Hi, I’m Tired

Just a person, an eldritch cosmic horror of sentience and carbon that can use internal vibrations to create home or hell for those in my vicinity, but that’s ok because I’m operating on the assumption that you might be too!

[iwasbibliomaniac]

ocean and adrienne's 'history' (or lack thereof)

hello! for those of you who might not know me, i'm brin. i was a moderator in the official isat server for a little over a year (from january 2024 to march 2025); me and ocean were the first two brought on after the first mods decided to grab some help. ocean is also my friend, and we speak very regularly.

by nature of my position i have quite a bit more context than the majority of people in the fandom. i cannot speak to anything adrienne is thinking here (nor will i speculate), and i am not going to give any private details, whether it is in private or otherwise. so don't ask for that please. :P but i can say that i've seen everything i'm going to be talking about here, and a lot more besides.

the reason i'm making this post is because i've seen a lot of people theorizing, especially after adrienne's vague reply, that ocean and adrienne might have some history that everyone else is just unaware of, with, often, the implication that ocean may have been negative towards adrienne in private. ocean is an incredibly kind, sweet person who's done nothing but care for this game and its fandom and it really sucks to see that xe are having to deal not only with suddenly being ripped from a fandom that she's given years and so much of her heart to, but being doubted by people who fully admit they do not have the whole story but all the same assume he must be in the wrong. i asked ocean if it'd be okay to clarify a few things (after all, i don't want to speak for her, of course), and i've been given permission.

in any case, here are the facts as i know them:

in march of 2022, ocean joined the isat server. it was much much smaller then, and adrienne was more active, so they spoke now and then in that capacity. (i wasn't there for this--i joined the server in nov 2023--but in the process of making my spreadsheet documenting everything adrienne had said about the game on social media, i saw all of adrienne's posts in the server, and ocean was frequently there at the same time as an active fan.) they didn't have any private interactions at this point.

in january of 2024, ocean is made a moderator; they continue to be a moderator from then until march of 2025. i know of three, and only three, DMs between them during this time period. all of them had to do with important moderation-related concerns and were worded politely. in the server mod chats they had the very occasional limited but professional interaction, including the one they've mentioned in 2024 in which we both notified her that the mirror picture standee's colors were off.

when ocean quit being a moderator in march 2025, xe also left the server. she isn't and wasn't discord friends with adrienne, and they didn't have any shared servers when ocean left, so after that point ocean had no private way of contacting adrienne other than the ones open to any fan.

adrienne usually has asks closed. not that ocean is the sort to send harassing asks anyway, but even if he was, mechanically it wouldn't really be an option.

ocean has publicly interacted with adrienne three times from then on: in february of this year, when the keychains were announced, ocean replied to the post (with an @ to adrienne) letting her know that mira's skin on the keychain seemed to be a bit too light. then, a couple days ago, as we know: ocean makes a post about the whitewashing issue, @ ing adrienne (in case tumblr had eaten the mention from february). adrienne makes a vaguely worded post on the matter; ocean reblogs from them, thanking her for talking to yetee and adding a link to xer original post for context because people were confused in the notes. to one person in particular saying they thought the post was a joke because isat is in grayscale, ocean clarified, and is blocked immediately thereafter.

as far as interactions go, that should be the extent of it. in terms of things that could, theoretically, be construed as negativity, ocean does and always has been vocal as a fan of color about issues of race and racism within the fandom (something that has been a big issue long prior to this point, and something which frankly imo is a labor they provided to the fandom that she shouldn't have needed to provide). on occasion, she would express feelings about things within the game that they wish were different--for example, that sif had been visibly nonwhite in the game, because as it stands the fandom draws him very white; or that their background as a person of color had not been spoken about as though it was optional.

none of these tagged adrienne in any capacity, and xe were in my opinion always very polite and understanding of adrienne's circumstances and feelings even speaking privately. other fans have spoken about the same issues and adrienne has expressed understanding and gratitude for them expressing their thoughts (for example, here). ocean was incredibly passionate about the game and about its characters of color and loved them dearly and was always very clear about that. other fans have also brought up whitewashing before (with no response) as well as other issues with merch (with a response) and there were no issues at this point.

again, i cannot and will not speculate on what adrienne's motivations were here--what posts of oceans they saw, what she thought of them, and her thoughts in any regard around this issue are all fully beyond my ability and right to say anything about. i just really needed people to know that there aren't huge sordid secrets here. ocean's a wonderful, brave, kind person who put her heart and soul and time and effort into this fandom and never had any idea that adrienne may have had any issues with anything xe were saying or doing--in my opinion, reasonably so; certainly no issues were ever communicated prior to this point in the limited interactions they had.

in any case. i very much understand the confusion and hurt here. it's not about me, but i'm pretty fucking poleaxed by this situation too. but i hope in all of this we can just be understanding of ocean's pain, being removed so suddenly and without warning from something he loved so much. your opinions on what adrienne did are your own, but please, please be certain to respect ocean in the process. the fact is that adrienne's blog isn't just their personal but also in stars and time's official mouthpiece, and the official blog removing xer access without any apparent rhyme or reason is something that is i think very reasonable for ocean to be hurt by even if you do not personally get it or think there is a reason from adrienne that you can accept. i am not at all saying in the midst of all this that anyone needs to think that adrienne is some cartoon villain here, and i do not want adrienne alone at the end of all this. optimally, i just would hope that she too can understand why what they did caused ocean pain and would be willing to apologize for that pain regardless of the reasoning behind it.

thank you for your time and understanding and kindness towards ocean in advance! because they really fucking deserve it right now

[aceofhome]

Maybe about to nuke this account anyway but I feel like I’m missing something.

(Rant below cut about the fandom drama)

I don’t know what’s going on in the ISAT fandom. I’m not sure why blocking one person (from what I understand) immediately makes everything ID5 touches horrible and wrong and racist. From my understanding, blocking isn’t a crime, it’s a boundary that people are allowed to make, regardless if it seems rude or petty.

I’m not sure what interactions between ID5 and Ocean were like historically, it’s frankly none of my business nor is it anyone else’s aside from those two. I’ve seen people calling ID5’s reaction as childish, are adults not allowed to make mistakes without everyone pointing and screaming? Whitewashing characters is wrong. The merch was whitewashed. Is it not being fixed? Do we have record of ID5 and The Yetee colluding to be racist and terrible and use a good game to just take money and not give a shit about fans? Because this is what I’m seeing it blown up into.

I think calling out ID5 like this wasn’t fully thought through, unless you wanted to watch the fandom burn itself, then I guess mission successful. But it seems petty to me.

I also don’t know anything about Ocean. I don’t know anything about ID5. And none of you know anything about me. Sure, you can put tags and labels and numbers to say anything, it’s like a personal ingredient list is at the top of everyone’s blogs with age and any number of “identifiers” but no one knows anyone unless you interact with them, and even then you still have so much limited knowledge that it’s functionally nothing. Do you know someone’s favorite candy because you walked past them on the street? Do you know their family? Do you know what they look like when they cry or laugh or get angry?

No. You can live with someone for years and still not know them, not really.

So, seeing everyone immediately jump on “of course! It was too good to be true! The person who made a game I like has feelings and opinions and sets boundaries in a way that doesn’t align with what I thought they were like! Something they didn’t have full constant supervision on had a horrible discrepancy! Who cares that we don’t know anything about their daily life! Who cares that they are working to fix it! They are wrong! Everything lines up with the conspiracy theory!” It feels like a witch hunt.

To my understanding, after reading the posts, there’s not enough info to make all these claims, I know one person was blocked, and now it’s everyone’s problem.

I’m open to being wrong, as is what it means to be a mature person who has only one perspective, no one of anyone in the fandom knows all the facts for this situation, but I don’t understand why we are all acting as if everyone was blocked, as if ID5 went into the game code directly and nuked all poc representation in it and replaced it with hate symbols.

We don’t all have a stake in this, it just seems like people inserting themselves to feel like they’re right or better rather than being objective as the third party we are in this situation.

If you really feel the need to prove to me that I’m not reading the situation right and can be civil about it, go ahead. I fully agree that the merch was grossly whitewashed and should be fixed. It shouldn’t have been a thing the merch company got wrong in the first place, and it’s frustrating that was let slide at all for any amount of time.

[sometimes--i--exist]

As Far As I Understand It:

A few days ago, ID5 wrote a post about the merch having a colour issue and that they're looking into it. Someone in the comments was confused / made a joke, because of the games lack of colours. Ocean responded to that commenter to clarify it was a whitewashing issue, and likely due to a printing error. Xey were then blocked.

Ocean has some stuff on their blog saying out he was blocked for the pointing out the whitewashing. She also talks about their time as a mod in the discord where whitewashed art was allowed but pointing out the whitewashing wasn't.

People start flocking to the ID5's post to ask why Ocean was blocked. Some of those comments go a bit too far. Most of them seem polite, but the number of them probably doesn't help.

At some point Ocean points out xey've been blocked on other social media as well. People bring up the previous times the merch has been whitewashed. People bring up ID5's responses to other criticism and how it contrasts this.

ID5 yesterday had a post about the merch being whitewashed and it being fixed. (Hooray!) She mentions nothing about Ocean, which is the main issue most people are concerned with. People flock to the comments there. People are more noticably upset, but mostly civil. Not everyone is civil, I saw insults towards both ID5 and Ocean. Some people point out this post has the same points that Ocean suggested in her comment.

ID5 responds in the comments saying they've blocked "some" people for mental health reasons and appreciate Ocean's feedback, and then saying she's logging off. This has been screenshotted and reblogged.

Some people are upset that Ocean is still blocked even though ID5 claims to appreciate his feedback. Some people were trying to figure out who else was blocked. Lots of people are pointing out bad the timing looks, and that it has made Black fans in particular really upset. The implication being that kindly pointing out an issue, even if saying it's not the creator at fault, is going to get you blocked. Whether or not ID5 intented for that to be the case.

Some people have been saying there could be private messages we don't know about and that ID5 is not obligated to share. Some people are saying the fandom is holding ID5 to a higher standard than is expected of white creators, and that this in and of itself is also a form of racism. Some people are saying that who someone blocks isn't anyone else's business.

[aceofhome]

Thanks for the explanation! I didn’t even know people were trying to be civil, but I’m not really good at reading tone. I’m still curious as to ID5’s side of all this and why they aren’t saying anything directly about it, rather than speculating that they had malicious intent or motivation. I’m also hopeful that this gets resolved soon, but knowing the internet it’s probably going to take a while. I’ve just seen too many times that indie devs get completely obliterated for a poorly worded statement or just trying to set boundaries, it tends to make a person like me who wants to make games too feel jaded and tired.

Thanks again for explaining it objectively!

[aceofhome]

Maybe about to nuke this account anyway but I feel like I’m missing something.

(Rant below cut about the fandom drama)

I don’t know what’s going on in the ISAT fandom. I’m not sure why blocking one person (from what I understand) immediately makes everything ID5 touches horrible and wrong and racist. From my understanding, blocking isn’t a crime, it’s a boundary that people are allowed to make, regardless if it seems rude or petty.

I’m not sure what interactions between ID5 and Ocean were like historically, it’s frankly none of my business nor is it anyone else’s aside from those two. I’ve seen people calling ID5’s reaction as childish, are adults not allowed to make mistakes without everyone pointing and screaming? Whitewashing characters is wrong. The merch was whitewashed. Is it not being fixed? Do we have record of ID5 and The Yetee colluding to be racist and terrible and use a good game to just take money and not give a shit about fans? Because this is what I’m seeing it blown up into.

I think calling out ID5 like this wasn’t fully thought through, unless you wanted to watch the fandom burn itself, then I guess mission successful. But it seems petty to me.

I also don’t know anything about Ocean. I don’t know anything about ID5. And none of you know anything about me. Sure, you can put tags and labels and numbers to say anything, it’s like a personal ingredient list is at the top of everyone’s blogs with age and any number of “identifiers” but no one knows anyone unless you interact with them, and even then you still have so much limited knowledge that it’s functionally nothing. Do you know someone’s favorite candy because you walked past them on the street? Do you know their family? Do you know what they look like when they cry or laugh or get angry?

No. You can live with someone for years and still not know them, not really.

So, seeing everyone immediately jump on “of course! It was too good to be true! The person who made a game I like has feelings and opinions and sets boundaries in a way that doesn’t align with what I thought they were like! Something they didn’t have full constant supervision on had a horrible discrepancy! Who cares that we don’t know anything about their daily life! Who cares that they are working to fix it! They are wrong! Everything lines up with the conspiracy theory!” It feels like a witch hunt.

To my understanding, after reading the posts, there’s not enough info to make all these claims, I know one person was blocked, and now it’s everyone’s problem.

I’m open to being wrong, as is what it means to be a mature person who has only one perspective, no one of anyone in the fandom knows all the facts for this situation, but I don’t understand why we are all acting as if everyone was blocked, as if ID5 went into the game code directly and nuked all poc representation in it and replaced it with hate symbols.

We don’t all have a stake in this, it just seems like people inserting themselves to feel like they’re right or better rather than being objective as the third party we are in this situation.

If you really feel the need to prove to me that I’m not reading the situation right and can be civil about it, go ahead. I fully agree that the merch was grossly whitewashed and should be fixed. It shouldn’t have been a thing the merch company got wrong in the first place, and it’s frustrating that was let slide at all for any amount of time.

[aceofhome]

Just gonna drop this horrible isat thought here and dip because I’m going through it and need to share this.

We know the rest of the family doesn’t remember the loops, except Siffrin and Loop

I know plenty of people have thought about what if they get those memories over time or through a fun format like if they got to play the main game or watch it like a movie

I’ve yet to see anyone talk about what if, after two hats, they all don’t just get the memories from the loops we saw, but they got the memories from Loop’s timeline too? How much this would mess up Loop? How much this would destroy them, and would Siffrin get those memories too? Or would he have to be left out while everyone around them has these horrible memories of actual years spent in the loops?

Imagine it! The suffering would be so bad

[sillylittlecharacters]

You could get even crueler with the implication that the ISAT party are the exact same as the SASASA:AP party instead of just being copies, since they get Loop's memories too!

While I'm at it, you could make the suffering even worse if the memories get shared before Loop is revealed as Siffrin (or even before Loop returns to the party!!); the party starts off receiving Siffrin's memories, talking through it and working through the shared trauma. Then they keep receiving memories, things that Siffrin has never mentioned, things Siffrin swears up and down never happened.

So now the party are pissed that Siffrin 'lied' to them, and Siffrin is panicking because those things never happened, what are you talking about?? He tried to be more honest and now they're being punished for it! And Loop is suffering but is too terrified to explain anything lest they expose themselves!!

Fun times!

[aceofhome]

HA! Woke up this morning to see this awesome response, you get it!

And the discussion of ‘how long were you in the loops?’ Gets so much more muddled because these are too many memories to make sense for just months.

It would mess Siffrin up so much to think he might have caused that much time and suffering to go by, did he forget so much of the loops like they forget other things? But then he looks over to Loop who has the look of a horrifically terrified feral cat between ready to fight the Universe for doing this to the people they care about (the people they thought were essentially dead and reanimated in a different timeline for all they knew) and ready to rip themself apart because they are the reason their family is suffering, again.

Ha ha

[aceofhome]

Just gonna drop this horrible isat thought here and dip because I’m going through it and need to share this.

We know the rest of the family doesn’t remember the loops, except Siffrin and Loop

I know plenty of people have thought about what if they get those memories over time or through a fun format like if they got to play the main game or watch it like a movie

I’ve yet to see anyone talk about what if, after two hats, they all don’t just get the memories from the loops we saw, but they got the memories from Loop’s timeline too? How much this would mess up Loop? How much this would destroy them, and would Siffrin get those memories too? Or would he have to be left out while everyone around them has these horrible memories of actual years spent in the loops?

Imagine it! The suffering would be so bad

[aceofhome]

Made a kinda neat isat mask in the last couple hours because I’m procrastinating on my projects and have writers block, but it’s spoilers so I’m putting it under the cut

It’s from when Sif tries to say the name of the island, idk I know the stitching looks weird, I still don’t know how to stitch things onto crochet, yes I’ve watched tutorials but none of them make sense.

That damn star took forever but I got to a point where it’s not going to get better and I need to stop

[aceofhome]

Ok, so, song recommendation for isat

Ghosts by Rosendale

It works way too well omg

[aceofhome]

When you have something like gifted child syndrome but it’s not academic, it’s the fact that you used to be a warm and kind person, used to be so smart about how to get through tough times, used to play the part of supporting others so well because you were kind and brave and strong and caring, and it got clawed and dragged out of you until you turned into a traumatized feral shadow of who you used to be.

Leaving you to look at your hands and feel like you strangled the person you used to be, you look in the mirror and you can only cry because they should be there, but it’s just you. Why can’t you be as kind as them? Why are you so weak now? They deserved better, a better future, and you can only hope they can learn to forgive you.

You never grew into your potential and you can never hope to be them again in a way that matters

[aceofhome]

I’m going to write an isat fanfic, it’s in the works, and it’s going to be abysmal/pos

It’s probably going to be emotionally rough but I’m not very good at gauging how intense things are, but just as a teaser…

Ever heard of ‘the call of the void’????

Anyway, I’ll try and finish it before classes start in August, it shouldn’t be too long of a story since it’s my first one

[aceofhome]

It’s been a bit, been trying to figure a lot of stuff out about myself so I haven’t been as active as I’d like but I’m gonna try and get back to posting stuff soon.

[aceofhome]

I think Siffrin, and by extension the forgotten island, are potentially more seafaring-coded and/or ocean-coded than you might assume at first glance.

I might be completely wrong but I like to find little patterns in details and I haven’t really seen anyone else talk about this.

The fact that Siffrin’s family had a boat makes me wonder how easily accessible it was to have one on the island, it could just be that they happened to have lived on the coast, but we don’t know what the island looks like or where people on it lived normally, but the fact that the family boat could be easily accessed by a child and that they understand how to use it makes me think it was very commonplace to just have access to boats and traveling by water.

The other thing is the culture surrounding the sky and stars and universe, which could be used for navigating the water and has been historically to a degree irl. Tides being controlled by the moon would potentially make the island more invested in learning about the other celestial bodies and it also contributes to the phrase and importance of “the universe leads, we can only follow” which can be about many things but I think it may have to also do with how unpredictable it could be to travel the ocean without using the stars (the universe) to lead you. This could also be a subconscious influence for why Siffrin would enjoy traveling, maybe his family traveled often, but we’ll never know for sure.

This is just interesting to me, I know it doesn’t really matter

[aceofhome]

ISAT cardigan update!!!

I’ve got the base done, but now I need to add the decoration and pockets, I’m so happy with this, this is the first big project I’ve done and my hand tremors from my meds have not made this an easy process, but it’s almost done, in the meantime, here’s a pic of one of the decorations that I sewed on. I have no idea how to sew but I did my best!

Also, before anyone asks, I don’t want to take pictures of me wearing it. Once it’s done I’ll take pictures of it by itself and post them

[aceofhome]

Hii

I'd be really interested in seeing your finished result!!!! Please share if you do it/nf

Also sorry for asking (no need to answer in case you don't want to!!) but I don't know much about manic episodes and such. I've only seen it as a fast increase in mood which is what happens in the game sometimes (and I think what happenes the entirety of act 5),, how it works on your end?

Unless. The manic episode thing was a joke and it flew straight thru my head... Which in that case, I'm double sorry for asking

Hi, I’ll be sure to post pics once it’s done, I’m going to get the supplies this weekend (the yarn mostly, and a couple more stitch markers)

I don’t mind talking about what my episodes are like, if that’s what you mean, but just as a reminder, my own mental health isn’t going to be the same for everyone who experiences manic episodes.

My manic episodes tend to happen a little more gradually than what you may be thinking (like I’ll notice things ramping up over the course of a week or so). But it’s mainly impulses, a lot of anxiety/irritability, lack of feeling tired, and feeling like, I guess the word is invulnerable? Like something that is typically painful doesn’t register as being the same level of painful for me when I’m having an episode. Which can be kind of scary because I’ll just be doing something, get hurt, and don’t notice until someone’s like “are you ok”, or if I do know I got hurt it’s like I feel weird and will just stare at it wondering if anything is real.

I’ve been dealing with these for a long time now, so I’m better at keeping myself safe now than I was when these first started.

When I saw Siffrin in act 5 I was so interested to see how he would handle having a manic episode, because everyone is different, but it totally reminded me of my first few episodes, without all the time loop chaos.

Also without the whole getting really tall and fighting against the people I care about.

But getting frustrated easily(irritable), feeling like you can’t be hurt, saying things impulsively without thinking it through, and a couple other things that Siffrin does(iykyk) are things I definitely relate to.

Im not sure if this is too much info or if this isn’t what you meant, but I don’t have a problem talking about my experiences with mental illness. When you’ve been in therapy for over a decade you get used to telling certain things like a hundred times over because it’s a different person or a different dr who still needs the information and there isn’t a streamlined way to just have it all in one place for the current dr or therapist to have access to without telling them anything.

[aceofhome]

I’m going to make a crochet ISAT cardigan based off of the act five fight scene and no one can stop me.

I just need to buy the yarn, I’ve watched the tutorials on how to make the basic pattern, but I’m going to make it ✨⏰

Am I doing this because I might be having a manic episode? Yes, and I find that to be fitting given the inspiration source

[aceofhome]

Y’know what’d be neat, doing an isat ttrpg homebrew campaign. I just think that’d be a lot of fun, especially if it was about the adventure before Dormont, like collecting the orbs, if there was a way to mechanically do the loops that’d be amazing but I feel like it might not work well if you have a group who might not want to do the exact same lines over and over while only one person gets more rp opportunities and can change their script. Maybe if it’s done in an au? Idk I just think it’s a fun idea to rp the party in a game format outside of the canonical stuff.

If anyone wants to add to this or anything I’m all for hearing it!

[aceofhome]

Ok, so my initial idea for the game jam probably won’t work as I’m trying to figure out how to justify it with the theme and I keep drawing a blank, so as from that one Friends episode that I only ever saw in passing because I never actually watched the show-

PIVOT!!

[aceofhome]

Game jam update!

I’ve always hated coding, and this time has been no different, but I’m making it work!

I think, at least.

I am using one of my old ideas because it’ll be the easiest to code and it had basically no game design or art done for it prior, it was basically a three sentence prompt.

But the void keeps being rude and makes it difficult to focus, like I keep waking up in a bad place, only to find myself not there anymore and six years past.

What even happened in those six years..