24 KiB
[RT][DC][FF][C] The Praises of Nayru: Link's Awakening. A story about dreaming, identity, intimacy in all its horror, and a mysterious island.
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Author: u/makoConstruct Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding*
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11884799/1/The-Praises-of-Nayru-Link-s-Awakening
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Score: 29
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Created: 2016-05-01T22:52:39
Post:
Comments:
u/FudgeOff [+9] (2 hours later)
This is very strange and dark and cold and beautiful. Link truly feels like a man a thousand years old, inhumanly cold and deeply impersonal. The story is set in a dream, and it feels like a thing of dream as well, full of unexpected twists and strangeness (I've never played the game this is set in, so that adds a great deal to the strangeness). It is uncompromising, brutally so, but that makes the depth and meaning in every interaction more clear.
Reading this felt like walking through a dark forest buried in snow, with the moon bright overhead. I love it, and would recommend that everyone give it a shot. Thank you.
If you are looking for advice, I would recommend removing the content warning. The tone of the story itself is more than enough of a warning.
u/makoConstruct [+1] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (3 hours later)
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
To an extent, that is how I really feel about Koholint when I go through the original black and white version of Link's Awakening. Mild but extremely illustrative spoiler
I was going to place a content warning for a few particular kinds of meaningful death, concerned that it comes on so abruptly and without warning(and to some extent, without explanation) that for people who arn't able to disconnect themselves from that kind of thing it might be a bit of a slap in the face. Though admittedly
Edit: Yeah, you're right about the content warning. There was a point where it wasn't entirely redundant, but it crossed that point in the third edit when I clarified the part about .
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
I absolutely have to read this now. Bookmarked, right alongside The All-Guardsman Party and To the Stars.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (12 hours later)
Extremely good. I recommend it to everyone here.
I have to say though, the penultimate dialogue is a bit confusing from my point of view. I feel like I only get what is being said because I have some relevant memories of decision theory discussions on LW, which most people will likely not have. In any case, I don't feel confident that I've correctly interpreted the messages being exchanged.
I'm almost sure that the order of speakers is messed up somewhere in that dialogue as well, although that may have been a deliberate stylistic choice, given what's happening at that moment in the story.
u/Gaboncio [+2] (18 hours later)
I agree. I really loved the story and everything leading up to that moment, but I'm confused about what revelation Link has in his final moments...
u/makoConstruct [+2] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (22 hours later)
Aye.. All of the information is mostly there, but I definitely have a habit of rushing things at the end. It's not half as bad as it was in http://towers-built-on-premises.tumblr.com/post/113062393855/these-things-mala-was-willing-to-sacrifice though, where there's just this totally dry 760 word soft philosophy dump at the end. I'm getting better.
I'm almost sure that the order of speakers is messed up somewhere in that dialogue as well, although that may have been a deliberate stylistic choice, given what's happening at that moment in the story.
The order is consistent, but there is some mingling of thoughts that might make it easy to get confused if you havn't picked out the alternation pattern I stick to during dialogue. This part
{The heart of the reason you are merciful, to me, is that you were never able to lie perfectly. A more essential way of putting it, was that your decision calculus understood that your computation was a part of the world, not some isolated black box that nothing could touch or measure. When you thought, people saw signs of those thoughts on your countenance, because of the dream.}
is not something Link could have thought on his own.
u/makoConstruct [+3] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (42 minutes later)
A note about the worldbuilding/worldfixing: I have tried very hard to draw as much as possible from the act of rationalizing canon and as far as I can tell(?), I've remained consistent with it (respecting the letter, at least. Forgive me if I violated the spirit, it's my first time). This isn't always going to be clear, even for people who've played the original game through multiple times. There isn't always a reasonable opportunity to have a primary character look at the premises of the source material and prove valid the inferences the author built on top of it.
For instance, one thing you might not know is that it takes place immediately after the Oracle games. This struck me as a little absurd. Link is usually just a vessel for the player, empty, or at least simple enough that roleplaying is very easy, yet, in LA there was apparently this whole episode in his past that wasn't even hinted at to the player? It's kind of like having the DM come back a few years after a session to tell you that you played your character wrong because acktueallly there was a lot you didn't know them (because the DM is a really lackadaisical storyteller).
At least, that would have been absurd if I did it. Nintendo gets away with it, because in their Labrynna, nothing really happened to Link. Sure, he has an adventure, but it doesn't change him. He becomes the person he was always supposed to be. The person we all expect to find in a zelda game.
In the timeline of the rat, things go a little differently. I reduce my point of divergence to Nayru, the (former?)goddess of wisdom, deciding that she couldn't content herself to being alone in her understanding of creation. She took a succession of close companions and taught them, uplifted them, and when Link's turn came around, that was something his fated role as the legendary hero had not prepared him for.
So, anyway, I invite anyone who disagrees with my interpretation of canon to start an argument about it. I'd love that.
u/CaptainLoggers [+4] (19 hours later)
I'm curious what led you to writing this and I'd love some more information about your inspiration and the ultimate message your work sends.
I have to admit I read it all last night and it inspired a healthy discussion between myself and a friend about morality, reality, and identity, so if that was the objective mission accomplished.
Spoilers for the work below:
When we play Link's Awakening as players, we ultimately have two major choices (aside from collecting the seashells, doing other sidequests, and stealing or not): to either set the game down, electing to allow the world to continue as it is, or to finish it and wake the Windfish. (Maintain status quo versus betray / compete with Nightmares) I must admit that for many years I chose the former, partially out of a desire to keep exploring the world that would be destroyed if I woke the Windfish, mostly because I couldn't figure out the ball puzzles in the 7th dungeon. I think that an earlier Link, one from the village of OoT for example, who hadn't tasted adventure, would probably choose the status quo, while naturally a Link who had just finished the story of OoS/OoA who thirsted enough for adventure to set sail would want to wake the fish and continue his journey.
Your Link, being "uplifted" or "enlightened" enough to reject the standard hero's narrative, is in a funny place. Correct me if I'm wrong but this Link is a sort of flawed or imperfect rationalist. He has learned to doubt enough that the standard narrative doesn't fit him well, and he has room to squirm, but he isn't quite knowledgeable or enlightened enough to fit into a different narrative. Perhaps a Link who had a true desire for transhumanism or had a better understanding of the nature of reality would have received a totally different mission from the Windfish and never would have questioned his mission to uplift the island or create immortality or whatever other MacGuffin would have awakened that narrative's fish.
As for constructive criticism, the beginning was a little rough as you were still finding your voice, complete with some anachronisms. Smoothing out Link's word choice especially could lead to a Link who clearly has a higher understanding of the nature of reality and of rational thought without creating a Link who appears to be from the modern era or who is a modern scientist. The ending was appropriately sudden, but it would have helped to have some foreshadowing (more conflict with the Nightmare prior to the end) or have it be deserved a bit more (make more mention of Link leaving himself vulnerable prior to the end).
Overall, kudos on an interesting read and thank you for giving me something to think about as well as reminding me of the GB/GBC Zelda games, which were very important to me years ago.
u/makoConstruct [+2] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (22 hours later)
I'm curious what led you to writing this and I'd love some more information about your inspiration and the ultimate message your work sends.
The initial impetus was a comment here... I can't quite remember the context, but it drew our attention to the fact that the setting and narrative of Link's Awakening is actually fairly fucked up from a patternist perspective. When I started out, I thought it was going to be entirely about simulation ethics. The thing about smart characters is you can't always convince them go where you expect them to go. The Wind Fish's dilemma percolated through uplifted Link's mind like water over a duck's back. The way the island had been presented to him made the dilemma seem to him to be worth no more than a moment of thought, and the way the story happened to progress didn't really give him the opportunity to think much about it. Before he can ask whether the island's nature as a dream makes its inhabitants unreal he is presented with two or three projections who are clearly real in multiple senses of the world. In other words, I very quickly ran into this, and the plan went out the window.
A large part of the purpose of the work became giving a name and a face to a number of things I consider important. The consummate witch, the many-spirited man, the nature of soul-numbing boredom, the TDT agent(Meshtapon. Coldly rational but relatively(only relatively) tractable next to a CDT agent)[1], the depravity of the non-patternist.
And I suppose the final thrust serves as a reminder of how careless and vulnerable pre-computational (post-computational?) mindsets can be before computational entities. But really it was just the way it had to go.
Overall it seemed to convey a lot of what I think of identity, and of the rationalist identity, or a rationalist archetype I know particularly well... I had a look over the witch myths of the world, recently. The enduring theme seems to be "bearer of seemingly malign insight, which makes them inscrutable or unmanageable".
When we play Link's Awakening as players, we ultimately have two major choices (aside from collecting the seashells, doing other sidequests, and stealing or not): to either set the game down, electing to allow the world to continue as it is, or to finish it and wake the Windfish. (Maintain status quo versus betray / compete with Nightmares) I must admit that for many years I chose the former, partially out of a desire to keep exploring the world that would be destroyed if I woke the Windfish, mostly because I couldn't figure out the ball puzzles in the 7th dungeon. I think that an earlier Link, one from the village of OoT for example, who hadn't tasted adventure, would probably choose the status quo, while naturally a Link who had just finished the story of OoS/OoA who thirsted enough for adventure to set sail would want to wake the fish and continue his journey.
Hahah, I've always disliked games that present 'dilemmas' where the only choices are doing the awful thing and quitting the game. The player has already demonstrated that they have a real-world primary motive of playing the game, so their actions are not going to reflect their moral stances. They're going to do the thing, sooner or later, the choice is not real.
Admittedly, I'm working on a game right now where I'm going to try to present a single large coded moral choice without forcing the player to make a choice between playing the game and doing something they don't really believe in. I can see why many designers would have trouble with this.
I was about 8 when I started playing LA. I don't think I saw the moral dilemma at all. I didn't realize ethics could be fun(Nobody had told me about consequentialism at that point) so I probably wouldn't have dwelled on it if I noticed it at all. I got stuck as hell on the Face Shrine (the dungeon just north of the southern shrine (where the forbidden thoughts are guarded by soldiers of iron, commandeered by the coven of the sword in the timeline of the rat)) and I guess maybe I did all of my exploring then, probably believing that if I explored enough I would find something that would help me to solve the shrine(nope). Face Shrine still infuriates me to this day. In fact, when I was doing the research run for writing this fic I stopped at face shrine because when I got to the boss room I was out of bombs, and it turns out that in the original if you run out of bombs before fighting the boss of face shrine you can't beat the boss of face shrine. You wont lose either. You just get stuck. The game breaks.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this Link is a sort of flawed or imperfect rationalist.
Sure.
Perhaps a Link who had a true desire for transhumanism or had a better understanding of the nature of reality would have received a totally different mission from the Windfish and never would have questioned his mission to uplift the island or create immortality or whatever other MacGuffin would have awakened that narrative's fish.
I had a lot of trouble here. I wasn't sure how to rationalize the dungeons or the instruments. A lot hung on figuring out what the wind fishes are and where they came from, so I suppose if I could do it over again I would have contrived an opportunity for the witches to discuss that more so that the reader has some idea why things proceeded as they did. Maybe I should write a prelude where Cybil discovers all that...
Anyway, the instruments.
<potential spoilers for a future potential explanatory work you might not enjoy much anyway having already read its sequel which I honestly can't see myself writing but you never know>
The wind fishes were designed(long, long ago) by a sorcerer who intended to use them as familiars and as very powerful dreaming plinths. They were designed to be unable to wake from their dreams under their own volition, as the forced waking process was dangerous for the wind fish's master and visitor, and because it tended to clear the contents of the dream. The sorcerer had some regard for living beings within the dream(more regard for the data he might have arranged there), but the fish was designed not to give a damn about it. Imagine, for instance, what would have happened to the visitor if the wind fishes had been more inclined to entertain deals like the one Meshtapon offered. At best, a dreamer that respected the lives of its projections would invariably take on a life of its own, it could no longer be used as a tool. At worst, the nightmares' societies would infect thousands of visitors and dominate the world. (omg kind of want to write in that timeline now)
As such, the forced awakening protocol needed to be out of the fish's control, and fairly difficult for the visitor, not the sort of thing a scared or confused visitor could do on a whim, but something they could consistently manage with a lot of patience and effort. How such a task would manifest would depend on the expectations of the visitor. For Link, knowing his past, it would be a series of dungeons.
It would never be a moral mission, because that would mask the nature of the act and provide a motivation to the visitor that isn't supposed to be there.
anachronisms. Smoothing out Link's word choice especially could lead to a Link who clearly has a higher understanding of the nature of reality and of rational thought without creating a Link who appears to be from the modern era or who is a modern scientist.
Maybe. Could you point to specific cases of things that Link shouldn't know? It dawns on me that the existence of the Labrynnian order of study could be explained as a result of Nayru's actions, over the centuries. Just creating one uplifted scholar would likely lead to the creation of a school. Maintaining a succession of extremely talented scholars would keep it alive, but it might even have survived without that, on its own inertia. Hylia has always had a lot of libraries and books, even if universities are rare, there must be some academic tradition there.
I agree that the attack could have done with more mm.. discussion (I'm not sure foreshadowing has much of a place in rational fiction and a lot of the time it's fantasist mind-projection. Some writers think red flags exist in reality, but really the flags arn't red when you see them for the first time, that's just how you remember them afterwards.), but yeah, it's abruptness makes sense, too. These things will usually only be understood in hindsight. Would you say there should have been more hindsight? I don't think it was clear why or how Meshtapon turned as soon as Link charmed the plinths against it.
[1] I will be a little bit terrified(though also delighted) if Eliezer pops up and contests my invocation of TDT here. I'm not a great mathematician, and I'm shaky on the distinction between TDT and UDT, and nowhere was I able to find a definition of the causal logical connective in the definitions given in this paper. But, it seems clear enough that these theories are well characterized as being introspective- capable of reasoning about themselves, and capable of making precommitments and behaving superrationally. These virtuous properties distinguish the decision theories MIRI are working on from the defectionate beasts of the past.
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
For instance, one thing you might not know is that it takes place immediately after the Oracle games. This struck me as a little absurd. Link is usually just a vessel for the player, empty, or at least simple enough that roleplaying is very easy, yet, in LA there was apparently this whole episode in his past that wasn't even hinted at to the player? It's kind of like having the DM come back a few years after a session to tell you that you played your character wrong because acktueallly there was a lot you didn't know them (because the DM is a really lackadaisical storyteller).
That's a little unfair to Nintendo, considering the Oracle games were produced years after Link's Awakening.
u/makoConstruct [+1] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (3 days later)
Extremely unfair, I discover. They mention a journey of enlightenment right in the booklet.
If I have any grounds to criticize them, and I think I still may, it's that none of this had a presence in the actual game. For someone supposedly enlightened he didn't spend a lot of time capitulating on the moral implications of ending the simulation..
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (19 hours later)
Man, I really enjoyed this. Thanks for posting/writing.
u/rhaps0dy4 [+2] (5 days later)
I'm finding this really hard to read. I'm starting to get lost at chapter two. Things I could not quite make sense of, and correction suggestions:
"unlikely that this forest was large enough for inter-species trade to be sustainable." I thought the humans did not live in the forest?
"they were longer real to me" probably wished to say "no longer real". There's also a "forseen", which should be "foreseen".
It would also help to put "said the Witch" and "said Link" in the conversation, sometimes it's hard to follow. I had to read the bit after "A conversation of looks proceeded..." three or four times. (damn prevention of selecting text and copy-pasting)
u/makoConstruct [+2] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (5 days later)
"unlikely that this forest was large enough for inter-species trade to be sustainable." I thought the humans did not live in the forest?
Yes? Hmm. I'm not really trying to make Link's thought process transparent here but, the reason is, there's only so much trade that can go on. If the moblin population is small trade will occur so rarely that, for instance, it wouldn't be possible for the moblins to produce an ambassador witch for facilitating interspecies exchanges, or it wouldn't be politically or culturally viable for said witch to forbid moblin hunting parties from coming too close to the trading site, losing their heads and killing humans.
"they were longer real to me" probably wished to say "no longer real"
I had to read this about 3 times before I could perceive the absence of the "no" =|. Thanks.
I had to read the bit after "A conversation of looks proceeded
Ah, that's actually breaking the alternation pattern, thanks, and sorry about that.
u/rttf [+1] (a day later)
What was his superior decision theory? To me it just looked like "convince the other guy you're going to cooperate and then defect" which is pretty much what everyone wants to do in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma.
u/makoConstruct [+2] Praises of Nayru, FLI Worldbuilding (a day later)
Well, the shadows on Koholint wouldn't have much of a reason to maintain speakable names for the latest revision of their decision theory, they have no mathematicians to discuss it with. I'd guess it's far more developed than our own. But we might assume it's superrational. Superrationality is nice but if a superrational agent is not recognized by its peers as superrational, superrational cooperation ceases to make sense. It sort of requires mutual common knowledge of reciprocal reasoning to work.
In more emotive words: If you regard a shadow with more distrust than is warranted, if you fail to see the decency in it, from then on it will think of you as an obstacle rather than a kindred spirit worthy of kindness.
u/rttf [+4] (2 days later)
In that case I think the biggest problem with this story is that it did not at all make it clear that there exist a set of circumstances where the shadow would have cooperated. It reads as if Link is playing as CooperateBot and the shadow is playing as DefectBot. Afterwards the shadow is bragging about how much better his decision theory is. Of course DefectBot beats CooperateBot, but that's not really an interesting observation.
Dragging superrationality into this seems unnecessary since any decent decision theory would defect against CooperateBot.
u/mhd-hbd [+1] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (a day later)
Excellent horror story — it is easy to construe link as a Villain, especially after