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Click here![/url]\n\nMajoras Mask. It feels like an eternity since I picked you up, and yet it hasn't been long enough. You taught me some really messed up things when I was a kid, but, I was still just a kid. You gave me the realization that sometimes life just isn't fair. \n\nGranted. Made sure I was responsible about what I made priority, and more importantly, you made me want to kick whoever designed the element of time in that game, right in the freaking face. So I picked you up again because I'm a glutton for punishment, but your graphics looked a whole lot better. So what did I relearn walking a second time through Majoras Mask? Well, for starters...\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n- Sometimes there is no limit to how low things can get. That's not a bad thing. - \n\nNow before we get melodramatic, roll our eyes and say \" Shane, you are such a cynical boy that needs more faith!\" let me just say, woah man, chill yourself. You don't need that much stress in your life. Second, we're also under the preconception that negatives only remain negatives in our lives. With that being said, let's do a brief catch up on Ocarina of Time. So as you probably know, Link wasn't your typical Hero when it came to the whole world saving gig.\n\n He started as a lonely boy who stood oddly out among those of his village, the Kokiri. Of course Link was a Hylilian which made him different and so he never got that fairy all the Kokiri received, nor did they really accept him for the most part. He had nightmares of an evil man, and eventually fate had it that he would leave his home to do as the goddesses intended. He gets a fairy, forest father/god/tree dies, whole world gets thrown into chaos, he gets that sweet horse, fights Ganondorf and then...! Well, nothing happens. Link is the Hero of Time and he makes damn well sure that Ganon never gets that power. He erases everything he did, all the people he met or lives that changed him for the sake of peace. \n\nWith that, he leaves because he has no destiny left. I'm also going to assume he totally stole that horse, Epona, because come on, he got out of there quick if I am to assume. His reward had simply been to never see the pain of others, but also to return to his own time. What time had that been though? He was out of place and could not find anywhere that he felt he could belong. Not every thing in the world, good or bad comes with the expense for recognition. \n\nIt's the idea that Link's fate was only meant to keep peace at the expense of his own. He knows he is Hylilian and so he cannot remain among the Kokiri, nor can he remain in a place that has no memory of him either. Even Navi, his own assigned fairy had left of him upon the conclusion of his victory. So Link wandered, unsung into the unknown without purpose. Then Skull Kid came to him, and we all know where this is going. Link got jacked; He lost Epona, he lost the Ocarina, and Skull Kid just went the mile route of dickery to curse his form into a Deku Scrub. \n\nThe thing is though, it's more than just physical goods being lost. We as players may not even be aware of what that loss represents. It's not just an instrument, a horse, and good looks being taken away. It's the thievery of an identity, or what small fraction of it had been left. You can lose your house in a fire or get your wallet stolen, but I'm going to assume it is soul breakingly hard to have your identity to yourself wiped. Some would argue that the past makes ourselves.\n\n What happens when there is nothing left of the past or you but the tokens of your journey? You don't need money and earthly things to truly be happy; They can be distractions, don't get me wrong, but memories and self identity...those things matter so much as well. For Link, he pulled the short straw on that department because when his purpose was used up, he really lost it all in the end of that road. There is this common conception that we can only go so far down before we hit something and stick.\n\n The truth is that there are no limits of how bad things can get. There is no true universal system of loss that any single individual can exhibit. Now that's not to bring you down, don't misunderstand me. There is more to this than the universe taking a collective piss on Link's head. It's about where he went with it at all. \n\nEverything is a testament to our will to exist, let alone thrive in the true face of adversity: others and more importantly, ourselves. We are things caught in the winds of forever changing circumstances, mountains to climb and demons to face in the wake of our growth. Yes, there is no limit to how far you can fall or how bad things can truly get.\n\n When it came to Link though, after everything was said and done, he didn't just sit there out in the fields and eventually die, probably by dehydration. He continued on because the truth is, when we feel our fate has been met, that does not mean it simply ends there. We can create our own ways. I don't know how you would or will, I don't pretend to be a glorious overseer of cosmic fortune. I do know this though, just as there is no end below ourselves, likewise there is no end above. \n\nWe might as well say that Link should have been a broken mess at this point but his aimless wandering wasn't just without hope. It may very well have been the opposite in the face of absolute loss. Skull kid's torment was not the end of his journey, it was the start of something completely new and on his own terms. So what I'm getting at here is that you can fall so far, and it may just happen some day in your life, it may not. \n\nYou can also struggle against what life is throwing you. Things will always happen when we make departure for new roads, good or bad it is challenge. They may not go as far as we can conceive, but if we remain in the holes we may stumble in, we won't ever know outside of how far we poke our heads out.\n\nIt's not a bad thing to know this because for some, there is a sense of apathy that extends into the realms of their own lives. There can be a purgatory in which we assume nothing can ever happen in any direction. We may be miserable, we may excuse ourselves and usher into the corners of that misery, not looking further up but assuming this is all we shall ever have. Likewise, we may not know such pains and live a life of contentment until the worst may suddenly spring on ourselves.\n\n There is a spectrum of ignorance to multiple ideals, morality and its importance to ourselves. Eventually however we need to understand the truth that bad things can happen without a limit. That also means we have to stand against those bad things with whatever power, no matter how small, to make things right for ourselves again. It can be as simple as tucking away five dollars just in case, or trying something new. It doesn't have to be big things to make a difference at the time, I don't know, you think of something. However if you happen to see the moon smiling down at you as it enters the atmosphere, Fuck it. Just pray to whoever you believe in at that point. If you do not believe in anyone, then believe in yourself.\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n- Futility does not mean abstaining from trying -\n \nNow if any of you are familiar with myself, you know I've gone on and on and on about this kind of message. People ask me why I do art, why I bother, things never change, yadayadaydada. Point being, I've said this stuff before but let us chug it down again. So Link is in Termina, the great ( and racist, seriously. ) town that is doomed to have a giant moon sized smiley face press it into oblivion and probably make the worlds most morbidly hilarious crater. \n\nSo Link and the player obviously need to get their shit together in three days to see what they can do about making sure the world isn't one less town short. Things are pretty much messed up already though. Lakes and rivers are poisoned, Great Fairies are broken, monsters are just all over the place and holy shit, how has this place managed to exist through all this trouble? It's chaotic and no one is going to hold you accountable if all the things happening at once are giving you a headache. \n\nSo link does what he can and before you know it, three days are up. Its okay though because you can go back to day one. Link can clear the poison from those waters, save a monkey from being slaughtered, help a woman marry a child- Naw I'm just messing with ya, That's just the whole curse thing with Kafei. Eventually though when those three days are up, Link has to go back to day one. Everything is the same, the poison is back, good deeds undone, and all the problems remain untouched. \n\nI'd want to say that duh, time wipes many things, but I'd also like to believe there is something more meaningful in all of this. It's the ideal circumstance of life, I imagine. All these repeating elements, these disappointments, distractions, worries and doubts, obstacles and so on. You can climb your hills but eventually there is another hill either the same size or even larger. Most people get discouraged thinking about that. You might feel a sense of futility in the attempt. \n\nMaybe you've given up on some of your dreams because the repeating elements of conflict keep getting in your way. Maybe you've tried so long at something that you just don't have it in you. The truth is that in many ways, Termina is a lot like our own lives. Pretty from the outside and just plain messed up to multiple degrees on the inside. So why do we bother with the things we do? Why do we create art, make music that hardly anyone seems to appreciate, or write long things about video games that just about every asshole out there is going to say \" Verbose and pointless.\"? Well, the answer is all dependant on you actually.\n\nYou see, the thing is for Link, he never really had a voice and I mean that both figuratively and literally. The player through him chose what things to repeat again and again, try in frustration and see the things they had done, only in the shadows of what else stood in their way of accomplishment. Yet through the determination of ability, we know you and so many others collected all those masks and eventually took on Majora.\n\n You beat the days and went through the repetition without reward, without joys or excitement. You maybe wanted to huck the controller or 3DS half way across the room, or maybe you just breezed passed it ( and I seriously hate you for that ability.) So what am I getting at with this? what I'm trying to say is that we're a bit like Link too. We can be voiceless and choose to let the moon fall. We can say \" I don't want to try doing this because _______\" and that is all it will remain at.\n\n Some of us look at challenge and resign ourselves to not put in the effort, expend time, energy and happiness, when we're living our days losing time, energy and happiness. Futility is just a word, and it is also an idea that leads to only one end: nothing. \n\nWe want to feel justified about what we're doing, and we want that feeling to be more apparent. We don't want to feel like somehow we're wasting our efforts. Yet we also need patience for ourselves and the challenges we face. It wont always be as simple as finding success and never having failure again, or never hearing some cold ass crap from a feeling vampire tell you things just aren't going to happen.\n\n Everything, I mean everything is a challenge and an obstacle whether it is people breaking you down or yourself being too content with resignation. The true difference is that unlike Link, the only people that are going to give us that ability to accept futility not as an end but as an endless challenge to better, is ourselves. \n-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n- The bad guys are not always what we believe -\n\nOkay so we have Skull kid from the get go who in about less than two minutes we can quickly identify as the king of assholes. They're a thief, they don't care who gets hurt, cause chaos and are the reason the moon is crashing down. Seriously you want to smack the hell out of this guy. It was when Link went on further that they found Skull kid had simply been a tool of manipulation for Majora, the creature within the mask. To their credit, even before the mask, Skull kid was a go-out-of-the-way jerk that caused mischief. \n\nCould you blame the guy when more than three fourths of Termina apparently has judgemental people who won't help you at all if you're not ( and I'm assuming here) a white Terminan. They're not all so disagreeable, but they also contribute to Skull Kid's overall douche behaviour. Now my point isn't about who is to blame, if someone deserves a right smacking or any of that. My point is that in the first few minutes we have, we only react of what we are given. We don't know Skull Kid yet we want to hate them. We're unaware of what in their lives are so destructive that they too wish to share that destruction with others. \n\nIt has never been easy trying to smile back at someone who is screaming at you. There will always be that primal part of ourselves that wants retribution and revenge. After all, we may feel harmed by words and actions and thus create this realm of black and white, good and bad, friend and enemy. There is that part of our brain that is quick to judge, to de-human those we perceive as a threat to whatever we hold dear.\n\n I can recall that recently I had done a work for an individual that upon response, said I fucked them on the commission. I've been told by people that I talk too much, that my art is shitty. I've been told how horrible I am for being a white male who just has everything so easy. I've had my physical fights, my verbal ones and some to this day remain with me, not in accomplishment but in regret. No amount of fighting has ever brought peace. No emotional wall, no flying fist or darkened word, no matter how we felt justified, had the purpose for good. I'm not going to lie, I was angry when I was told my art was an insult, that the time I spent on it was not enough. I wanted to ring their fucking throat because I pride on my work. \n\nI also know this, I don't know these people, they don't really know me. We've never hung out together, I haven't met their family or seen their place. I don't know what their childhood was like, how their day went or if they enjoyed Legend of Zelda. Yet I perceived them as a threat to my happiness, and that by being insulted I should retaliate, create the intricate and easily identifiable side of black and white.\n\n Guess which side I was on? I kept my mouth closed. I apologized, offered them a refund and explained myself. They had nothing more to say and I wandered in my anger. It hit me so hard then, the way I felt. We're so quick to judge because we assume everyone is on the same level, having the same thoughts, thinking the same way. We get angry when others disagree, even go out of their own way to prove otherwise because \" Fuck you, isn't everything so obvious as I see it?!\".\n\n Yet they are human, their ideals are so similar to our own just on different levels. The truth was that they really did feel insulted in the end by what I offered. They may not have been articulate with their words or politeness, but they verbalized their unhappiness. You see, in most games and movies there are cardboard cut outs of villains. People and monsters whose soul purpose is to cause destruction without a true purpose other than...screw it, fire everywhere. \n\nThis concept sticks with us because it is easy to believe those who you fight with simply go home, draw the curtains and laugh their evil laughs away while burning kittens in the fireplace. We seldom consider that they have problems, or maybe they're going through tough shit just like us, they just don't know how to deal with it. Or maybe they just don't really like what they're seeing and we need to sometimes respect that.\n\n Lord knows, and I'm willing to admit, I've probably came across as heartless and rude to other simply because I felt scared and so used to being treated poorly, it was my only point of response eventually. There is a world of different perspectives and problems and the worst we can do is so quickly assign its moral equation based completely on our instant reaction to it. Skull Kid felt abandoned and hated so they hated those that hated them. They got so used to it, eventually they even started thinking their closest friends hated them too because it is so easy to draw lines than pass over them. \n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n- Time is not always our enemy -\n\nNow if you read my previous recollections of what Majora's mask did to me, you know that it is the soul reason why I hate time in video games. I mean that, it broke me like a virgin toy. Stressed me the hell out and just really scarred me a bit in the whole video game line. Having returned to it, there is this odd sense of alternative perspective. Maybe it's because when I was younger, seconds stretched out into the horizons of eternity yet somehow my patience was so limited. \n\nMaybe I smartened up to the dialogue, and maybe I've grown to appreciate the world of Majora's Mask a bit further. What I do know for sure is that when the day counter began again, I wasn't freaking out. Hell, I took my time, got to know the characters again with all the good and bad that came with it. As a child I think I was this objective-less wandering idiot who was the Hero Termina DID NOT deserve.\n\n As an adult I'm just a slightly older idiot who wants to appreciate smelling the flowers in the wake of doom. I know a lot of people who complain about their age, about feeling old and how time has been an enemy for them. I also know at times the hours are fleeting for myself and I feel my head wanting to explode because Jesus save me, I just wanted to eat a sandwich for five minutes, not take on something else for two hours.\n\nFor awhile I really felt lost with a lot of things. I didn't know what any day would bring and I still don't, but I appreciate something that Majoras Mask reinforced. Time is a gateway to chance, joys and excitement, good or bad. When we feel as if we have lost it, we cherish it's existence even more. Things happen with time, and no I don't just mean a town being blown up from lunar impact. I mean that things only happened at certain times, and the greatest gift I could know of this world is patience just waiting for it to happen.\n\n Not going to lie, I'm still struggling some time but I realized that as I waited for things to happen on one quest, I just went off in another direction and did my own thing. Every little bit of time given is the potential of new things. Kind of goes hand in hand with trying out tucking that dollar away, doesn't it? The thing though is that I have been the kind of guy who has tried to schedule himself, scratch away at my happiness and worry about the days, oh what will I do?\n\n I treated responsibility and all the things that came with it, including the time needed, as an enemy of my own happiness or purpose. Hell, I once skimmed other's words as if somehow the time and effort would be a waste just getting to know them better. That is a seriously messed up way of thinking by the way.\n\nMajora's Mask was the pinnacle of my impatience as a kid, and my fear of inevitable failure. How many of you used to equate time with death or the end of something? I'm a cynic and don't deny that. I'd also like to believe there is a bit of optimism for the good in what we perceive as bad. Ever try and temper yourself as you wait down the time? Maybe just stretch your legs or fill in the fleeting minutes of emptiness with something else.\n\n Maybe you've been doing something for awhile and just grown bored with it. Every minute of time spent examining something is you learning, growing in the most minute of ways, yet still growing. That is the gift of time being given. It is often given for something growing larger, not smaller. While it may not always be yourself who is the one receiving, none the less you may prosper too in the regard. \n\nThe potential of all things comes not with how quickly we do things or how many times we do it. It comes down to how we treat those things and ourselves with them that will matter most. Time has never been our enemy nor the things that covet it...so what I am trying to tell you is...seriously, stop saying I talk too much. I like talking. Oh, also you're probably a good person, but also this: to waste time is not a hard thing, not in truth but in personal perspective. When you give it, you often receive in return, not detract. Give as much purpose to it and all things that revolve around it what you will, because just as time, all things matter just the same. ", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Want to see the original? Click here!

Majoras Mask. It feels like an eternity since I picked you up, and yet it hasn't been long enough. You taught me some really messed up things when I was a kid, but, I was still just a kid. You gave me the realization that sometimes life just isn't fair.

Granted. Made sure I was responsible about what I made priority, and more importantly, you made me want to kick whoever designed the element of time in that game, right in the freaking face. So I picked you up again because I'm a glutton for punishment, but your graphics looked a whole lot better. So what did I relearn walking a second time through Majoras Mask? Well, for starters...
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- Sometimes there is no limit to how low things can get. That's not a bad thing. -

Now before we get melodramatic, roll our eyes and say " Shane, you are such a cynical boy that needs more faith!" let me just say, woah man, chill yourself. You don't need that much stress in your life. Second, we're also under the preconception that negatives only remain negatives in our lives. With that being said, let's do a brief catch up on Ocarina of Time. So as you probably know, Link wasn't your typical Hero when it came to the whole world saving gig.

 He started as a lonely boy who stood oddly out among those of his village, the Kokiri. Of course Link was a Hylilian which made him different and so he never got that fairy all the Kokiri received, nor did they really accept him for the most part. He had nightmares of an evil man, and eventually fate had it that he would leave his home to do as the goddesses intended. He gets a fairy, forest father/god/tree dies, whole world gets thrown into chaos, he gets that sweet horse, fights Ganondorf and then...! Well, nothing happens. Link is the Hero of Time and he makes damn well sure that Ganon never gets that power. He erases everything he did, all the people he met or lives that changed him for the sake of peace.

With that, he leaves because he has no destiny left. I'm also going to assume he totally stole that horse, Epona, because come on, he got out of there quick if I am to assume. His reward had simply been to never see the pain of others, but also to return to his own time. What time had that been though? He was out of place and could not find anywhere that he felt he could belong. Not every thing in the world, good or bad comes with the expense for recognition.

It's the idea that Link's fate was only meant to keep peace at the expense of his own. He knows he is Hylilian and so he cannot remain among the Kokiri, nor can he remain in a place that has no memory of him either. Even Navi, his own assigned fairy had left of him upon the conclusion of his victory. So Link wandered,  unsung into the unknown without purpose. Then Skull Kid came to him, and we all know where this is going. Link got jacked; He lost Epona, he lost the Ocarina, and Skull Kid just went the mile route of dickery to curse his form into a Deku Scrub.

The thing is though, it's more than just physical goods being lost. We as players may not even be aware of what that loss represents. It's not just an instrument, a horse, and good looks being taken away. It's the thievery of an identity, or what small fraction of it had been left. You can lose your house in a fire or get your wallet stolen, but I'm going to assume it is soul breakingly hard to have your identity to yourself wiped. Some would argue that the past makes ourselves.

 What happens when there is nothing left of the past or you but the tokens of your journey? You don't need money and earthly things to truly be happy; They can be distractions, don't get me wrong, but memories and self identity...those things matter so much as well. For Link, he pulled the short straw on that department because when his purpose was used up, he really lost it all in the end of that road. There is this common conception that we can only go so far down before we hit something and stick.

 The truth is that there are no limits of how bad things can get. There is no true universal system of loss that any single individual can exhibit. Now that's not to bring you down, don't misunderstand me. There is more to this than the universe taking a collective piss on Link's head. It's about where he went with it at all.

Everything is a testament to our will to exist, let alone thrive in the true face of adversity: others and more importantly, ourselves. We are things caught in the winds of forever changing circumstances, mountains to climb and demons to face in the wake of our growth. Yes, there is no limit to how far you can fall or how bad things can truly get.

 When it came to Link though, after everything was said and done, he didn't just sit there out in the fields and eventually die, probably by dehydration. He continued on because the truth is, when we feel our fate has been met, that does not mean it simply ends there. We can create our own ways. I don't know how you would or will, I don't pretend to be a glorious overseer of cosmic fortune. I do know this though, just as there is no end below ourselves, likewise there is no end above.

We might as well say that Link should have been a broken mess at this point but his aimless wandering wasn't just without hope. It may very well have been the opposite in the face of absolute loss. Skull kid's torment was not the end of his journey, it was the start of something completely new and on his own terms. So what I'm getting at here is that you can fall so far, and it may just happen some day in your life, it may not.

You can also struggle against what life is throwing you. Things will always happen when we make departure for new roads, good or bad it is challenge. They may not go as far as we can conceive, but if we remain in the holes we may stumble in, we won't ever know outside of how far we poke our heads out.

It's not a bad thing to know this because for some, there is a sense of apathy that extends into the realms of their own lives. There can be a purgatory in which we assume nothing can ever happen in any direction. We may be miserable, we may excuse ourselves and usher into the corners of that misery, not looking further up but assuming this is all we shall ever have. Likewise, we may not know such pains and live a life of contentment until the worst may suddenly spring on ourselves.

 There is a spectrum of ignorance to multiple ideals, morality and its importance to ourselves. Eventually however we need to understand the truth that bad things can happen without a limit. That also means we have to stand against those bad things with whatever power, no matter how small, to make things right for ourselves again. It can be as simple as tucking away five dollars just in case, or trying something new. It doesn't have to be big things to make a difference at the time, I don't know, you think of something. However if you happen to see the moon smiling down at you as it enters the atmosphere, Fuck it. Just pray to whoever you believe in at that point. If you do not believe in anyone, then believe in yourself.
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- Futility does not mean abstaining from trying -
 
Now if any of you are familiar with myself, you know I've gone on and on and on about this kind of message. People ask me why I do art, why I bother, things never change, yadayadaydada. Point being, I've said this stuff before but let us chug it down again. So Link is in Termina, the great ( and racist, seriously. ) town that is doomed to have a giant moon sized smiley face press it into oblivion and probably make the worlds most morbidly hilarious crater.

So Link and the player obviously need to get their shit together in three days to see what they can do about making sure the world isn't one less town short. Things are pretty much messed up already though. Lakes and rivers are poisoned, Great Fairies are broken, monsters are just all over the place and holy shit, how has this place managed to exist through all this trouble? It's chaotic and no one is going to hold you accountable if all the things happening at once are giving you a headache.

So link does what he can and before you know it, three days are up. Its okay though because you can go back to day one. Link can clear the poison from those waters, save a monkey from being slaughtered, help a woman marry a child- Naw I'm just messing with ya, That's just the whole curse thing with Kafei. Eventually though when those three days are up, Link has to go back to day one. Everything is the same, the poison is back, good deeds undone, and all the problems remain untouched.

I'd want to say that duh, time wipes many things, but I'd also like to believe there is something more meaningful in all of this. It's the ideal circumstance of life, I imagine. All these repeating elements, these disappointments, distractions, worries and doubts, obstacles and so on. You can climb your hills but eventually there is another hill either the same size or even larger. Most people get discouraged thinking about that. You might feel a sense of futility in the attempt.

Maybe you've given up on some of your dreams because the repeating elements of conflict keep getting in your way. Maybe you've tried so long at something that you just don't have it in you. The truth is that in many ways, Termina is a lot like our own lives. Pretty from the outside and just plain messed up to multiple degrees on the inside. So why do we bother with the things we do? Why do we create art, make music that hardly anyone seems to appreciate, or write long things about video games that just about every asshole out there is going to say " Verbose and pointless."? Well, the answer is all dependant on you actually.

You see, the thing is for Link, he never really had a voice and I mean that both figuratively and literally. The player through him chose what things to repeat again and again, try in frustration and see the things they had done, only in the shadows of what else stood in their way of accomplishment. Yet through the determination of ability, we know you and so many others collected all those masks and eventually took on Majora.

 You beat the days and went through the repetition without reward, without joys or excitement. You maybe wanted to huck the controller or 3DS half way across the room, or maybe you just breezed passed it ( and I seriously hate you for that ability.) So what am I getting at with this? what I'm trying to say is that we're a bit like Link too. We can be voiceless and choose to let the moon fall. We can say " I don't want to try doing this because _______" and that is all it will remain at.

 Some of us look at challenge and resign ourselves to not put in the effort, expend time, energy and happiness, when we're living our days losing time, energy and happiness. Futility is just a word, and it is also an idea that leads to only one end: nothing.

We want to feel justified about what we're doing, and we want that feeling to be more apparent. We don't want to feel like somehow we're wasting our efforts. Yet we also need patience for ourselves and the challenges we face. It wont always be as simple as finding success and never having failure again, or never hearing some cold ass crap from a feeling vampire tell you things just aren't going to happen.

 Everything, I mean everything is a challenge and an obstacle whether it is people breaking you down or yourself being too content with resignation. The true difference is that unlike Link, the only people that are going to give us that ability to accept futility not as an end but as an endless challenge to better, is ourselves.
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- The bad guys are not always what we believe -

Okay so we have Skull kid from the get go who in about less than two minutes we can quickly identify as the king of assholes. They're a thief, they don't care who gets hurt, cause chaos and are the reason the moon is crashing down. Seriously you want to smack the hell out of this guy. It was when Link went on further that they found Skull kid had simply been a tool of manipulation for Majora, the creature within the mask. To their credit, even before the mask, Skull kid was a go-out-of-the-way jerk that caused mischief.

Could you blame the guy when more than three fourths of Termina apparently has judgemental people who won't help you at all if you're not ( and I'm assuming here) a white Terminan. They're not all so disagreeable, but they also contribute to Skull Kid's overall douche behaviour. Now my point isn't about who is to blame, if someone deserves a right smacking or any of that. My point is that in the first few minutes we have, we  only react of what we are given. We don't know Skull Kid yet we want to hate them. We're unaware of what in their lives are so destructive that they too wish to share that destruction with others.

It has never been easy trying to smile back at someone who is screaming at you. There will always be that primal part of ourselves that wants retribution and revenge. After all, we may feel harmed by words and actions and thus create this realm of black and white, good and bad, friend and enemy. There is that part of our brain that is quick to judge, to de-human those we perceive as a threat to whatever we hold dear.

 I can recall that recently I had done a work for an individual that upon response, said I fucked them on the commission. I've been told by people that I talk too much, that my art is shitty. I've been told how horrible I am for being a white male who just has everything so easy. I've had my physical fights, my verbal ones and some to this day remain with me, not in accomplishment but in regret. No amount of fighting has ever brought peace. No emotional wall, no flying fist or darkened word, no matter how we felt justified, had the purpose for good. I'm not going to lie, I was angry when I was told my art was an insult, that the time I spent on it was not enough. I wanted to ring their fucking throat because I pride on my work.

I also know this, I don't know these people, they don't really know me. We've never hung out together, I haven't met their family or seen their place. I don't know what their childhood was like, how their day went or if they enjoyed Legend of Zelda. Yet I perceived them as a threat to my happiness, and that by being insulted I should retaliate, create the intricate and easily identifiable side of black and white.

 Guess which side I was on? I kept my mouth closed. I apologized, offered them a refund and explained myself. They had nothing more to say and I wandered in my anger. It hit me so hard then, the way I felt. We're so quick to judge because we assume everyone is on the same level, having the same thoughts, thinking the same way. We get angry when others disagree, even go out of their own way to prove otherwise because " Fuck you, isn't everything so obvious as I see it?!".

 Yet they are human, their ideals are so similar to our own just on different levels. The truth was that they really did feel insulted in the end by what I offered. They may not have been articulate with their words or politeness, but they verbalized their unhappiness. You see, in most games and movies there are cardboard cut outs of villains. People and monsters whose soul purpose is to cause destruction without a true purpose other than...screw it, fire everywhere.

This concept sticks with us because it is easy to believe those who you fight with simply go home, draw the curtains and laugh their evil laughs away while burning kittens in the fireplace. We seldom consider that they have problems, or maybe they're going through tough shit just like us, they just don't know how to deal with it. Or maybe they just don't really like what they're seeing and we need to sometimes respect that.

 Lord knows, and I'm willing to admit, I've probably came across as heartless and rude to other simply because I felt scared and so used to being treated poorly, it was my only point of response eventually. There is a world of different perspectives and problems and the worst we can do is so quickly assign its moral equation based completely on our instant reaction to it. Skull Kid felt abandoned and hated so they hated those that hated them. They got so used to it, eventually they even started thinking their closest friends hated them too because it is so easy to draw lines than pass over them.        
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- Time is not always our enemy -

Now if you read my previous recollections of what Majora's mask did to me, you know that it is the soul reason why I hate time in video games. I mean that, it broke me like a virgin toy. Stressed me the hell out and just really scarred me a bit in the whole video game line. Having returned to it, there is this odd sense of alternative perspective. Maybe it's because when I was younger, seconds stretched out into the horizons of eternity yet somehow my patience was so limited.

Maybe I smartened up to the dialogue, and maybe I've grown to appreciate the world of Majora's Mask a bit further. What I do know for sure is that when the day counter began again, I wasn't freaking out. Hell, I took my time, got to know the characters again with all the good and bad that came with it. As a child I think I was this objective-less wandering idiot who was the Hero Termina DID NOT deserve.

 As an adult I'm just a slightly older idiot who wants to appreciate smelling the flowers in the wake of doom. I know a lot of people who complain about their age, about feeling old and how time has been an enemy for them. I also know at times the hours are fleeting for myself and I feel my head wanting to explode because Jesus save me, I just wanted to eat a sandwich for five minutes, not take on something else for two hours.

For awhile I really felt lost with a lot of things. I didn't know what any day would bring and I still don't, but I appreciate something that Majoras Mask reinforced. Time is a gateway to chance, joys and excitement, good or bad. When we feel as if we have lost it, we cherish it's existence even more. Things happen with time, and no I don't just mean a town being blown up from lunar impact. I mean that things only happened at certain times, and the greatest gift I could know of this world is patience just waiting for it to happen.

 Not going to lie, I'm still struggling some time but I realized that as I waited for things to happen on one quest, I just went off in another direction and did my own thing. Every little bit of time given is the potential of new things. Kind of goes hand in hand with trying out tucking that dollar away, doesn't it? The thing though is that I have been the kind of guy who has tried to schedule himself, scratch away at my happiness and worry about the days, oh what will I do?

 I treated responsibility and all the things that came with it, including the time needed, as an enemy of my own happiness or purpose. Hell, I once skimmed other's words as if somehow the time and effort would be a waste just getting to know them better. That is a seriously messed up way of thinking by the way.

Majora's Mask was the pinnacle of my impatience as a kid, and my fear of inevitable failure. How many of you used to equate time with death or the end of something? I'm a cynic and don't deny that. I'd also like to believe there is a bit of optimism for the good in what we perceive as bad. Ever try and temper yourself as you wait down the time? Maybe just stretch your legs or fill in the fleeting minutes of emptiness with something else.

 Maybe you've been doing something for awhile and just grown bored with it. Every minute of time spent examining something is you learning, growing in the most minute of ways, yet still growing. That is the gift of time being given. It is often given for something growing larger, not smaller. While it may not always be yourself who is the one receiving, none the less you may prosper too in the regard.

The potential of all things comes not with how quickly we do things or how many times we do it. It comes down to how we treat those things and ourselves with them that will matter most. Time has never been our enemy nor the things that covet it...so what I am trying to tell you is...seriously, stop saying I talk too much. I like talking. Oh, also you're probably a good person, but also this: to waste time is not a hard thing, not in truth but in personal perspective. When you give it, you often receive in return, not detract. Give as much purpose to it and all things that revolve around it what you will, because just as time, all things matter just the same.                      ", "writing": "", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "", "pools_count": 0, "title": "What I learned replaying Majoras Mask", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "image/png", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "0", "rating_name": "General", "ratings": [], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "f", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "3", "views": "115" }