Bit of a random question, but as a teen I'm curious, what would you want to say to kids of today? Any advice?
Hm... every person's life journey is different, but I don't mind giving a few tips based on my personal experiences! If they can help in anyway then I am glad for it!
Ted Talk below the cut.
Life will always change. YOU will change. You may feel stuck or trapped in some aspect of your life right now and are worried that things will never get better. But they do... it will take time, but you will get there so long as you keep moving forward.
Try not to stress too much. All those things that seem like such a big deal right now... most of them will be forgotten within a few years. So it helps when you feel overwhelmed to step back and not let these little (or even big) missteps take control of your life.
No really, go touch grass. I can not express how important it is to disconnect from social media and just be present in the moment. Going out to a cafe or a park to help you unwind and ground yourself. If life allows, try traveling! Even if it's just a road trip. Get out and see and experience different things because those will be the memories that will stick with you!
Change things up. Even if that's just taking a different path to school or trying a different snack. I find that stepping away from the mundane daily schedule helps bring so much more variety to my life and helps me be more present in the moment.
Be flexible. Especially in your goals and expectations. We're expected at such a young age to choose our destination in life, when it's the journey itself that we should be seeking. So while it's great to have goals, do not make them so rigid that you will deem yourself a failure should they not come to pass. Often times it's the things that surprise us in life that help lead us to opportunities we had never even considered.
Your worth does not come from what you produce, or how many milestones you hit, or how much money you make. It is something you give yourself as you relearn time and time again to love yourself.
Your health is important! It is something we often take for granted when we’re younger but it will mean so much as you age. Also should you feel that you’re ever in pain or unwell, speak up. There are so many instances of people coming to greater harm because they only listened to the first doctor who brushed them off. Seek a second opinion. Know that your body is worth proper care!
Just because you have to grow old does not mean you have to "grow up." Those things you loved that sparked joy in you as a kid? Hold onto them or find new ways to instill them into your life. Keep that passion and remember what fun is! Because you will need it just as much when you're older. It is a major ingredient in the spice of life.
Remember, you ARE special. You may not feel like it... but the fact that you exist is such a mind boggling feat in this vast universe of mostly empty space. While that may be difficult to grasp as we are, stuffed in this tiny jewelry box we call Earth, that does not make any one of us any less special in the grand scheme of things. And in this tiny but overflowing box of treasures, there is no gem that is quite like you. You managed against all odds to come into existence. That is AMAZING. Congratulations! Hard part is already done. Now go shine!
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wait omg i’m curious about your unpopular thoughts about temenos writing wise.. i love when people discuss octopath writing it’s really enriching to see what we all have to say about certain story elements. plus you’re like a temenos representative to me. your thoughts about temenos make me go “so true!”
Aw, thank you! It took a while for me to decide on what to write here, since honestly I could go on for… frankly any aspect of this guy, especially in regards to treatment in fanon. But for now, I'll focus on my thoughts regarding how people treat tragedy in Temenos' story— namely, Crick's death— and why I personally dislike it as a writing decision and why I disagree with the idea that it is necessary.
Note: Goes without saying, but this is my personal opinion. If you believe otherwise, then that's all good. I'm not writing this to say that any one person is wrong, just to talk about an issue I have with the game's writing itself.
To start, I'll say that my main reason for disliking Crick's death in SH route is a matter of practicality. Killing him off causes Temenos to lose the main person that he had a fantastic relationship and banter with, and in my opinion, Temenos works best when he's bouncing off another person; not unlike most under the Sherlock-archetype.
Also, genuinely? It works wonders to keep Crick alive, if just because it provides a fantastic avenue to explore Temenos' institutional trauma. Having a character that's lived a different experience but within the same harmful institution opens up ways to explore the scope of its harm. And yes, this is for Crick specifically; not Ort, not the travelers, but Crick.
I think it really adds something that Temenos was raised by the church while Crick converted as a teenager during a really difficult time in his life. These two are good for each other. Crick sure as hell makes it a lot easier to write Temenos in fic.
(If you have a different experience, again, that's cool. I'm glad for you. I, however, will never fail to take the easy way out.)
(This is a lie, I'm over here making up fantasy church law for fic stuff but that's not related to this answer.)
I won't pretend that disliking Crick's death is an unpopular opinion. I mean, "Stormhail Fix-it" is an entire genre of fic on the OT2 Ao3 tag. What I do feel tends to go unaddressed though, is the fact that the idea that Crick's death is canon, therefore it is necessary, therefore it is the best decision; an idea that I wholeheartedly disagree with.
Within the text itself, Crick is killed off in order to give Temenos a personal reason to pursue Kaldena, thus putting him at odds with Kaldena's motivations being driven by her ideology and worldview that, "because humans committed the massacre, it was the gods' mistake to put us here". I also won't pretend that Kaldena's writing here isn't fucking awful, because Crick's death is also a device to make the player want Kaldena defeated even though she is just as much as a victim of the church; and that's to say nothing of her portrayal as an indigenous and dark-skinned woman.
These decisions are ones I disagree with. Killing Crick off was unnecessary to give Temenos reason to pursue the culprit, because Temenos already had someone close to him killed; and that's Pontiff Jörg. He raised Temenos from infancy, but due to the lack of focus on him outside of banter conversations, it's never relevant to his motivations outside of the desire for truth because a crime was committed.
We also didn't need to kill Crick off to show that the church was a terrible institution, because Roi already went missing in action. The Sacred Guard is the main body of law within Eastern Solistia, it's not unreasonable to think that the reason why Temenos dislikes them is because they clearly didn't do shit to investigate his disappearance.
However, one thing I really don't agree with is the idea that Crick's death is necessary because Temenos' story is a tragedy. And if you asked me why, I'd ask this in turn: why is death the only form of tragedy? Furthermore, why must a tragedy contain only tragic events? That in mind, what gives anything value in a tragedy, then?
Pretend we cannot completely rewrite Temenos' story. Even then, changing Crick's death to a permanent injury, a coma, or whatever is still a tragic event; and that's nothing to say of living with the consequences. Isn't losing your faith a tragedy? Isn't losing something you worked for years to do a tragedy?
Similarly, I'd still argue that it's more valuable to make Stormhail a near-death experience because not only does it show Temenos succeeding in making someone question the church but also the terror that is feeling like you're doomed to repeat tragedy. Even if you really aren't, it's hard to dismiss that feeling; especially when it has to do with being victimized by institutions.
And before someone says, "but bad things happen to good people in real life", I'm not treating these characters as living, breathing people who are subject to things like gravity, hunger, and exhaustion. I'm treating them as choices, and choices made that I disagree with.
It's why I make different choices. I choose to make Crick have to deal with chronic pain onwards. I choose to make Temenos realize change is still possible. I choose to let them both leave Stormhail alive. Are these better choices? I don't know. But I'll never stop questioning the ones made by the writers regardless; much less stop disagreeing with them.
So, in summary: I dislike Crick's death. I dislike Temenos having to spend the rest of the story without someone he can talk to so easily because Crick's absence weakens a lot of his scenes in Temenos 4. But more than that, I dislike the idea that tragedy is necessary on top of the idea that it is superior. Tragedy's good, I adore the genre; but written in mindful doses and all that.
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Do you have any good Jonsasha fic recommendations? In line with your lovely posts about them?
Unfortunately Jonsasha that isn't poly//chives is thin on the ground. There's a few cute fics that I recced here but for dual archivists/eldritch js? There's jon/michael/sasha this series (which I'll admit looks VERY promising, and I keep meaning to get to it) and this fic but I haven't gotten around to either of them yet so I can't speak to their quality.
The only fic that I've read that came close to giving the JS vibes I'm so hungry for is this Jon//michael fic, which has one specific line that haunts me to this day: “'Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims fell in love with his Archivist, Sasha James, and in trying to save her life, gave the world to the Beholding on a silver platter.'” (I hope if you decide to read the fic that this isn't too spoilery? I'm not sure what I'd think of it now that my TMA opinions have shifted so much from what they originally were, but I remember I quite enjoyed it at the time). I know it probably isn't quite what you're looking for but when I think Jonsasha I think of That One Singular Line. I hope I can make it haunt someone else the way it haunts me.
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I think the fact that Ganondorf has suffered so much is what makes him so compelling to me. Fiction is rife with villains who never suffer the consequences of their actions. Gan has had consequences out the wazoo. But he never stops fighting, because his spirit is truly unconquerable. On a related note (sorry, this thing doesn't seem to paragraph very well), I think that gloom is very different from malice. Consider the terminology: malice is the will to do harm, gloom is sorrow and depression.
That is certainly what drew me to him to begin with, as Wind Waker was what completely made me change my mind about him as a character. It took some time, but eventually I started to comprehend, I mean really comprehend the ending, all the things he says to you. Then watching him lose everything and mentally break for the last time before your very eyes.
I realized. He had been so determined, because this one goal was all he had left. He didnt even want the Triforce at the end, he wanted to be rid of it because he was tired. He wanted an ending to this fucked up story.
Then he watched the one thing that would have kept him going get taken from him and was left with nothing. Nothing to go back to and not a friend in the world, because this was not his world at all. He broke down completely for those reasons but also because it was just so predictable, so fucking like fate to do this to him, he couldn't help but see the irony even as his soul was shattered.
He didn't attack Link because he wanted to take these kids down with him (If he did then let's be honest, both link and tetra especially would have died) but he attacked Link because the kid had the one thing in the world that could kill him, and he was ready to use it. Ganon was never the type to just lay down and give up. To the very end, to his suicide, he went down fighting. It was what he wanted. A final wish, I guess, that was ultimately just to die.
I related with that and it hurt so deeply. It still does. I can still barely watch the ending, as much as I love seeing him in action. The ending just breaks me every time. Because for him and his people, everything truly is hopeless.
As for gloom and malice, I can see the discrepancy. They're parts of his strongest negative emotions. I find it kind of fascinating that the malice was the Subconscious (calamity) while the gloom happens when he's actually waking up. Rage and depression go hand in hand with him, really.
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