HELLO you teach elementary schoolers how to draw dragons?? 👀 that is the DREAM I used to teach my friends how to draw dragons during lunch in high school heheh

oh that is SO much fun HELL yes >:D

and yeah! i'm a part-time art teacher and as part of a program i'm in i go around to elementary schools and teach art workshops!! in the fall i taught them the basics of making comics and now that it's spring i'm teaching them how to draw dragons, somedays i wear my dragon button-up shirt and dragons socks too and it fucking rocks i feel like ms. frizzles cousin who's also gay

😒 I'm really hearing my mom complain that the report card wrote my brother's grade as an "A" instead of an "A+" because he has "three hundreds" and laughing abt how he's "finally set straight" and "running after every single point" because he understands he's not allowed to let his grade fall, and like WOMAN, we're both going to (am in) Community College, grades don't mean shit. They accept everyone, there's no reason to be so fanatic, you're not getting additional benefits, just wasted effort.

(2) Context being him staying after school to retake a Spanish quiz because it was "two points less" than a perfect score, I'm baffled. That's hardly worth the extra time. I operate on a mentality of "if the extra effort isn't changing the result or if I'm not getting anything in return, then screw it." Teach gives an A regardless if it's a shitty essay or a high quality essay following the rules? I'll write a paragraph and get that A. Teacher assigns essay and has no intention of grading it? (3) Now then why the hell would I do the work? True stories, both of them. Which my mom thinks is ridiculous on my part, and I know she's gonna cause a fuss about him acing the SATs. Which I had so much anxiety over only to discover that no, my whole future did not hinge on this stupid test. AFTER I took it, lovely. Could've taken it with a relaxed mindset and the months leading up. (4) Despite what I say, I have such a seething jealousy or annoyance, can't tell the difference, over her saying her son is going to "top" Highschool too, like. Sure, GL competing against the 5.0 AP Class Valedictorians, this ain't middle school. I'm ticked because that kid had no competition EVER, his classmates are afraid to take a single Honors Class. Meanwhile, mine were getting grades "above 100" it broke the fucking grade book limit. I know this because our teaches made grades public. (5) You can imagine how floored I was to be considered "smart" in a standard Highschool when I spent my whole life thinking I was stupid. Oh, and the icing on the cake is that my brother clearly has Autism and I have ADHD but to her, when brought up by people she's like "nO he's NORMAL" because he gets good grades. Like people with Autism can't be smart. If I say anything about it, it's "how dare you say that about your brother" I'M NOT SAYING ITS BAD. (6) I need her to understand that this is just a part of us instead of ignoring it, and that it's not something "not functioning" kids have, which rude. Instead she's content filling in the silence of my brother not speaking and his small gestures and words that I understand far more clearly than she ever would with her own delusions. There's a reason my brother talks to me about the "truth" instead of her. And I get so ticked when my brain goes brrrr and I gotta bounce around the house. (7) I don't realize I'm doing it, I just get this physical and psychological urge to go zoom, and she's telling her friends how I still act like a cute little 5 year-old bouncing on the toes of her feet which I find so insulting, that is NOT what I'm doing. It's a struggle, I'm trying to act normal, this is not cute or quirky and not a expression of how happy I am with life. It's just a physical release of Too Much Emotion and Thoughts stop looking and pointing it out. (8) I know you're taking a break from Uni, and good on you for respecting yourself as a person and caring about your mental health. That has far more worth than High Academia ever will, because you have a soul, your degree does not. I'm going to do my best to make sure my mom doesn't succeed with her whole "it's a waste of smarts if he doesn't become a neurosurgeon" thing when I know he doesn't want that. It's so easy for people to just say things without caring about the reality of the work. (9) I'm so unconventional in many ways I'm not saying, but hey 🤝 You do your best too, to live life at your pace making your own choices. Fifty years from now, this life will still be yours that you'll be living, nobody else. It's important to go with what makes you happy, and society doesn't care one bit what you do really. You're not a performer on a stage. There's no rush, and nothing is ever a waste. I hope you continue to heal and experience the funnest of days with friends, I'll try too!

Firstly, I want to apologise to you nonnie, you sent this ask a long time ago now and I'm only just getting to it. I'll admit, they amount you sent was quite daunting, especially when I received multiple asks with the same length.

I'm so sorry what you've had to go through with your mother about your education. I swear some people try and live through children and force them to succeed where they failed or force them on the path they went through because "I did it so my child can too, what do you mean they don't want too?!"

I'm happy to hear you can be a support to your brother, in a situation like yours where your stress is coming from your parent, you're not getting the support you need from your parents, especially if she's ignoring your mental health and neurodivergent disorders. I hope your brother is able to support you too.

Education really isn't worth the stress we go under, especially the pressure placed on students by parents and education. It just leads us to people struggling more and more until they can't do their education... That's what happened to me at first, where I felt like I couldn't turn to anyone because I thought my parents had put an expectation of univeristy on me.

I made the right choice to drop out of education and am now looking into interests that don't drain me mentally with the help of my therapist (for years I denied myself following art as a passion but now I'm getting support from everyone to try and I couldn't be more touched) and I hope moving forward you and your brother are able to follow paths that you want to do, not what you feel forced down.

Good luck Nonnie, I'll be backing you.

sending u this ask as an opportunity for u to talk to me abt fi!! i love ur thoughts n words on things nd i don't send asks as much bc i don't have. good words to talk to u abt stuff but i rlly enjoy just. ur Passion nd stuff. autistic people r the best at talking abt stuff i stand by that we r just Epic. anyways if u wanna, i'd love to hear more about just... how fi sorta. changes, over the game? like the Little Things that show her starting 2 care abt link more, or becoming more "human"!

i love this whole ask. you’re right autistic folks r sexy as hell idk how the divine powers that be fit so much passion into my tiny body but i’m glad they made the attempt. 

ANYWAYS FI. i don’t think i’ve ever actually laid this out because for the most part it is incredibly subtle and requires a lot of filling in gaps yourself, and i think that someone who cares less abt her can probably come away from it with an entirely different interpretation. fi’s development of actual feelings are a very sudden a mysterious thing, and i have a LOT of thoughts about them going in a lot of different directions so forgive me if this answer isn’t particularly linear or coherent. i’m not just gonna talk about her slow burn into feeling things, i’m also gonna talk about... why i think it happens.

we don’t get to learn a lot about sword spirits and how they come into being, other than it takes great power to enchant a sword with a spirit/temper a sword with one inside it. hylia obviously created fi and, presumably, demise created ghirahim, and they are pretty much as opposite as two people can be with their only real characteristic in common being precision, intelligence & otherworldly loyalty to their respective masters. 

we thus don’t get to learn how much control the creator of a sword spirit has over what kind of spirit comes of it, if their personalities are organic to their experiences or crafted from the moment they awaken. what i mean by this is like... ghirahim could have been a cold, calculating AI like fi when he was first tempered and gained his dramatics over time, we have no idea how long he’s been alive in comparison to her, if his personality is so much more extroverted because he was allowed a life outside his blade whereas fi was isolated in hers for millennia. or if he just came into creation immediately ready to scream and stick his tongue in ppl’s ears.

i swear to god i’m going somewhere with this. ok. anyways.

fi in the beginning of skyward sword is, i think, how most people remember her--data-interested, icy, and detached. there is a reverence in how she addresses link from the start, even before he formally becomes her wielder, but beyond that she is calculating and precise and rarely wastes words. all of this kinda paints a picture of hylia creating fi, to me--breathing life into the spirit and willing her to be effective, be efficient, be loyal, and be sharp. when you have that image in your head, a lot of how fi operates makes sense--she wasn’t created to have emotions, because emotions get in the way of what her purpose is. hylia made a weapon and a servant, not a friend. it sucks to think about, but that is fi’s purpose.

the game is very careful, however, to show you it’s not that simple from the beginning. because hidden in Ice Queen Fi’s introduction is... a surprising amount of personality.

like this shit, where she straightup just dunks gaepora in the trash because his #Lore is out of date. it’s hysterical because you really do not know if she’s just a) an AI who doesn’t understand when she’s being kinda Rude or b) being snarky On Purpose. and that ambiguity in itself crafts this beautiful air of mystery where you, from the get go, don’t entirely know what to expect of fi all the time.

or this, which she says directly after link hesitates to accept the blade:

this scene, which people who have edgier takes on fi constantly use to paint her as intentionally manipulative, where all i see is... her using emotional validation to calm link down enough for him to take in what’s happening. a really important thing about fi is that she’s paradoxically an empath? she can read auras and detect emotion with extreme precision even if she’s incapable of feeling it herself in the beginning. so she knows everything link is experiencing here, understands that it’s holding him back, and takes care to deconstruct the whirlwind of emotion he’s collapsing under and explain to him why he can and should trust her words.

again this is all in her introductory scene. they write her very specifically to be a seemingly flat character with this... rumbling of something more going on under the surface. so much so that the first time you get to a sacred spring and fi, completely randomly, just starts skating across the water’s surface and speaking ancient poeticisms to you, you don’t question it. you’re not like hey, why is sword alexa doing a little dance? you just accept it as something fi is doing, because fi always feels like she’s at her job, and you don’t know how she acts outside of work, but you kinda feel like maybe you want to.

fi’s affinity for music is another way they insert humanity into an AI without making you think too hard about it. singing and dancing are inherently human, artforms are something we associate with the heart and soul. even teaching a robot to paint is, in itself, an art project crafted by a human hand. but you don’t really... consciously think about that, when you watch her do these things. you just kind of accept that she is this otherworldly thing guiding you. you don’t think about the contrast of this programmed assistant performing music alongside you in a sacred ritual. you’re just kind of like, yeah? i can’t JUST play nayru’s wisdom on my harp, i need someone who can sing and god put a vocaloid in my sword???

throughout the game, fi’s dialogue chains when you summon her don’t change in any meaningful way (besides based on what you’re carrying, where you are, etc) but as you near the end, there are a couple things of note. one that sticks out to me is what she says about one of the mid-game minibosses, who is also an artificial intelligence--

a lot of people laugh abt this line and make jokes about fi being hot for the tall handsome robot pirate and they’re valid. but the thing is, like, from the beginning of her mission, fi knew she’d essentially be dying once the world was saved. and early game fi has no hesitations about her part in things regardless, because, as we know, she wasn’t created to feel things like that. she wasn’t created to fear death, to grow attached to life or anyone in it, or to experience sorrow at the idea of saying goodbye. but this is mid-game fi, who still... never says anything she doesn’t deem entirely necessary, but she says this. for no discernible reason, she says this. it’s an unskippable dialogue option, one they WANT you to see and one that is different when you know where she ends up. admiration is already something you wouldn’t really expect of her, but it’s more than that--she’s longing for her own story to mirror it. by the sand sea, fi has started to realize she doesn’t want to go to sleep.

it’s another one of those moments where you’re kinda like, ‘haha, what, fi?' and then move on. another one of those moments where she kinda does something a little unexpected, but not so unexpected you question it too hard. fi excels at those.

before you go off to fight demise, fi stops you to warn you that it is the final battle, and you cannot return. and when you tell her you’re ready, she says this:

as i’ve said, fi doesn’t waste words. almost always, everything she says is for the purpose of efficiency, and rarely does she offer thoughts without fixed probabilities and ultimate endgoals in mind.

this is a sentiment.

it serves no purpose. it is purely an expression of devotion.

and because of EVERYTHING i’ve mentioned thus far, this line both hits you HARD as significant and foreboding in how suddenly tender it is, AND manages to read as in-character for her to say. because the way they write fi’s humanity is so beneath the surface, so easily missable, so hard for me to even lay out with concrete evidence despite the fact that i’m a person who reads a text dump of all her dialogue before bed every night.

but to me, what lays out fi’s inner workings best is actually her actual goodbye, and... not the moment most people would think, tbh? it’s not her tender farewell that speaks her emotions loudest to me, but the moment right before:

these lines, which would read as perfectly in character if it were early game fi, cut you. her complete and utter flippancy, the way she talks about all you’ve been through together as though it were nothing to her, the absolute coldness here after everything. you as a player feel kind of pathetic when she says this, like you were misguided in growing attached to her and thinking of her as a friend. and you KNOW thats the intended effect, because this is what link looks like:

he takes a moment in that last shot to like. swallow sadness and turn away from her, but even as he’s turning his head, he doesn’t take his eyes off her until the last possible moment. she hurts his feelings! why.

because it’s an act, is why. of COURSE fi loves him. of course she’s grown attached to him, of course she’s happy to have known him, of COURSE they’re friends. but fi was NEVER supposed to feel that way, she was never supposed to have the capability to love, and there’s no calculation she can run to set the uncertainties of that at ease within herself. so those lines up above is her trying her best to reset herself to who she was in the beginning, to snap herself back into the role of an emotionless servant to the goddess, to convince herself--not link--that saying goodbye won’t hurt. she’s trying to cope with something she has no idea was in the cards for her, and that’s why she’s seemingly so cruel for a moment.

all of this becomes apparent when she calls him back moments later and tells him how she really feels. there’s major whiplash because fi herself is Going Thru It. but essentially what’s happening in that moment is she thinks she knows what will hurt the least, but she miscalculates and backpedals and realizes even if saying goodbye hurts, it hurts less than pretending she doesn’t want to.

i think a lot of people overlook that line--“the most precious data i have on record.” fi, who contains multitudes within her. who contains knowledge immeasurable, the thoughts and feelings and stories of thousands. of civilizations, of gods, of countless ages passed. everything she holds within her is dwarfed entirely by what she feels for link, beside link. nothing in her encyclopedic knowledge can even compare to her friendship with him in the significance it has to her. like all things, fi has her own way of communicating her meanings, and this is her way of saying she really, truly loves him. 

in addition, she very carefully does this after he abandons the sword, so it’s clear that it’s of her own will, not a part of her purpose as his servant. for this whole cutscene, up until she end, she drops the honourific and calls him just Link. 

and while i see a lot of people debate if she truly does ‘feel,’ anything, like... she says it right here, she does. whether or not she was able to feel from the beginning or not, she can feel now. she has trouble putting words to those feelings, or explaining to herself and others where on earth they came from... but she feels now. that cannot be disputed.

happiness that she was able to know him. loyalty she wants to transcend lifetimes. sorrow at the idea of them having to part. gratitude that he took the chance, and did so beside her.

let’s talk about gratitude.

in skyward sword, gratitude is a tangible source of magic. it opposes malice, which as of botw is a reoccurring thing in zelda lore. skyward sword has two items--evil crystals and gratitude crystals--that represent malice and gratitude respectively. while the first isn’t entirely relevant, the second is something you’re actively encouraged to more or less harvest by helping people and basking in their thanks toward you. these feelings of gratitude are so canonically powerful in the zelda universe that they can turn monsters into humans entirely, and the outpouring of energy that event causes makes every monster & hostile creature within all of skyloft turn docile at once. 

according to batreaux, the monster in question, this is well-established legend, the idea of gratitude granting humanity to the nonhuman. skyward sword literally said the power of love was canon.

the song that plays over the goodbye, of course, is called fi’s gratitude.

this is just one theory i have on the matter, but... whether hylia intended or foresaw fi to be capable of feeling human emotion or not, i do believe it was gratitude that woke her heart up. whether she was meant to love or not, link’s spirit contained within it enough love for the both of them, enough to touch her soul and rouse her from her cold and emotionless state. as always, through everything, they work in perfect tandem--his passionate heart touches hers as it sleeps, her wisdom holds him steady and level-headed. 

when fi says “may we meet again in another life,” she says it like a prayer, because it is one--she knows hylia, knows that hylia loved link’s spirit just as she did, and knows that hylia of all people understands what the sword spirit is going through. and fi also knows that hylia immortalizes those she loves with cycles, with reincarnation, eternal life without the pain of never dying. fi doesn’t have a soul that hylia can bring back from death nor a physical body to revive, but she works with what she can--and so long as link’s spirit breathes anew, he finds fi. in a sunlit grove, with light bearing down on her, safe and warm and always loyal, even as the world rages on outside. fidelis, she was named for--“faithful.”

the fandom doesn’t really talk abt it, but fi is an angel. she’s an angel god sent to watch over one human, and when god said your mission is complete fi faced god and walked backwards into hell. her divine mission is long passed, but it stopped being about what she was fated to do long ago.

fi began to watch over link because he was her master. and fi resolved to stay forever because he was link.