My First Time on the Mystical Island of Po Toi

Written by Dyami Millarson We took the boat to Po Toi island in the morning of Saturday 22 April 2017. It was a spiritual journey that relaxed me. When we arrived near the dock of Po Toi, I could see from the ship there was a sacrificial fire burning on a cliff. It looked like a movie scene. It inspired me with awe. The scene of the sacrificial fire never left me, because it felt like a new…

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so insane about the Fairy Queen (or whatever the hell it is).

It takes no "disrespect" or "talking back". It wants you to stay. It will literally die without you. It is explicitly described as an elder. We are sticking to tradition because "this is just the way it is."

The Fairy Island is a place of pure nostalgia. Everyone who goes there stays young. You can live in the bliss and pretend everything's alright but the rules are set in stone and you cannot change or bend them.

Childhood is wonderful in comparison to adulthood, sure. But there's a reason being "treated like a child" feels like a dismissal of dignity. You could play and pretend you could fly and have zero responsibilities but there would always be an older figure holding you back, holding you down. You were never really free.

And leaving is hard, and painful, and you'll be leaving family members who love you behind. But you need to leave. Escape, even as the island tries to stop you. The human world will seem boring at times, but that island is a prison. You were never really free.

Hilda said a lot of things this season, about families and the different ways we love and hurt each other. But I was not expecting that the last reveal of the show would be that Johanna is not just the best mother in fiction, but that she also broke the cycle. By letting her daughter be free, by giving her daughter the same respect she'd give an adult. By treating her like a person. Like a human being, not a fairy. In the fairy realm, in nostalgia, and childhood, you were never really free.

culturally-specific orientations and gender identities are real and they exist whether you want to validate them or not. terfs and truscum refuse to accept these facts because their ideologies can only be defended by racist and colonialist arguments, such as insisting that gender is biologically-dictated or that your gender is not real unless you experience gender dysphoria and pursue medical transition with hormones, surgeries, and legal document changes.

biological essentialism, cis-normativity, and the pathological idea of ‘transgenderism’ are racist, they’re concepts made up by colonizers that are violently enforced by christianity and white supremacy. when we say “gender is a social construct” we mean “the gender binary and the idea of transness, as it is defined by western standards, are ideas constructed by a white christian society.” i am ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ only because i am considered trans and queer by white christian standards. in my own culture, i would not have to ‘transition’ because my gender would simply be accepted.

colonizers force upon us their concepts of gender, biological sex, and sexuality while they continue to erase ours. you cannot separate the extermination of our culturally-specific sexual orientations or genders from the violent genocidal destruction of our cultures. the words that once existed for our concepts of gender and attraction were erased when our languages were banned and we were punished, beaten, and tortured for teaching them.

my own two-spirit identity can only be labeled using the language of my oppressors because the words for what i am are no longer spoken.

housesitting with a very large and affectionate dog as part of the gig means waking up every morning to this:

Spirit Island, Jasper National Park🇨🇦

Spirit Island is basically just a firefighting co-op game, but you interact with the board by playing magic the gathering at it. There's a lot of rules complexity but it's all in the anatomy of cards/powers, it's more deterministic than any co-op I've played but the cards' interactions and synergies are just as emergent and spontaneous as rolling dice. It's also not afraid to break in several directions at once, be unfair but also have everyone be overpowered. 10/10

watching dead boy detectives when you've lived in coastal bc

i love that they have a ship that services a metro area of 2.4 million people & all of southern vancouver island, to depict the ferry to (checks notes) port townsend, wa, pop. 10,388. cannot overstate how incredibly funny the scale is. on a regular day that route has more passengers than the entire population of port townsend. like a title card saying our beloved characters had to take three trains and a regional bus line and then smash cutting to a red london double-decker

that being said. bc ferries both as a crown corporation and as individual vessels is DEFINITELY haunted so this tracks actually

gay people are so funny

HAPPY (LATE) ANNIIVERSARY SPIIRIIT PH0NEE💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

REBL0GS > LIIKESS

“ light steps through the plane of the forgotten “

AHH neglected this platform @~@ here’s a drawing for the troubles

Cat island, Seitung province

sponsored by arenanet

you look lonely, i can fix that.

passing glances

I AM BACK AFTER 2 YEARS (OMG) ONLY FOR MY BELOVED ZUTARA

✨ This is my contribution for Zutara Week! 💜 ✨

day 6: FORGE 💋

Summary:

“The Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit are about to start action in the Ember Island to protect its people. Before the real action begins, the two talk to each other. Flirtation is inevitable. And one lipstick will be their red string.”

AU - Canon Divergence, Post- War

They are in their 20s

Maybe they already love each other, maybe they are already lovers or married - or perhaps they are simply partners! 🤷🏻‍♀️

hope you enjoy it! xoxo

@zutaraweek

Don't worry guys, Brunim's gonna adopt Pepito!

One of the flaws of Spirit Island that many reviewers point to is that the ability to truly cooperate with your friends is behind a hefty skill wall, it's just too complex and fuzzy, and the simultaneous play makes it easy to just let the other players do their thing without burdening yourself with understanding their kit. Many of your first games will just involve dealing with your own board and maybe a little cooperation happens on your borders, and at the base difficulty that's pretty much enough.

The reason my buyer's guide is basically just "buy horizons first, proxy scotland" is because Scotland gently raises the difficulty in a way that gives the entire board more asymmetry and dimension. They're stronger at the coasts, which gives some direction, but Scotland's escalation effect is (i think) the only one in the game that specifically ruins one player's board. In a four player game, one player will suddenly have 4 new towns on their board, and the way the rules decide it, it's often the one with the weakest offensive powers. Everyone else at the table probably needs to decide which of their lands they can forsake in order to help whoever bears the brunt of the 3 escalations that could occur, (unless they're stone's, who can just deal with it lol.) Games I've played with Scotland have always involved the most cooperation, players swapping boards, players with high mobility swooping in as a savior for a built up land on the opposite corner of the board.

Also the games are longer and you get to discover more of the wild power scaling the game has in store for you, snake actually gets to wake up before you win, usually.