of these practices, but they would know enough to know attempt something as risky as, say, wishing away all knowledge of their country or any one big thing. not to mention wishcraft is weird- technically speaking, siffrin's wish probably wouldve had a lot less effect if all the energy of the failed wishes hadnt culminated into their successful one.

and before you bring up how op the kings wish is- remember that a good 75% of the game is exposing all the ways the other characters foil siffrin, including the king. the king, who supposedly made a wish to freeze vaugarde- but did he?

a lot of the king's dialogue, when he isnt gushing about vaugarde and how much he loves it, is about his grief surrounding the loss of his own country. when given the chance, he'll grasp at any opportunity to remember anything about it, even if its putting trust in the hands of a stranger who is literally here to kill him for help. its pretty clear to anyone with a brain that he's not being ingenuine about this.

and, see, siffrin's true wish was masked over by their other wish. its one of the game's big red herrings. yadda yadda yadda how do we know that the king's true wish was really the "preserve" vaugarde, huh?

"where are you going with this we've gotten wildly off track" no we havent! get fucked! i think the kings true wish was the remember his country- and, yknow, there's probably a fair few islanders remaining. probably yearning to grasp even a fragment of their lost culture, hoping and dreaming and wishing for answers. not unlike the king, perhaps? perhaps a culmination of half baked wishes being fueled by one, fully formed wish?

yeah, you get where im going with this.

so perhaps wishcraft isnt quite as strong as we assume it is? that the soul intent of one person isn't necessarily going to give you godlike power in most cases- mind we're not quite grasping the full scope due to loops. Whole Situation. but that's not why we're here.

if the Islanders had enough faith in the rest of the world to provide them with their wishcraft knowledge- then i doubt they wouldve wished themselves or their knowledge away. nobody would do that.

and if the rest of the world did, indeed, have access to that knowledge, then there's a fair chance some other group could be responsible. a group who doesnt even recall their own responsibility because it's been wiped from their memories.

like, idk.... a more on the nose version how colonizer countries bury their own history of misdeeds from the general populace?

idk man. idk. just feels weird to me that so many people seem to have immediately gone towards the Cultural Suicide route for some reason. you have to be willing to acknowledge that the isat universe is definitely not the perfect, pristine world you think it is. and maybe folks just need to be willing to acknowledge the actual brutality the metaphor is alluding to.

after all, an entire island- all of its peoples and cultures- disappeared.

[bigassmoth]

Sho frowned as he watched Leo tap furiously at his screen.

"Dude....eat your fuckin food." The plate of ultra-hot chili ramen was getting cold in the table.

"Yeah, whatever." Leo rolled his eyes and huffed, sending his tweet and then slapping his phone down. He ate angrily while Sho regarded him with a rasied eyebrow.

"The fucks wrong with you?"

Leo looked at Sho with annoyance and slurped his noodles.

"That NPC is the problem. Ever since I made that post calling them my girlfriend, followers have been bitching."

"Isnt that what you wanted? A few days ago you were laughing about it." Sho starts cleaning after confirming that the dish meets Leos impractical level of spice.

"It -was- funny but now it's just annoying. Everyone keeps calling them a Basic Bitch or an NPC, its every other comment. So unoriginal."

"That's what you call the honor student all the tim-"

"And when it's not regurgitating the same stupid one-liner, it's moaning about how someone else would be such a better fit."

Leo steamrolled Sho's comment and then picked up his phone with a scoff.

"See? Listen to this, "She is too boring for you Leo, you would be such a better match with Anastasia" as if that Kardashian copying nepobaby is half as interesting." Leo reads the text aloud before scooping more noodles into his mouth.

"Is that the blogger that keeps getting a new baby animal every few years?" Sho puts his freshly cleaned knives onto the magnetic board you talked him into getting to save on space.

"Yeah, she keeps hopping on trends. She ditched the Italian Greyhound and got a micro husky- whatever the fuck that is." Leo slathers a piece of his pork belly in sriracha before popping it into his mouth.

A new voice joins the discussion as you pass by Leos table.

"That sounds unethical. Hey Sho I know it's late, do you have anything you could whip up for me?" You peer up at Sho as you lean against the truck. The dark circles under your eyes and your unkempt hair say enough- you just got back from another mission.

"Hm...sure I think I have something I can whip together. But dont get mad at me if it doesnt turn out." Sho easily relents and begins rummaging through his fridge.

"Youre cooking is always good, thats why I can never get mad at anything you do." You tease back- it was no secret that food was the way to your heart. You had a wealth of patience for anyone who offered you snacks.

Leo grew tired of listening and scoffed.

"Did you get so tired of flirting with that musclehead so you had to move onto a guy in love with his motorcycle?"

"Shut up man." Sho responds automatically. You sit down across from Leo.

"I also love Bonnie." You say matter-of-facrly while resting your head on your arms.

"Gross." Leo rolls his eyes and aims his phone at you. He takes a couple pictures, decides on one that is decidedly your worst angle in the worst lighting. His snickering makes you open your eyes.

"What did you do?" You are annoyed when you speak to him and lacking the familiarity that you hold for Sho.

"Just want the internet to know my relationship with my girlfriend is going well." Leo shows you his recent post with a sly grin.

Having learned better, and too tired to care, you dont bother reading it and once again shut your eyes.

"As long as you arent trying to extort Tohma-senpai again." You sigh.

From inside the truck while he heats up your food, Sho opens his phone to view the post.

Your picture is editted with several heart emoties with a caption reading "Best Girlfriend Ever<3 She ordered 23,456 yen worth of food but forgot her wallet, shes so silly!" The comments are already scalding as they tear into your character. Sho peeks out to see Leo smugly scrolling through the comments before he reaches out and pats your hair.

"Ah, NPC-chan youre such good rage bait~" he coos.

"Youre welcome." You sigh out. Sho snorts as he brings you a bowl of ramen. In a short amount of time you had adjusted to Leo miraculously. Typically this unbothered attitude would bother the chic influencer but without realizing it he had become endeared to your attitude. The two sat with you and chatted as you ate your food. Sho eventually kicking Leo when he tried to get a picture of you eating.

[featherlouise]

Falling in love with sketchbooks again :D

[astranauticus]

stultifera navis rerun AKA thinking about Iberia hours again because a lot of the Iberians have such fascinating relationships with the concept of home but specifically Thorns and Lumen are eating at my brain. like where do you call home when the place that is your home Just Fucking Hates You? Elysium's rewinding breeze specifically makes a point to hammers home how differently Iberia treats its Liberi and its Aegir

(which is especially interesting since this comes right after a conversation where Purestream commented on how despite Leizi being a high ranking government official, there are still some experiences that are universal for all Yanese people - because the experience of what Iberia itself is like isnt universal for all Iberians)

But all that being said, Thorns also straight up states that Aegir is not his home, and yeah, how could it be? How could a place you've never been to, never truly known, ever be your home? How could it ever feel like a home?

so where do you go when the place that you are from hates your people and the place your people are from is completely unfamiliar and alien to you? Thorns' answer at the end of the conversation with Aya is: my home is where i chose it to be. my home is where there are people I care about and people who care about me

in the complete opposite direction, Lumen's oprec asks: why do you still stay in a place that wants you gone? because the people of Gran Faro like Jordi well enough but when push comes to shove, they will want the only Aegir in town gone

and yet, when Rald the messenger offers him a chance to leave Jordi turns him down and when he's forced to escape Gran Faro after the people there literally try to send him to his death (or worse) at the hands of the Inquisitors he keeps trying to go back because like everyone in stultifera navis, Jordi is clinging to his own dreams of a golden age

but the shape of that dream is unique to every character and for Jordi, his dreams are deeply, inseparably bound to the Eye of Iberia, the legacy his parents left behind

and it's this dream of becoming someone great, of bringing about that golden age that his parents devoted their lives to help create that ties Jordi to this nothing town because despite everything, despite the mistrust of the townsfolk and the hostility of the Inquisition and the danger from the ocean, he simply cannot leave it behind

(or, because i personally dislike the official translation,)

"I just see this place as my home"

so yeah. not sure what overall point i was trying to make here i'm just. deeply in love with these stories about chosing what is and isn't your home, of saying you will not call a place your home because it has given you no reason to or saying you consider a place your home even though it has given you every reason not to. deeply unwell about them <3

[acaciapines]

rereading random bits of descendants of olympus (as one does) and. vera <3 still soooo obsessed with how she takes lupa's divinity. like MAN.......there is something to how shes had to scrape and claw her way into every single good thing shes ever had. that she's never just been able to KEEP these things, that she is always always always fighting for them. and so of course she takes divinity. she wants to LIVE. and in this world where the fates themselves are trying to control her, its like--yeah. maybe you do need a gods power to finally get like, at least a year of the life you want. the life you werent supposed to have. forever thinking about vera's one line in her chapter thats like 'of course the fates are losing power. because they'd never let someone like leo into my life.' YELLS. FOREVER.

also have we talked enough about minnie I THINK WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MINNIE--

[mellotronmkll]

Does anyone else get the thing of like you're already so obsessed with something that you're like it would probably be good if I was less obsessed with this / I need to shut up about this but at the same time you constantly find yourself thinking I have Got to get more obsessed with this. I have Got to get more obsessed

[swallowtail-ageha]

*video by a self proclaimed historian archeology with mary on a cross dramatic beat in the background fake crying hand on mouth in instagram reels* here is a funeral epigraphy of this young roman lady who got murdered by her husband! People especially men were such beasts right then and haven't changed much! *shows epigraphy where parents of murdered girl both father and mother denounce their daughter's murder as something abominable and either way Very Much Not Uncaring of the girls fate*

[pseudophan]

i just lost two followers and it's making me laugh because judging by my most recent posts i assume they were diehard royalists? or at least people holding the british royal family in an unusually high regard? cry about it i guess idk, i do find it funny that you give a fuck though

on this note though of my followers holding different beliefs than me - if you're a terf? please kill yourself! i don't usually give a fuck because i just don't have it in me to start a war with everyone i disagree with but like. truly. if you hold any kind of prejudice against trans people whatsoever. fuck off from my blog lol i don't want you here

[bmpmp3]

post ankle-twisting clarity

[lycan-mutt]

bought this blueberry soda and on the label it just says BLUE BERRY SODA and all i can think of is. well. you should know. its so evocative of it. you know.

[subsequentibis]

it kills me stone dead when i think about how the main three in preacher are all like. stuck as kids in a way. tulip is always that girl being taken away from the last family she thought she'd ever have, jesse is always that boy watching his father die in front of him and knowing he prayed for it to happen, cassidy is literally Forever Nineteen and forever reliving that moment of letting someone who trusted him down in the most painful, fatal way. as much as they grow and learn and change, in moments of crisis and stress they revert back to being those scared children who have no control over anything. fucking kills me man.

[jinstronaut]

this is also why i stopped using my tracked tag for a while tbh

[ssaltlicker]

So much of the arcane fandom subscribes to the belief that any harmful action can be explained away and excused as long as its either someone you agree with or if you have a good enough sob story

[hwanwooyoung]

the way I've been waiting for the txt sg concert behind for months and they finally uploaded it today but I feel bad watching it now

[crypt1dcorv1dae]

Metalheads who don't like/respect Babymetal bc their "look" isn't, what? Traditionally metal? are so cringe. Like bro it's an alternative music scene we're supposed to say FUCK tradition????? What's wrong w y'all... Embarrassing

And also they are missing out bc Babymetal fucking rules

[stinkrascal]

listen i love animals too but sometimes dog people are so fucking gross, i just saw this tiktok vid where this lady is cooking dinner and halfway through the video she took a piece of raw beef from the meal, let her dog lick it off her hands, and then kept cooking without washing her hands even though she had dog slobber all over her hands like GIRL WHAT?!?!?????? i love my pet too but holy shit i also love being you know hygienic??? barf vomit gag hurl etc