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.
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Prompt by @rabbit-harpist - Chayanne and Tallulah finally meeting in person. (Also @becauseplot as I saw you were also thinking of this one). I hope this is fine. I rotated it a few times too many oops.
Mention of injured child, but it's just the comfort that comes after.
Chayanne only sits still because Papa has him trapped. Dad isn't here, but his closest sister had updated him on that. She is here now, he knows that, her reaching out every few minutes to check if something scaring her is actually dangerous or not.
None of it has been; Chayanne is still a bit uncertain about some things here, but Dad is with her and would never let anything bad happen to anyone ever. So, he promises her it's okay, that he'll see her soon, that she just has to let Dad and the Doctor look after her and then they could see each other. That's what Papa had said, and Papa does not lie.
(It does not change the fact that he wants his sister /now/.)
She updates him on the other children she was with, too, just like she always has - and just like he does for her. He worries about all of them - Bobby and Pomme and Richarlyson and Trump and Allie and Dapper and Ramón and Leonardra and all his siblings without names - but he worries about her most of all. He can talk to her, and has been able to talk to her since the day she was dragged into life, listless and not yet screaming. He remembers things she cannot, and that he never wants her to, and now he finally, finally gets to see her!
Chayanne asked, once, what she looks like. She didn't know, and he doesn't know either.
Finally, finally, she lets him know that the Doctor has told her she can leave. There's more that she doesn't understand, and if she doesn't understand then she cannot explain it to Chayanne either, but what she does know is that Dad has picked her up, and is bringing her to see Chayanne.
Papa cannot keep Chayanne any more; he squirms his way out of Papa's arms, dropping to the floor and running.
"Chayanne!" Papa calls, also standing up to chase.
Chayanne is little, but he is fast. Papa is also fast, but Chayanne has the head start and knows where he is going; out the door, down the stairs, cross the balcony over the "subsidiary power generator", then-
He does not make it to the then. In the little walkway between that room and the next, he collides with Dad.
Dad only laughs, and ruffles his hair, and yells, "it's okay, Missa! I caught him!"
Chayanne does not have attention for his parents, though; he stares up at the little girl being carried on his Dad's hip.
She is much smaller than him, but then he knows people grow and that she has only been alive for half of his life. Curly brown hair, glowing yellow eyes, a patch on her cheek and neck where dark skin fuses with grey-purple insect shell. She is dressed in one of Pomme's dresses - one of the simpler ones, left open at the back so that little blue wings have the freedom to move - a little loose on her, but also too short.
Under it, Chayanne can see bandages - they make a thicker patch, and poke out of both the sleeve and neckline of the dress. He shudders, remembering the agonising pain from when she was shot.
She stares at Chayanne, before turning to Dad and tugging on his arm. He laughs, and Missa scoops up Chayanne, and Dad says, "I'll let you down once we get to the common room, okay Tallulah? It's still a bit dangerous here."
Chayanne can feel the warning in the back of his mind. He would sulk at being picked up again, except that Papa is picking him up, and Chayanne will never actually refuse him.
Instead he rests his head on Papa's shoulder, ignoring the way his parents talk to instead watch his sister. With one hand he waves to her, and she smiles back - fangs and all.
"/Is Tallulah your name?/" he asks her, in the same way they have always talked.
"/I think so!/" she replies. "/Do you like it/?"
"/It's pretty/."
"/So are your arms/!"
Chayanne looks down to where the glowing patterns on his arms are providing a low light. Wanting to make her happy he pulls up his sleeves, showing off more of the intricate - if random - designs.
He doesn't ask if she is hurting, because he knows that she is. He doesn't ask if she is okay, because he knows that she isn't. He doesn't ask about their sisters, because he knows the two Tallulah came with are safe, as are the ones already here, and that the rest of their siblings are dead.
Instead he shows off the patterns, and points out people they pass, and tries his very best to entertain her.
Eventually they make it to the common room - Chayanne's parents are always slow when they decide to walk and talk, no matter how impatient Chayanne is feeling - and set the two children on the floor.
"Chayanne, this is-" Dad begins.
Chayanne does not listen to him. Instead he runs across the room, and pulls his little sister into a hug.
"Careful!" comes the warning from both parents, one in English and the other in Spanish.
Tallulah is in no more pain from the hug than without it, so Chayanne does not let go. He tucks his precious sister close and he knows he cannot protect her, that the hurt is already done, that he could not even save Bobby when he was right there beside him.
But...
She's here now! Dad actually found her! Helped her! She's safe, and she's okay, just like he promised and promised that she someday would be.
He did not know what a hug was until Papa gave him one, and Tallulah is still a little unsure. Carefully he explains, in that silent way which comes most naturally to them, and she hesitantly wraps her arms around him too.
Carefully, he leans down and taps their foreheads together - the gesture of welcome, of comfort, of family that they eggs developed for themselves, before the adults of The Order came and taught them what hugs are.
That's when the tears spill. Not just Tallulah's, but Chayanne's as well.
"/It hurts it hurts it hurts/," Tallulah whispers into his mind. "/Big brother, I'm scared./"
"/You're safe/," he promises back. "/You're safe, you're safe, you're finally safe - I will protect you now. Together, we're together, we won't ever be apart again. You're home now, this is home, nothing will ever hurt you again, Dad and Papa won't allow it./"
Tallulah does not know what /home/ means, but that's okay. Chayanne is going to teach her.
And that starts with letting go, but holding her hand, and dragging her to the box of children's toys and accessories to pick out the first thing that she will ever own.
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any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before
i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig
from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.
the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.
as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.
I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.
The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.
In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.
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