I’m pretty on board with the headcanon that what Link gets out of being the bearer of the Triforce of Courage is the power of being a video game protagonist, but I genuinely can’t decide whether it would be funnier if he’s 100% aware of how much bullshit his everything is, or if he honestly doesn’t realise.
Like, does he know that normal people can’t recover from life-threatening wounds in a matter of minutes by drinking a jar of really good soup? It’s the sort of thing you’d assume would be obvious just from being around other human beings, and yet.
The fact that Breath of the Wild Link’s laser-parrying trick is something that only works for him is made explicit in the dialogue, so presumably he’s at least aware that it’s exceptional, but does he understand that it’s complete bullshit, or does he think it’s just a skill issue?
Link: No, that’s fair, if I fuck up the timing I have to eat a laser to the chest and that is, understandably, extremely painful, so I don’t recommend you practice this unless you’re really confident about your timing.
Random Guard:…Link people die if they take those to the chest.
Link: I mean you should be angling yourself, i’m not saying to just let your sternum take a whole blow, to just take it square, that’s a terrible idea
Random Guard: It explodes rocks.
Link: You have armor for a reason my guy.
Random Guard: …
Link: If it helps, drinking some fire resist potions has proven to be moderately effective for me.
Random Guard: The Ones you apply to your skin?
Link: What
Random Guard: What
I’ve been acting like Link is just kind of done with people not understanding what he means, and if he were try to explain everything that’s going on our how to do certain maneuvers (eg. bullet time during falls) it is take hours with each person. he’s just very good at synthesizing information so everyone else seems slow on the uptake
which is why he ‘rarely if ever’ talks/explains stuff
(also nobody has any sense of curiosity that actually leads them to ask questions, they all just stand around wondering aloud where their chicken went instead of looking around for a minute or asking if people had seen it.)
Indie horror games are either like “You’re on a submarine because you were sent to explore a mysterious pit in the ocean floor and you slowly realize you weren’t meant to resurface” or “Mr. Scrubkus is gonna get you!!!!! Don’t let him get you!!!!” And Mr. Scrubkus is the one everyone talks about
A thing that bothers me about wizard schools in popular media – outside of the magic-grade-school stuff, anyway – is that they’re typically depicted as being basically magic universities, but their actual curricula and pedagogical approaches look much more like those of a technical institution. Like, buddy, that’s not a wizard university, that’s a wizard trade school. You can’t just slap university student culture on top of trade school pedagogy. It doesn’t work like that – the one emerges from the other!
“Well ACTUALLY wizards are” wizards are made up. They can be analogous to whatever real-world class or vocation the author wants. Wizard-school-as-university and wizard-school-as-technical-institute are both perfectly fine; what I am grumping about is wizard-school media that doesn’t seem to have a clear picture of how different sorts of educational institutions actually operate.
Okay but now I really want to know what a Wizard technician would look like. Would he wear magical overalls with all kinds of reagents and magic tools sticking out of his numerous pockets?
A guy like that walks into your tower with a toothpick in his mouth, takes one look at your summoning circle and goes
“I see yer problem. You used chalk B12 instead of S3. B12 is only for transmutation circles. Gimme a sec I think I have a piece somewhere here.”
He fixes your circle, test summons an imp and goes.
“There ya go. Fit as a fiddle.”
“It’s the chalk.”
“The chalk? I always use that chalk, it’s never been a problem.”
“Ah - yes. This stuff will work just fine for most circles, but, uh - here, take a look with my loupe. You see the off-color flecks? Can’t hardly see them with the naked eye, but those are impurities. Silicates, might even be some iron in here, to be honest. Usually won’t cause a problem, but - you said you hadn’t tried this particular summons before?”
“First time trying a 5th level, yeah.”
“Those silicates will make your scribing a little fuzzy when viewed from the astral plane. You see, for example, these three fine lines here? With this chalk, on the astral that looks like one thick line with fuzzy edges. They can’t tell exactly what you want, and they’re picky lil’ critters so they just won’t do anything in response.”
“Really? Oh. I always thought the expensive chalk was just fancy to be fancy.”
“Making pure chalk is difficult, you need a dedicated production line or dust gets in the finished product. To be honest, you don’t need to bother with it for most things, but 5th and up, 5th level and up, it actually is necessary. Anything with lines within about two millimeters of each other.”
“So I need to start over?”
“Unfortunately yes. You’ll have to erase all this, but with some good chalk it should work just fine. Next new moon your summons should go off without a hitch.”
“Dang. At least it’s not my sigils, I was worried it was my sigils.”
“Nah Your sigils look good. Even and balanced. You know what you’re doing, it’s just an equipment problem.”
“Thanks for the help, sorry to make you come all the way out here.”
