#soft warm lighting

[andy-clutterbuck]

Rick Grimes in The Ones Who Live | 1x03 - Bye

[astralember]

[minslune]

𓏸𓈒 𓇼 Sweet Summer Breeze

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

(we've already done this before a few months ago, but i thought it might be nice with a second round)

[fleurral]

this was one of the best, if not the best, sunsets i’ve ever seen in my entire life

[bluesdeluxe]

Deniss Vasiļjevs: Hallelujah | Montreal 2024

no commentary version music by Leonard Cohen, performed by Thomas Feiner choreography: Shae-Lynn Bourne

[brackenblythe]

Finishing my first knitting project and taking breakfast in bed

[canterai]

[fighting-naturalist]

idk i just thought he looked real pretty lit like this 🤷‍♀️

[blueskittlesart]

what do you think his thoughts were at that moment?

this is an insane question and i am going rabid trying to answer it. for context this is about my. link dead on the fucking floor compilation. i. e. "what do you think went through link's mind as he all but DIED in precalamity botw."

i've thought about this before because. well obviously i have. look at how many times i've drawn it. i think context matters more than anything when examining that moment, because it's essentially the culmination of link's entire life up to that point in the worst way possible. you have a kid who has been raised to either win or die. those are his only two options. he's known this for basically as long as he can remember. either he defeats the calamity like he's supposed to and lives the rest of his life as an untouchable gold standard of soldier, as proof that all that pressure and pain he suffered worked, or he dies and dooms everyone he has ever loved to suffer horribly for the rest of their likely very short lives. And i do think he thought about this extensively, because how could you NOT, and i think that he probably believed that death was the most likely outcome. He was raised by a soldier, around soldiers, to be a soldier. soldiers are practical. soldiers strategize for the most likely scenario. they're not pessimistic, but they know how to look at a situation objectively and make a judgement call. Looking at link's situation objectively, it would have been obvious that he couldn't win. he was one kid, a 16-year-old boy, with maybe some above-average swordsmanship skills, but too many variables were missing. he couldn't hear the sword's voice. zelda's power wouldn't manifest. Hylia, who should have been there guiding them through this prophecy that SHE had supposedly inflicted on them, was completely silent. the divine beasts may have given him some hope, initially, but it was clear below the optimistic facade that hyrule was toying with very dangerous forces they didn't truly understand. I think he very likely went into that confrontation with the calamity anticipating death.

what's most interesting to me about the scene of link's death isn't that he fell, but WHERE he fell. because he didn't die in the sanctum, at the scene of the calamity's birth, as one might have expected. he died in an empty field along the road to a fortress that might have been able to protect him. Link, the bearer of the triforce of courage, the boy raised to die a martyr at the hands of the calamity, who had all but accepted his fate before the monster even showed its face, chose to run for safety, what some might call the coward's approach, instead of dying where he stood at ganon's hand. and it seems almost out of character at first, when you think about the person he was when he first met zelda, the person who would do anything in his power to show no weakness, to take the pain and the stress without flinching or faltering. the boy who so completely embodied that idea of "courage." but i think that zelda was the piece that changed him. If it had just been him at that final confrontation, maybe he wouldn't have run. maybe he would have been content to take his final stand and accept the death he'd been promised. but zelda insisted on being there, too. "there must be something i can do to help." and while link was a soldier, more than willing to engage in self-sacrifice, he was also a knight, sworn to protect this girl, and so he couldn't in good conscience sacrifice HER, too. so he ran. he tried to live, at a moment when he should have expected to die. and i think that was infinitely more courageous of him. to go against everything you have ever known and expected is infinitely scarier than accepting the outcome you've always anticipated. Running for his life (and for zelda's) was running into the unknown. escaping death in that way was defying everything he'd built himself up to be, everything everyone expected of him. Who is link if not the hero who faced the calamity with courage? what would he have to be if he could not be what was expected of him? in that moment, he made the choice to step into the unprophesized timeline, into a world where his actions were no longer defined by some great all-seeing power. and that was the most courageous move he could have made in that moment. he must have been terrified.

so what was going through his mind as he made his last stand? Honestly, i think the only thing on his mind was zelda. I don't think he cared about himself, his physical condition, any of it. I think he made the choice to run because of zelda and so he made the choice to take his final stand where he did because of her, too. just before zelda's power manifests, we see him try to continue fighting even inches from death, so gravely injured that he's unsteady on his feet, using his sword to keep himself standing. i think he must have known that he was in no condition to fight anymore, but he expected death to come for him at one point or another. what mattered was that she might live as long as he kept going. that's why he ran in the first place. not for himself, but because zelda was there and zelda didn't deserve to die like this. Even once zelda's power manifests, link only gives up and allows himself to fall once a beat or two has past--once he's sure that there really is no more danger. that she'll be okay, that she can make it past the fort and into relative safety even if he lets go here. He collapses then, and only then, after running miles through fields and woods, already gravely wounded, because in that moment he sees that the danger has past. a soldier's work is only done when there is nothing left to fight. a knight's work is only done when his princess is truly safe.

maybe he was relieved that he'd managed to hold on as long as he had. that he'd been able to find her some form of safety, in one way or another. maybe he worried about what manner of things would come for her once he was gone. maybe he wondered why she wouldn't just leave him and run for the fort. i'm sure there was a flash of regret in the back of his mind, for the family and friends he'd leave behind, for the people he'd let down, for the calamity he wasn't able to defeat. but this was the outcome he'd expected, even if it had come in a slightly different form. Even if now there was a girl hovering above him begging him to open his eyes.

[scoutingthetrooper]

x

[catsbookscoffeeandlove]

𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐳𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝

[astralember]

[minslune]

𓂃 st★rboy ! ¡

[rkkuri]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⟢⠀⠀⠀ ﹒⠀⠀⠀ꊞ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀you bewitch me ⠀⠀⭒⠀⠀ @wnhee

[floral-hex]

I lied, I don’t want to have sex. Take off your shoes, we’re going to gently hold each other for the next 4 hours.