rangifer’s diary: pt. cxix
I am hopelessly obsessed with Victoria Island.
Is it possible to physically live inside a videogame?
Sometimes, when you’ve no more than a computer & an internet connexion to keep you company, you’re born on Victoria Island. Born & raised under the lights piercing unabashedly through the limitless columns of verdant treevines triply helix’d sprouting & falling over one another, the bedposts & ceilings of Ellinia. And it’s a small thing.
Unless, that is, you’re the one born in & borne by these very limbs (or by the crumbling grey marble, perhaps). Being born & raised in a place is inextricable, something that you will never rid yourself of. The inversion of place is almost too trite to say out loud: you are not in the place; the place is in you. But here the bond is forged in tireless Mithril that dies only when you do, the dead man’s switch of spiritual internalisation.
But internalisation is an occultation, & the dead man’s switch is not wired to anything. You will never show anyone where this place is, because they weren’t there when you were — weren’t there how you were.
Still, maybe they could be convinced to pay a visit when the weather’s nice.
Victoria is just one island, & I still don’t believe that. The royal ruins & xeric mesas of Perion, the urban swamps & rickety underground of Kerning, the fair Mediterranean harbour of Lith, the quaint idyllic town of Henesys, the supernatural luxuriance & lofty treehouses of Ellinia, and of course the unfathomable depths of Sleepywood & its dungeon. One island.
An arresting diversity is one thing, but you’ll find that Victoria is far more than the topography that can be portrayed on a map. The surest sign that someone isn’t intimately familiar with this island is that they think they are. For every desire path there are two roads less travelled by, for every road less travelled by there are three niches left unexplored, & for every niche left unexplored there are a hundred involutions, one for each fibre in the iris of Evil’s Eye.
Maybe you weren’t born here — maybe you haven’t even visited. But if you could forsake yourself just briefly enough to be reborn, Victoria will allow you to do that. You will not win anything — there’s no teleology, no prize at the end, & no big bad archvillain to conquer (unless you count Jr. Balrog or Ergoth). Don’t think about it too hard, & maybe you’ll find yourself caught in one or two of those hundreds of involutions. And even if not, I can guarantee that the beauty of Victoria Island will be there to greet you at every step along the way.