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A Familiar Voice

Panel 1: Voice off panel- "Hey! Can you two help me?"

Panel 2: Amy- "Okay!" Cielomort- "Sur- huh?"

Panel 3: Amy- "Is something the matter?" Cielomort- "Oh no not at all!"

Panel 4: Amy- "oh ok" Cielomort- ("I thought I heard Lord Cinnamon just now...")

*Amy and Cinnamoroll share the same Japanese voice actor*

Full strip:

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The best photo I took at Dashcon 2

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😢😢😢

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I MISS THEM SO MUCHHHHHH 😭😭😭😭😭😭

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GO LOOP GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Flower fairies 🌼🌷🌻

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I need to stream making new talking sprites for myself maybe then I’ll actually do it lol

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i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book

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I JUST REALIZED I NEVER POSTED THIS HERE????

SO! This was for a precure collab over on twitter/bluesky that kiiiiinda imploded on itself. BUT! I still met a lot of cool peeps through it, and ended up being able to draw my fav girl~

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i feel like an often-overlooked downside to 10-episode seasons and the death of the "monster of the week" format is that we get way less whump variety nowadays. used to be that there'd be dozens of opportunities for your fave to get punched or kidnapped or hypnotized or what have you. these days if it doesn't fit into the main plot, it just doesn't happen. this is a tragedy. we should be protesting.

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I'm playing Sonic Adventure DX!! Let's go!!!!!!!

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stardust

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What do you find patriotic about the themes of In Stars and Time?

Yayayay thank you for this question anon! I have SO MANY THOUGHTS!!!

I hope this won't get too long sorry in advance for the whole huge essay heh

I think first we need to get into what patriotism actually is. Because what some seem to propose is that it is only “supporting the political interests of a country you're a citizen of” which is not actually true or “glorifying it to the point of warping into nationalism and chauvinism”, which is extrremely untrue and frankly bonkers??? No, patriotism is love for your country, for your nation, for your people. And by extension, for your culture, your language, your history (loving means admitting to the dark sides of it btw), your home, all of it. It doesn't mean your national food, music, etc. have to be your favorite in the world, but it does mean you find value in them, you want to preserve and remember them, you want what’s best for them. (I love my brother. He gets on my nerves so much i wanna strangle him sometimes. You get the idea) so sorry if it's all obvious to you but i thought it needed to be clarified just in case

ISAT as a whole but especially Odile, Siffrin, and the King’s character arcs pose a question: how much of yourself is influenced by your origins? This topic is explored in many various forms, woven into the flesh of the narrative, ever-present (the differences and customs between countries a recurring topic in the party’s conversations, for example). The cultural exploration is often what drives the plot forward.

(Also the use of national religions is so great, it adds a yet another perspective to the problem, but it’s a whole nother can of worms for a whole nother day!)

While the Country is used mainly as the vehicle for themes of loss and loneliness, the so-called "Homesickness" (“Mal du Pays”),

its national aspect is never undermined. This is, among other themes, a story about being denied the connection to your roots, after all. If you think about it, the whole plot happened because of it, is undivorceable from it, and arguably serves to show how horrible such a thing might be.

This is also a brilliant way to explore what being a “country” means - it's not just about some territorial politics or conservative history classes. It's the whole environment you grow in as a human being.

The King and Siffrin are juxtaposed here as narrative foils, the King acting as a fallen Siffrin: now this is especially interesting, because in every other story like this i'd expect the King to be a chauvinist. But… surprisingly, he’s not. He is a patriot, in a sense. He does love his country and he does love Vaugarde, his actions are not motivated by a political self-righteousness, they are motivated by a love warped into obsession by fear. Don’t get me wrong, he is an irredeemable villain, but he’s as much a victim here. He isn’t condemned by the narrative. He gets his wish granted in the end (wishcraft and the Universe? add it to the aforementioned can of worms, not today but boy do i have things to say), he gets to remember his homeland. He gets justice, both in the form of punishment and compensation.

Siffrin nearly ends up like him, but doesn’t - not because he decides to abandon and forget his country forever! but because in being loved by his family he finds strength to conquer the fear of losing everything again. It’s a fine line, but i think insertdisc5 navigated it masterfully. Check out how Sif's internal monologue changes in regards to the Island. He has a history of running away from the painful things and thus not working on his massive trauma (one could make a case that the rewinds when he remembered his past weren't actually caused by the Universe but by him but again, worms. in a can.). But now in act 6 he finally stops looking away:

and you might even imagine a fondness in his eyes.

By the way, here's a tiny personal digression: i 100% believe that there are some nationalities that will inevitably be hit harder by this narrative than others - one of those being Polish. Which i happen to be! Now lemme tell you, at some point in act 3 i thought: "huh. i, too, am from a country that disappeared once". But it didn't really disappear now, did it. So then i thought, what if it had, and i were the only one left and i, too, couldn't remember anything? And then my heart weeped, and i grieved inside a little, and made a fanart, and didn't feel better afterwards. Yay!

But you know what? There's a cool quote from Shang-Chi saying: "you are a product of all who came before you" - and your own unique characteristics, one should add after Odile. Your past, and i mean the generations upon generations before you as well, is a part of who you are, whether you like it or not. We see it in Siffrin. No matter how the wishcraft tries to erase it, it can't. Because one way or another, he will remember. He will love the stars and know basic astronomy, he will be able to use wishcraft, he will dress in his ethnic clothes, he will love malanga and cheese samosas, he will instinctively swear in his language. It's a part of him:

And maybe that's what's actually the most patriotic aspect of ISAT's narrative - that you can't erase it. As much as you try, you will never be able to fully succeed. Because there are people who love it, still. Even if they will never remember it. After all: