#I didn't sleep long enough so my brain is all muddled and foggy but I wanted to get this out

[aragaki]

Zelda & Hylia, Praying Was Never the Answer

This is probably incoherent but I'm having thoughts on Zelda and Hylia's relationship and how I don't feel that Zelda's frustrations with the goddess are completely warrented.

I don't think Hylia is the detached, cold figure that a lot of BotW fan content presents her as. The goddesses in the Zelda universe exist, they're not just theoretical or mythological and they do intervene when they have to and no goddess is as present and active in protecting mortals as Hylia.

People point out that Link is able to communicate with Hylia whenever he wants at the goddess statues and that means she must like him more than Zelda. I don't feel that's exactly the case. I doubt Link was able to hear the goddess before he pulled out the Master Sword, and wielding it to protect Hyrule is his sacred duty. Thus, his connection to the goddess is established.

Zelda ends up able to hear Fi's voice from the Master Sword when she unlocks her sacred power so it's reasonable to assume that she would be able to hear the voice of the goddess now. And I know that's fairly obvious but what I'm trying to get at is without the sacred connections, either through divine power or being the wielder of the Master Sword, you can't hear the goddess. Zelda was never going to be able to hear Hylia until her powers manifested and I don't think prayer was ever going to be how she got them.

Even if Zelda has complicated feelings about Hylia because she couldn't communicate to the goddess through prayers, Hylia was desperately trying to speak to her. One of her diary entries pretty much confirms this:

"I had a dream last night... In a place consumed by darkness, a lone woman gazed at me, haloed by binding light. I sensed she was...not of this world. I don't know if she was a fairy or a goddess, but she was beautiful. Her lips spoke urgently, but her voice did not reach me. Would I have heard her if my power was awoken?"

So it feels like the idea that Hylia is ambivalent or choosing to ignore Zelda when she prays at the springs to unlock her powers is wrong. I honestly don't think Zelda was ever going to unlock her sacred powers that way because introspective prayer is almost the antithesis of Zelda's nature, and that's true for almost all of the past Zeldas.

Zelda was a pirate, Zelda was a Sheikah warrior, Zelda was a monarch trying to lead during the darkest hour of twilight. The only reason Hylia's mortal reincarnation went to those sacred springs was to purify her body and regain her memories of her life as a warrior goddess and protector of the Triforce.

Zelda doesn't sit and pray for power when Demise's curse revives evil into the world. BotW Zelda was on the right track when she was trying to figure out the Sheikah technology, because that was the drive and the weapons she chose. Sitting and praying didn't do anything. She only gained the sealing power when she chose to protect Link, when she stepped into the role of a protector.

King Rhoam was a bad father and it's obvious and easy to blame everything on him but I really feel like it was his fundamental misunderstanding of how the goddess' sacred power worked that caused Zelda to have have such a hard time unlocking it. She was never going to awaken anything through prayer because neither Zelda nor Hylia sit on the sidelines during a crisis.

Zelda blaming Hylia for being "deaf to her devotion" when Hylia is meeting her in dreams, urgently trying to speak to her is misplaced anger. Hylia isn't ignoring her, she isn't the statues with their placid smiles, she's near screaming for her mortal self to hear her.

I'm not saying that Zelda doesn't have the right to feel like she does or people's angsty interpretations aren't good but for me? I like this idea a lot. Zelda feeling like the goddess isn't listening while Hylia feels the same way about her.