Eddie: *overhears some girls gossiping about how Steve and Nancy got in a fight in an alley and the police got involved*
Eddie: *hears someone else say that Nancy Wheeler was taken to the police station*
Eddie: *sees Steve jumpy as hell with bruises on his face*
Eddie: *notices that Steve doesn’t talk to his friends anymore. notices that Steve and Nancy always seem miserable together. notices that only one of them is trying to please the other*
Eddie: *witnesses the halloween bathroom fight*
Eddie: *sees Steve confused, beat up, bruised to hell, and single the literal next time he sees him*
Eddie: *puts the pieces together and draws a conclusion*
Conclusion: *is wrong*
Eddie, accosting Steve at lunch: Hey, did you know that if a guy is getting hit by somebody that it’s abuse? Even if it’s a girl doing it.
Steve, confused: Oh-kay?
Steve, deciding that Eddie is reaching out to him for a reason and draws the same wrong conclusion about Eddie: I mean, yeah. That’s - yeah? That’s true. And messed up. You should tell someone if that’s, uh…going on.
Eddie: Yes, exactly. You should.
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So, despite some faults, I really enjoyed totk, and on its anniversary I want to say something about it. Other people have said similar things before but it’s really important to me and actually a big part of why the story of totk was meaningful to me, so I want to also say it:
Zelda needed to come back from draconification. The story needed that. It wasn’t lazy and just ignoring “consequences” because (imo) that was the *point*
The point is to feel like there are going to be terrible consequences and then say actually, no. You can come back from this, with the help of other people.
To me at least, that was the theme of the whole story.
If botw was about how the world goes on past loss and grief and starts to heal (how flowers grow in the ruins and the world can be beautiful again, be worth saving, even if it has changed)…then totk was about a more personal kind of healing.
The weight of the world should not be on your shoulders alone…you, alone, should not have to fix everything…you should not have to sacrifice yourself, but when you do, someone will be there to save you from it.
This turned into a really long ramble so:
You (Link) gained so much and now it’s gone. It feels like you’re back to where you started and yet you know you have to do it all again…you were weak and you failed and you’re weaker now…but
You go down to the surface. Monsters swarm across it once again. Other people are fighting them too though. You help, but it’s not just you…
You go to the Rito, the Gorons, the Zora, the Gerudo…just like with the divine beasts, there are friends who help you save each region. But this time, part of them comes along with you when you leave. It’s nice, you realize, the first time one of them protects you from a monster you weren’t prepared for. You’re still weaker than you were before, but someone has your back…
When you go up to the sky you see a strange new dragon there. There’s something about them that feels familiar. You try not to think about it.
You go down to the depths too. It’s terrifying at first. You hate it. You only want to get what you came for and get out of the dark….but slowly, the light grows. You get stronger. The dark feels like a challenge you can face (and someone has your back).
There are spirits down there. You don’t know when they’re from, but some part of you wonders…are these all the people you let die in the Calamity? (You help them find rest from their wandering. The weight on your shoulders feels a little less heavy).
There’s so much gloom. The first few times the sky turns red and hands chase you (a reminder of what you’ve lost, how you failed) you just run. Eventually though, you have to fight. It feels like the (second) worst day of your life again. But you manage to get free of the grasping gloom and stand and fight, as wild and desperate as it is. Beneath the manifestation of your worst fears, there’s another thing to fight, but this time it has a face (a voice in the back of your head says…you know this isn’t all on you and your failure…it’s really Ganon’s fault right?). You get through it.
At every turn in your travels, it seems like something reminds you of Zelda. Her passion, her curiosity, her kindness. You miss her.
At first, the tears you find reassure you. She may be in the past, but she’s safe. She’ll come back somehow…but then you hear the word draconification for the first time. You want to believe she wouldn’t do it but you know her and the fear sits cold inside you. (Zelda is a lot of things. She’s been allowed to be more of them, since she was freed from her hundred year battle, without her father holding her back. But deep down inside her, there’s a vein of self-sacrifice that still runs strong. It’s what saved the world before, after all).
She did it. She really did it. She’s gone from you (from Hyrule) forever, and it’s all your fault. If only you hadn’t failed so utterly in the battle (you can hardly even call it that) under the castle. If only you’d caught her. If only you hadn’t let the sword break. You should have protected her you should have been better it’s all your fault and now she has to live with the consequences, forever. Everything really is on you, you should have been better.
(Zelda POV: you couldn’t call upon Hylia’s power in time, you were too content to let it wither and fade away from you, ready to be free of it. You shouldn’t have. He got hurt, the sword got hurt, it’s your fault…Sonia and Rauru help you channel it again, Sonia helps you learn how to turn back time…but you don’t save her. She dies because you couldn’t save her. Rauru dies not long after. There is no one left to guide you, once again. You could spend years trying to figure it out on your own. But you did that last time. It didn’t work. Self-sacrifice, stepping in front of someone you love, that worked. (You do what you can, to call upon the sages, to help Link in the future, first). And then you swallow the stone. You’ve come a long way, in the past five years, allowing yourself to exist. But in the end, self-sacrifice worked last time. It’ll work this time too.)
You (Link) go down beneath the castle. You were supposed to bring the sages but you didn’t. It’s nice, for someone to have your back. But no one else should get hurt to fix your mistakes.
They follow you anyway. They fight with you, against the hordes, against the greatest enemies you defeated together, along the way. They’ll have your back, even if you don’t think you deserve it.
You fight Ganondorf, and then the demon king, in the hardest battle of your life. You think it’s over and then the demon king decides it’s better to lose himself completely than let you win. You’re exhausted and afraid of yet another battle, but up there in the sky, when you’re falling, the Light Dragon catches you (you wonder why she changed her path to catch you, you wonder if there’s still something of Zelda left in there to save). With her help, you win.
And then you’re in some other realm. The spirits of Sonia and Rauru are there. You remember how the two of them and Zelda channeled such incredible power together. You think about Recall. Turning something back to the memory of what it was before, like Sonia said. You stand with them and you allow yourself to hope. Maybe the Light Dragon can remember the form she took so long ago, the person that she was.
And then you’re falling, and Zelda is falling, but this time you catch her. You catch her. She’s back home with you, finally, finally.
And maybe, one mistake doesn’t have to be the end of the world. You don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes, someone else can stand with you, and it’ll all turn out alright. (You can put the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can sacrifice yourself, but someone will be there to catch you, someone will be there to pull you back to yourself, when all is said and done).
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astarion, the man who was dying and offered eternal life, but had no idea that it meant becoming a slave to a sadistic master.
astarion, the man who had his freedom and bodily autonomy ripped away from him.
astarion, the man who was forced to befriend, seduce and sleep with people to lure them back to his master, resulting in severe sexual trauma and the struggle to form any sort of intimate relationship.
astarion, the man who was horribly punished whenever he refused his master’s orders (one punishment being sealed away in a dusty tomb, starving, for an entire year. he scratched his hands raw trying to carve his way out).
astarion, the man who was forced to eat rats.
astarion, the man who hasn’t even been able to see his own face since he turned.
astarion, the man who had his body mutilated as cazador carved scars onto his back, which he later found out was to bind him to a ritual.
astarion, the man who is so severely traumatised that he admitted he doesn’t know how to say “no” or ask for help (and he feels guilty when he does).
astarion, the man who waited two centuries to be helped and freed from torture, but no one came.
astarion, the man who was always treated like a monster when all he wanted was to be treated like a person.
astarion, the man who came up to you in the middle of the night just to thank you for defending him and allowing him to make his own decisions.
astarion, the man who said that no one ever looked out for him or showed him kindness, and that you’re the only one. “other people don’t have a heart like you. you’re you. no one is like that.”
astarion, the man who broke the cycle of power and terror that started centuries ago thanks to the love, care and compassion that you showed him when no one else did.
astarion, the man who confessed that he loves you and feels safe with you; something he has never felt with anyone before.
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Alright time for me to start my nonsense
(Possible) reasons why Jinx has cut her hair in s2
She doesn’t want to be a symbol for Zaun and all the art people have made of her feature her braids prominently so she chops them off
She doesn’t know how to braid her hair, Silco did it for her
Someone ELSE cuts it off her Flynn Rider style, why idk
Someone grabs her by her hair and she cuts it to escape
She cuts it off to let Jinx go and put her in the past (like letting go of Powder) after Ekko tells her moving forward means leaving things behind
And the worst most HEINOUS possibility I will fight the arcane writers for, SOMETHING happens to the mini Jinx and she cuts it off so her hair looks more like hers (I really hate this theory)
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