I need a hero.
Feb. 28th, 2019 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkMy sexual and interpersonal development was extremely stunted, I did not "date" until I was 19, and those first dates very much resembled the terrible awkwardness and stupidity of most people's middle school crushes. Except that it was adult men on the other end, which made everything even more awkward.
At least I have always been blessed with a strong sense of boundaries, even if I had zero grace in enforcing them. I was never taken advantage of, but I was just...late discovering men, and sometimes things were very weird.
Link was my first fictional crush. When Ocarina of Time came out I played it obsessively. I was twenty at the time, and I vividly remember seeing the adult Link from the game and going "Wow, he looks really good. Like. Really. Good." It was a funny feeling I didn't know what to do with. I had never had the usual teenage celebrity crushes. I'd had odd teenage fascinations, but they'd fixated on characters like Leto II from Children of Dune. (I was a weird kid, okay?) Never on somebody who just looked hot. But damn, Link was hot, even in the blocky version the game presented me with.
I write stories about Link more than any other single character, I think. (Actually the real most often is probably Twilight Sparkle, but that's only because she's a very convenient storytelling medium, so often the stories aren't "about" her, she just fits as a vehicle for what they're really about. Anyway.) He is my favorite character to write, and the one whose stories always have to have pornographic codas at the end even if they're not stories about sex, because damn he is hot.
More than the purely physical, though, I tend to write Link as very close to perfect. SO MANY of the stories I write about Link center on somebody else near him struggling, worrying, fighting with deep issues, and Link just being there, being supportive, being perfectly understanding about all these issues, always doing the right thing and saying the right thing. My Link is awfully damn perfect.
He's that way in the story I just posted, perfectly supporting Sheik through his struggles with remembering Zelda, and trying to figure out how to be Sheik again, and his fears about love now that he's male. Link is just perfect through all of that, saying exactly the right thing, doing exactly the right thing.
It's because the other character is always me, you see. And Link is always my SO. They don't look anything alike (the SO is more of a tall hobbit or maybe a dwarf, given the beard and hair combo he tends to rock) but the way Link acts in these times is very much based on the way that somehow my SO always says the perfect thing, always knows just how to be supportive, and how to make me feel better.
I don't think he's literally perfect. In fact the first Hylian Mathematics story, Less Than, is kinda based on some conversations we've had, about how inadequate he sometimes feels, and how inadequate I feel, and how stupid it is that we're both sitting around feeling the other one is the better one.
At its worst, that sort of thing is soul-destroyingly toxic. Feeling lesser is a horrible thing. Nobody should feel like they lack worth.
Yet at its best I feel it's how a relationship should be. One should fee like one has gotten a bit of a catch. "They're a little out of my league, I'm so lucky they love me" is good so long as it's not paired with "them" ever putting you down in any way. (One's SO should absolutely never belittle one. Honest conversation about flaws, yes, but always with support. If you come away from talking about your deepest insecurities feeling even less secure, something is not right there. You should feel supported, cared for, and uplifted by a life partner.) I think it's very healthy to feel really lucky to be with the person you're with.
I'm lucky to have a practically perfect hero, and I'll keep writing him into my Zelda fics for as long as I'm writing them, probably.
At least I have always been blessed with a strong sense of boundaries, even if I had zero grace in enforcing them. I was never taken advantage of, but I was just...late discovering men, and sometimes things were very weird.
Link was my first fictional crush. When Ocarina of Time came out I played it obsessively. I was twenty at the time, and I vividly remember seeing the adult Link from the game and going "Wow, he looks really good. Like. Really. Good." It was a funny feeling I didn't know what to do with. I had never had the usual teenage celebrity crushes. I'd had odd teenage fascinations, but they'd fixated on characters like Leto II from Children of Dune. (I was a weird kid, okay?) Never on somebody who just looked hot. But damn, Link was hot, even in the blocky version the game presented me with.
I write stories about Link more than any other single character, I think. (Actually the real most often is probably Twilight Sparkle, but that's only because she's a very convenient storytelling medium, so often the stories aren't "about" her, she just fits as a vehicle for what they're really about. Anyway.) He is my favorite character to write, and the one whose stories always have to have pornographic codas at the end even if they're not stories about sex, because damn he is hot.
More than the purely physical, though, I tend to write Link as very close to perfect. SO MANY of the stories I write about Link center on somebody else near him struggling, worrying, fighting with deep issues, and Link just being there, being supportive, being perfectly understanding about all these issues, always doing the right thing and saying the right thing. My Link is awfully damn perfect.
He's that way in the story I just posted, perfectly supporting Sheik through his struggles with remembering Zelda, and trying to figure out how to be Sheik again, and his fears about love now that he's male. Link is just perfect through all of that, saying exactly the right thing, doing exactly the right thing.
It's because the other character is always me, you see. And Link is always my SO. They don't look anything alike (the SO is more of a tall hobbit or maybe a dwarf, given the beard and hair combo he tends to rock) but the way Link acts in these times is very much based on the way that somehow my SO always says the perfect thing, always knows just how to be supportive, and how to make me feel better.
I don't think he's literally perfect. In fact the first Hylian Mathematics story, Less Than, is kinda based on some conversations we've had, about how inadequate he sometimes feels, and how inadequate I feel, and how stupid it is that we're both sitting around feeling the other one is the better one.
At its worst, that sort of thing is soul-destroyingly toxic. Feeling lesser is a horrible thing. Nobody should feel like they lack worth.
Yet at its best I feel it's how a relationship should be. One should fee like one has gotten a bit of a catch. "They're a little out of my league, I'm so lucky they love me" is good so long as it's not paired with "them" ever putting you down in any way. (One's SO should absolutely never belittle one. Honest conversation about flaws, yes, but always with support. If you come away from talking about your deepest insecurities feeling even less secure, something is not right there. You should feel supported, cared for, and uplifted by a life partner.) I think it's very healthy to feel really lucky to be with the person you're with.
I'm lucky to have a practically perfect hero, and I'll keep writing him into my Zelda fics for as long as I'm writing them, probably.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 04:19 am (UTC)I'm a great fan of the imaginary perfect same-frequency SO who gets one. (I dare say I'm pretty fortunate in some of my actual relationships, but I don't expect the degree of psychicness one can get from a fantasy). It is double-awesome to have an actual SO insightful enough to manage the trick on regular basis.
If I may, I'd like to draw a distinction, though, between feeling fortunate and feeling like they're out of your league. My best relationships have always been the ones that feel the most equal. There's still plenty of room for the sensation of awe and amazement and gratitude at the circumstances that lead to us meeting and loving each other, but the feeling of being true equals is every bit as wonderful as any other aspect of it.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 04:27 am (UTC)I think it's a difficult thing to parse, sometimes. I know *all* my own flaws and insecurities and problems in a way I can never know his. That he's so very close to perfect and I know I'm so very *not* makes it seem inevitable that he does seem a bit out of my league. Yet it's not an *unequal* relationship, there's no element of him taking any kind of advantage, and he's said things that lead me to believe that he thinks I'm the one who's a bit out of his league at times.
I feel we are equals, and we act as equals and treat each other as equals, yet how can I not think he's "better" in those moments when I feel full of inadequacy and he's always there for me?
It's a complicated thing.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 12:34 pm (UTC)Not that I'd wish my own feelings of inadequacy on anyone, let alone anyone I love, but the combination of knowing that they truly can relate and noting my own feelings when they're at their low points is far more effective at reducing me feeling like a burden at my own dark times than even the most sincere assertions.
(I do believe I might be under the influence of NRE just a bit. One of the referenced relationships of this shape is a recent remergence, and I'm very much at the wishing to burble at the world part of the experience.)