@sneak but i either have to chainload the iso (syslinux cant boot directly into iso im pretty sure) or unpack it and coerce tails to work. i unpacked tails before, and it kernel panicked on me, i just havent looked much into it. i gave up for a while pretty much
i know how to create a bootable usb drive, what i want is to use an existing drive, with syslinux bootloader installed on it, to launch tails from a partition on that usb