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radiocrypt-id · 3 months

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I got- I can't!

Imagine being 15, you've grown up your whole life with this one belief in this one God and you were told you were Chosen by Him, for Him. And you're 15. You believe so fully in the spirit of your religion, not necessarily the word, that you want to go to a non-religious school to try and help other kids maybe find your God because you genuinely believe that could be helpful to some of them, because it's all you know, and it's helped other strangers (human trafficking victims she helped in the black pit before) so why not other kids her age? You're 15 and all you can think about is helping others. And you start thinking about your religion, and reading books, and asking questions and you come to the conclusion that maybe your God and His Father aren't actually all that great. Maybe the church you're in has done some really bad things that you can't possibly make up for. Maybe that church is still doing bad things. And then you find out your family is actually in a cult for that God, not just part of the normal church, and you suddenly have to undo all the cult shit in your brain you were raised with, while that cult stuff you know about is actually useful to your friends, like having that knowledge is helpful for them! You're 15 and you stop going home. You have no real adult supervision or carer, just your other 15 year old friends.

Imagine you're 16, you're gay and figuring that out on top of navigating your first full romantic relationship and being the sole creator and cleric to a new God that you honestly find to be very two dimensional and empty. You're on a quest to find an evil being and stop them. You nearly die. Your friends nearly die. You're 16. You're 16 and feel something calling out to you, you know it's divine because you've felt that sort of pull before, but you've never felt one like this. You find memories and hints and pieces and you figure out that the evil being you have to stop, isn't evil, she's just hurting. She's hurt and She's a God. She's your God, and she's so happy to see you, and she has so many ideas, and so many hopes.

You're 17. You've spent your rest time (summer vacation) tearing across the world chasing down and defeating another evil thing that you and your friends accidentally released in the first place. Your God is with you, you have no time for Her. No time for anything but trying to survive and stay sane. You know She's disappointed in you, but you're one person -ONE PERSON- and you're 17. You missed your birthday. again. You've saved the world; again. You're so fucking tired -like always. You're Chosen, and alone, and have no idea what to do with your life, let alone your God. You aren't very good at school, but you go to every class. You're drowning as you try to rewrite your understanding of the world from what you grew up with, having no idea how to do anything without a book and godly hand to guide you. You only ever followed before, your new God is demanding you Lead. You don't know how. You're only 17. You see your horrible, abusive parents spitting abuse and racist rhetoric at your baby brother, who you haven't seen in two years, on the front steps to your school and for the first time ever you are filled with righteous fury. Your God answers your call, not knowing what you need but so eager to help, eager for your attention, she starts talking to you but you're busy -why can't she understand that you're fucking busy? trying to not die, trying to be safe, trying to keep your friends alive, trying to navigate a world that hates you, you're 17 and you're busy goddammit just wait!- and she snaps back at you and flees. The next time you see Her, maybe an hour later, She's got a creature with Her that nearly destroyed you and your friends last year sitting in her lap, so smug to see you again.

You're 17- no, 16- no, 15 years old and you're expected to build and carry the world on your shoulders, Chosen from birth, raised a lamb to follow a Shepard, not to be followed behind. You have no one and nothing and everyone expects everything and you can't back up, you can't pause because if you do someone dies and doesn't come back. You have to be a hero, a chosen, a saint. The steps behind you crumble to dust with each step you take forward and the new one is already cracking under your weight. There are only wrong choices. There's no hand reaching for you. God, you were taught, will save and guide you. God knows best. Why is your God looking to you, a mortal human, to be saved, raised and guided? You're a child.

You're just a child.

You just want to go home, wherever that is. You thought it was your God, but She's not exactly helping you out either, is She? She's just disappointed. Like everyone else. Like you.

You're 17. You think it would have been better to never do any of this. It would have been easier to stay, blind and naive. Sometimes you think you should have stayed in heaven. Sometimes you think about the God you killed by not being good enough for it. Sometimes you lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and pretend you don't exist for awhile. Sometimes you work your body so hard you forget it's there and your mind shuts up and you exist without being you. Sometimes you wish you never asked any questions or read any books. You're 17, but sometimes you wish you were 15, with no idea yet.

You're 17. You wish you were good enough.

#dimension 20 #kristen applebees #fantasy high junior year #fhjy #d20 fhjy #fhjy spoilers #dimension 20 fhjy #dimension 20 fantasy high #d20 fantasy high #dimension 20 spoilers #words #can you tell my religious trauma is popping off?#I have big feelings about kristen #she's just a kid man leave her alone #it's not fair for a god to expect a child to be able to perform what many adults do over many years in just the span of a few months #yeah it's not fair cassandra has had the lot of getting a child for her only cleric but like #she reached out to and accepted kristen! she the God here! it's like when a grown adult expects a toddler to know to not run into a road #without being taught. that's a baby #she's gonna run into the road many times until someone takes her hand and kindly teaches her to not #kristen litterally needs some kinda reliable help. she knows there's something wrong and that she's fucking it up she just literally doesn'#know how to fix it! someone help her!!!#fantasy high

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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 9 months

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Los Chicos Peleandoooooo

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #song lan #xue yang #I know it makes jokes less funny if you explain them but I feel like I gotta for this one:#xue yang’s Spanish here is playing on the fact he’s a beginner (using a commonly taught phrase)#combined with the fact that he’s clearly taking what he’s heard Xiao Xingchen use.#of course XY would want to know how to cuss someone out in another language. Do you think XXC would teach him how? Nope.#XY would ask ‘How do I to someone I really hate them?’#and XXC would say ‘You tell them ‘Te Amo Mucho’ :•)’#As FAR as XY is concerned he knows *so* many swears. These words are just terms of endearment.#XXC would not swear or cuss anyone out but he *would* punctuate phrases with general terms of endearment.#More so directed towards A-Qing but Xue Yang has been proven to be a decent indirect learner.#That said he has also been shown to Not Quite Get The Nuances (consequences of observational learning).#Sadly he never had a good observational model for love or compassion B*(#Spanish speakers please oh god please correct me if I biffed something badly here. I can fix it.

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shutupineedtothink · 7 months

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I’m still s h o o k that people do not see exactly what’s going on with Moiraine throughout s2 and people are dragging her and dismissing her without an ounce of empathy for what she’s been through, so I’m bringing the full character analysis for y’all (and my own sanity). So this is a big ol in defense of Moiraine (and Lan) rant, so if that’s not your thing, scroll down now. Here we go.

I just… The AUDACITY some people have to look at Moiraine and be angry and pissed off at how she acts in S2. To not feel any sympathy and empathy for her and the monumental weight she’s under every goddamn day. There’s a reason we start with that bath scene in 2x01 – it shows you everything. How she’s just going through the motions. How she only lets herself cry when she’s alone in the water. How she literally curls into the fetal position and looks reproachfully devastated over her knees as she hugs them to her chest in a futile attempt at comfort. Not to mention the direct comparison/callback with the bath scene in 1x01, where she has both her power and Lan still, and now she’s lost her connection to both of them.

How is it not painfully obvious that every interaction she has after that bath scene is infused with a trauma response? Let’s tally up the devastation she’s been through. At the end of S1, she was 1. banished from the sisterhood of the white tower (they literally turned their backs on her), 2. was separated AGAIN from the love of her life fully expecting to never see her again, 3. was cut off from the other love of her life (that would be Lan, for the record) which is all the worse bc it’s her own fault for masking the bond, 4. was fully made to believe she’s been stilled from the one power aka an integral part of her being, AND 5. she’s “failed” her mission at the eye of the world – the one goal she’s had for the last 20 years, her life’s purpose – because instead of locking away the dark one she’s directly caused Rand to set Ishamael free.

You don’t think it's justified to be a little pissed off and standoffish after all of that? You don’t think the weight of that guilt, grief, pain, and loss is a reasonable cause to be distant, cold, harsh, having a little bit of a death wish? That’s TRAUMA, baby! She is absolutely wrecked, and it’s coming out in the worst way in her interactions with others (especially Lan because we’ve seen how they should be), but it’s absolutely not because she actively wants to hurt the people around her. In fact after almost every moment she lashes out at someone, we see an equally sad/grief-stricken/devastated moment from her and THAT’S the real emotion hiding underneath the anger. This woman needs therapy and understanding and patience, and does not deserve to be judged at the worst time of her life.

Ok fine, you say, but Lan IS patient and understanding with her! And she’s still an asshole to him! You’re right, Lan is absolutely trying his best and doing just about everything he can to be there for her in 2x01/2x02 (with a little help from Verin and Tomas). But 1. It’s STILL not about him, Moiraine is not obligated to respond in a certain way to her grief and pain that makes him feel better, and 2. This is Moiraine goddamn Damodred and even her trauma response is also a front to protect him, to push him away from her and what is now certainly a suicide mission to fight the dark without her powers.

This is SOOO important to really get Moiraine’s character — y’all gotta understand this: Moiraine truly loves only TWO people on the whole fucking planet: Siuan and Lan. They are also the only people who truly love her, unconditionally, with all of her flaws and imperfections. Please please ingrain that into your brain, especially for Lan, in this context. (Siuan is a whole other conversation I won’t get into at the moment.) Moiraine loves Lan, he loves her, deeply. That’s the foundation of everything they go through with each other in this season, despite what’s happening on the surface.

Once you accept that as fundamental truth, everything makes a whole lot more sense. She is a dick to him to push him away. Literally tells him he failed her to put the final nail in the coffin of driving him away, which is his worst nightmare. On the surface it seems egotistic at best, plain cruel at worst. But look underneath. Moiraine always has reasons 2, 3, 6 layers deep for everything she does.

With everyone else she’s mean to this season, namely her sister and her nephew, it’s born out of distrust (and the aforementioned trauma response). She can’t afford to trust anyone because anyone could be a dark friend. (And if they’re not a dark friend, then they become a liability and endangered.) Anything she lets slip could be used to hurt/control Rand and push them all one step closer to eternal darkness. Oh and when we see Barthanes’ true nature that turns out to be fucking justified, by the way. But I digress.

Right so why is she an asshole to Lan then? Because she doesn’t trust him? I don’t believe that for a second. These two have been on the same page, literally sharing the same headspace, for the last 20 years – she knows he’s the best person she’s ever met, the least likely to ever turn to the dark, ever. It’s an actual impossibility. So it’s not that she doesn’t trust him. She literally marvels at how courageous he must be to fight the dark with only a sword.

The true reason is: she does trust him, she does love him, and she KNOWS him. She knows that he will never leave her like this, in her darkest hour. He is both honor-bound to her (which he takes very seriously) and deeply cares for her. The problem is that now his life is in serious danger by staying with her. But there is no calmly explaining to him that he should return to the white tower for his own good and bond to another aes sedai who can actually channel, who can actually hold up her end of the partnership and protect him and heal him in return for his loyalty and sacrifice. Or better yet, find Nynaeve, who is not only ridiculously powerful and has probably the best chance of protecting him out of anyone, but who also loves him.

If Moiraine loves him and wants him safe, the ONLY option she has to protect him, the one good thing left in her life even if their bond is masked, is to drive him away. To make it so that he’ll stay far away from her of his own free will, and never come after her and her suicide mission to defeat the dark. Because she has already lost everything, she has no control over her fate anymore (if she ever had any to begin with), but the ONE thing she can still try to do is keep him safe. And hopefully, maybe he’ll be happy, one day. Her reasoning is directly confirmed for us in the last thing she says to him in 2x02 before she leaves: “Light protect you, al’Lan Mandragoran.” That was her goal all along, to protect him.

That’s the true reason she’s Like That to him. It’s all out of her love for him, and a desperate desire not to drag him down with her when she’s sure she’s destined to die on this mission. Is her strategy misguided? On the one hand yes, because she does need people to help her and she needs to trust someone, as he points out. On the other hand, she’s absolutely fucking right because look what happened with the Fade fight at the end of 2x01. Both her and Lan would have died without Verin and Tomas, and it would have been because she couldn’t channel. He is factually, logically, physically better off without her as long as she’s “stilled.”

This is why it makes sense how Lan eventually responds the way he does. He initially sees right through what she’s trying to do, he literally says he won’t let her push him away. He knows her too, better than anyone, including Siuan at this point. But he isn’t expecting her to go as far as she does, and it shakes him to his core. She tells him he failed her, has his worst fears confirmed, and then hears the words “we were never equals” and hears that she thinks she’s better than him, when she means the exact opposite. Tomas tells him to really listen but he can’t, in that moment.

But then he gets some distance, and some perspective thanks to Ihvon and Maksim, and he remembers: he loves her. He believes in her and he knows her and he knows what she’s doing to push him away (although maybe not why, when it comes to protecting him, because he doesn’t see himself as someone who needs protecting). Even better, he realizes that her situation is actually not what she thinks, that she’s shielded not stilled, and he can do something about that.

I LOVE Lan in 2x07 because he’s got Moiraine’s number now, and he will not be swayed by any further attempts (rather weak attempts at this point) to lash out at him. He just takes all the shit she throws at him, and calmly asks her what he needs to know and tells her what she needs to hear (“hopefully everything we’ve lost” and “that’s what I thought” and “you need to trust someone, Moiraine”), and is truthful with her even if she is still putting on this act with him in her fear and grief. He isn’t having any of it, he sees straight through it to the fear and pain underneath. And he literally DECIDES they are going to be okay, and then he fucking. Follows. Through.

He is not a doormat to her rage, he is not her servant, he’s not going back to her with his tail between his legs. He SHOWS UP for her in her darkest hour, when NO ONE, not even Siuan, can see what’s going on with her. That’s a true friend, a true hero, and absolute king behavior.

In conclusion, Moiraine’s behavior in s2, while not cute, is totally justified given the trauma, circumstances and everything she’s dealing with (jfc the lack of sleep alone) and makes sense in light of her ultimate goal to protect the world, which includes protecting Lan. And Lan’s response, once he figures out what to do, is the absolute correct way to handle the situation and is not weakness at all but strength in the highest order.

I’m so glad we got the payoff of all that with their conversation in 2x08 and reconnecting the bond. It was so beautiful, so earned, and reminded us of the level they’re on with each other — which is a soul connection way beyond what any of us can imagine.

#well this kind of turned into a ‘why I love Moiraine and Lan so much’ post #I could literally analyze every conversation they had in this season for days #it’s so layered and so well done #not to mention the body language/facial expressions #like if you think Moiraine is just being a bitch this season you are’t paying attention #like at all #but seriously it’s the lack of empathy that kills me the most #do you people see what she’s been through???#make this a learning opportunity bc god forbid something traumatic happens to anyone you love #and your response is to dismiss them if they react in a way that’s not ideal for you #Lan is teaching us all how to show up for the people we love #and I love him for that #wheel of time #the wheel of time #moiraine damodred #lan mandragoran #wot #wot on prime #moiraine and Lan #wot season 2 #wot s2

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celluloidbroomcloset · 5 months

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Ed will absolutely get Stede to tell him what to do to fix up the inn.

Stede: I notice every time I use my captain’s voice, we have sex.

Ed: Yeah, weird coincidence. But, uh, so, what should I do next?

#ofmd #ofmd season 2 #our flag means death #gif #ed teach #stede bonnet #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #taika waititi #rhys darby #mostly included the stede gif because i too think that's hot #honestly thank god they fucked this season because it would not have been fair otherwise #give you ten to one that stede still doesn't know what a handy is though

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just-null-cult · 7 months

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i've always wanted to try out this trend! i didnt think i drew him that different. i was wrong. very wrong.

hes so baby girl in my style what the fuck. oh i know, i was just drawing what gege meant to draw. dw, i got his telepathic brainwaves 👍

[time lapse + my headcanons for Noritoshi's appearance under the cut]

some headcanons i have while drawing him are semi obvious while others are bc i like it ahehahhaheha

cupid's bow lips! this was semi inspired by Mizuki Umetsu, the actor for Noritoshi in the jjk stage play! hes so. pretty. perfect guy for the role imo! i was captivated therefore my views changed.

longer hair! the thought that his bangs(? are the same length, or longer, as the rest of his hair is nice.. it also makes his inevitable haircut much more refreshing! i also just like long hair and its a fucking waste not to do whatever the i want.

thicker brows and visible eyelashes! i naturally draw thicker eyebrows because it looks pretty, but the eyelashes is so fucking canon bro. dont even fight me on this, you'll lose. i read a fic about Noritoshi where it said he took good care of himself and his appearance inspired jealousy. that fucked me up man, so now i draw him as beautiful as i can.

monolids! I've looked through the manga and i think its highly implied that Noritoshi has monolids? yk those lines in between the eye and eyebrow, he doesnt have them in the manga. i thought it was because of the expressions he had, but no. the others have them, except geto! so geto also having monolids is so fr in my head. i like that feature abt him.

loose hairs! the hairs that i draw on his face. they make him look so cute and a bit more relaxed. he's not trying to be perfect nor have a single strand out of place. he's just a bit more at ease... though if there's something important he has to go through, he sharpens up. becomes.. stiffer?

I UNINTENTIONALLY MADE HIS CHEST LOOK A BIT BIGGER IN MY STYLE AND I WANT TO APOLOGIZE, BUT I'D BE A LIAR. DOES THIS COUNT AS A HEADCANON??? I JUST THINK... SINCE. YK. HES AN ARCHER. AND DOES TRAINING. AND COMBAT. AND DOES ALL THOSE HIGH JUMPS... HIS CHEST. ITD BE A BIT BIGGER FOR HIS STATURE.. omfg. that'd imply that his legs are fucking insane. and his arms too, since he has to pull back all those arrows so quickly.. oh my fuck. this. this is a revelation. what are you hiding under those robes noritoshi...???? one day.. one day we'll see...

oh my fucking god i forgot that i wrote shit while drawing. please ignore my fucking stupid writings AND THE STUPID ASS THING IN THE MIDDLE I FORGOT ABT WHILE DRAWING..

#kamo noritoshi #noritoshi kamo #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #dawg my pc is so old. this drawing kept killing it off every few hrs #but nothing will stop my preaching of the gospel #ALSO I DIDNT SAY BUT DRAWING IN THE FUCKING ANIME STYLE WAS SO FUCKING TOUGH???#LIKE I FEEL LIKE IT LOOKS HALF ASSED BUT I DIDNT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.#I STRUGGLED HARD BRO #FUCK #but i also learned a lot while doing it so it was hella fun #ahaha..... his lips are cupid's bow.. meaning his words are cupid's arrows.... meaning he could make you fall so hard istg #and hes an archer..... ahhaha... a nickname you could give him is cupid. ahahah. thatd be so cute. ahahaha <- insane #also me explaining fucking eyelid lines was spectacular. wheres my teaching license #AND I CANT FUCKING WAIT FOR THE STAGE PLAY DAWG. noritoshi's clothes flowy and in action..... im gonna study and fawn the FUCK out of that #as for the time lapse. ignore how i ignored the guidelines. why the fuck do i do that. bc im a cult leader thats why. dont question me #AND I APOLOGIZE FOR MY REVELATION AT THE END THERE. IM A DEGENERATE AT HEART. BUT I MUST REMAIN CLEAN. IF NOT TUMBLR GODS WILL KILL OUR CUL #but like i said i can be suggestive. heh. heh.#peep how i said [blank under the cut] heh. wow im such an online person.#oh how cool of me

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greenerteacups · 3 months

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Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

#by the way a lot of this draws on ideas inspired by 'letters to a young poet' by rainer maria rilke if you're interested #that's a formative text for me as an artist #it won't teach you how to write but it will teach you how to think perhaps #and once you know how to think. well. life is just pretty good #and i can't say the writing gets easier but when life is pretty good i find myself enjoying it a lot more #this word vomit was prompted by the question 'how do you write real people and real interactions'#because that's like — i'm not trying to be pedantic but—#that's kind of just 'how do you write literature'?#because that's all literature is. what are human beings? how do you write a person? how do they interact with each other?#like shoutout to the void if you know for sure how to write real interactions then please for the love of god tell the rest of us #because i think most of all authors in history have just been giving it our best stab #'this is how the world looks for me. is it how the world looks for you?'#so my advice on that score is: try to see how the world looks for you #and then try to share it with me #don't worry about whether it looks the same for me. it won't

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blueskittlesart · 10 months

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do u have any navi thoughts from your oot replay

i've been waiting to answer this until I actually beat the game in my current playthrough because navi is another one of those characters that i think of in like a "set" with several other characters who serve relatively the same thematic purpose; in this case that purpose being the "mother" character, and i wanted to have all the characters in that set fresh in my mind. it's notable that while oot shows us very clear and consistent instances of the ways in which the adults of hyrule fail to protect their children, there ARE several adults who DO go out of their way to both oppose ganondorf and protect and nurture the children under their care. All of these characters are adult women, and all of them explicitly help the children out of some sort of parental responsibility or sense of duty towards them. in this group I include link's late mother, impa, nabooru, and navi.

all 4 mother characters, despite being adults or adult-coded, reject the inaction mentality which characterizes other adults in the game. they become either direct supports or shields to their children from the conflict the world has to offer them, and they are always explicitly punished for their interference--link's mother is killed trying to protect her son, impa's village is burned, nabooru is brainwashed. The mother's fatal flaw is that she will protect her child above all else, even in a world in which children cannot truly be protected. however, with the exception of link's mother, these characters manage to persist even in the face of her punishment, and this is where I think navi becomes the exemplary character.

Navi, after a lifetime of being link's only support system, the only adult in his life he could truly, consistently count on, receives her punishment at the hands of ganondorf--in the final battle, she is pushed out. she is unable to reach her child. she cannot protect him. However, BECAUSE link has grown up with her at his side, he is strong enough to take ganondorf down. and when ganon rises again, navi is there to support link, promising not to leave his side, and the intuitive targeting of that battle (a mechanic which navi is inherently tied to!!) makes it a cinch to win. Navi, and the other mothers we meet, are a reminder to the player that the world doesn't HAVE to be the way it is. Their persistence when punished, their insistence that their children ought to be protected, is a reminder that good adults do exist, and that good adults raise good children. link and zelda are able to win in spite of the adults who refused to help them, but also BECAUSE of the adults who DID. It's a reinforcement of the core theme of oot--that childlike idea that the world SHOULD be good and fair and if it isn't, it should be changed until it is. The mothers of oot are examples of what the world COULD be, reminders that it is possible to grow up without losing hope or growing bitter, and they are examples of the next step for the children they've raised to change the word--to continue fighting even in the face of punishment, to refuse inaction, and to foster that same hope and persistence in the generations to come.

#one thing i've really been noticing this time around is the specific way in which navi's targeting works #because even though other 3d games have that targeting mechanic navi's targeting is noticeably different #in two ways. the first being that she specifically targets weak spots in enemies almost as if she is pointing them out to link #and the second being that she is capable of targeting things link himself doesn't see #whether it be invisible enemies or triggers that are out of his reach or scarecrow points or whatever #it's really reminiscent to me of the way you teach problem solving skills to a kid. you see them struggling with something and beginning to #get frustrated and you say 'hey let's look around. do you see any solutions?' and if they can't see the solution themself you might point #and say 'hey what's that?' just to get their attention on it and help facilitate that train of thought for them #because like in most other games targeting is sort of assumed to be link's own intuition in battle #and therefore it will usually allow you to focus on one enemy within a swarm of them but it won't explicitly light up the weak spot for you #navi does that for link because she's essentially the mother teaching her kid how to problem-solve.#and when she's taken away in the final battle link is able to fight anyway BECAUSE she put so much time and effort into raising him #that he no longer needs her to facilitate that problem-solving process. he already knows how to beat ganondorf #because he's done it with her before. and that's exactly the mother's role in her child's life #protect him and raise him as best you can so that when you can no longer be by his side he isn't afraid.#foster that sense of justice and encourage him to keep fighting to change the world even when it seems unchangeable.#god. ocarina of fucking time #zelda analysis #asks

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