#mailen

[lolatini]

Beautiful women of HZD

Edit: women and trans man. Thanks for the tip. I talked to Janeva recently. Aloy didn't want to let her break her arm just to take a look.

[spaceguylewis]

Horizon: Zero Dawn (106/ꝏ) | REMASTERED and Horizon: Forbidden West (11/ꝏ)

Love Across the Horizon

[project-another-dawn]

Girls night in? Doing each other's hair, watching movies, sleeping in a sprawl with each other?

VARGA: It’s been three years, hasn’t it? More than? That should have made a difference, shouldn’t it?

VALA: I wouldn’t know...I’ve never been anyone’s first choice before. Or I have, and it was...weird. Too weird to count.

VALA: Kind of sucks when everyone assumes you know what you’re doing, when you...honestly? Really don’t have a clue yourself.

VALA: I guess that’s why I haven’t gone for it yet. I don’t like not being sure what kind of response I’ll get, and right now..I don’t know how she’ll react. 

VALA: I don’t want things to be weird with her, too.

[avionvadion]

Shark prince? SHARK PRINCE!!!! 

Haven’t completely figured out the backstory yet, but basically Iliana winds up in Hyrule with little to no idea how she got there or even where she is. She thinks she’s an elf at first because of the ears, and it isn’t until she nearly gets killed by monsters and drowning- encountering a woman named Mailen/Maiju who fishes her out of the river, that she learns she’s in Hyrule. Something Iliana... both does and doesn’t know anything about. 

Mailen/Maiju is a Sheika who grew up in Gerudo, by the way. She’s a weapon merchant and bladesmith, and learned the fighting style of the Gerudo women. So she’s overall a pretty tough gal. Her design may change- so don’t get too attached to this version of her just yet, lol. Mailen is her Sheika name and Maiju her Gerudo name. She tends to go back-and-forth between the Gerudo, Rito, and Zora regions frequently. She’s on pretty good terms with the Zora, and laments not being able to visit after the Divine Beast Ruta starts acting up. 

After she saves Iliana, she drops her off in Hateno- a nearby village. There Iliana basically becomes the weird yet charismatic farmhand to one of the Hylians that take her in, and she gets proper clothes and learns how to shoot a bow. One day, when sent off on a hunting mission, she gets lost (Iliana is, like, really bad with directions. It’s chaotically bad) and she winds up in a monster camp. She takes down quite a few of them, before getting chased and falling in the nearby stream. Again. Poor girl can’t swim. 

So she clings to a rock and Link shows up just in time to stop the last few remaining monsters from killing her, and she ends up following him around because... well, she doesn’t know the way back to the village and hey! She has a bow! She can shoot things! She can be helpful... kind of. 

But she does end up being really helpful and they form a very sibling-like dynamic where they’re constantly bickering yet always protecting one another. Link in the form of sassy eyerolls and faces and snappy gestures, and Iliana just being herself, lol. She actually ends up being the better archer out of the two of them, which she refuses to admit to, despite Link stating so several times to Sidon and even Maiju. 

(In this, he doesn’t really like to talk because he finds it overwhelming and too noisy at times, so he prefers sign language. Maiju learned sign language back in Gerudo, and Iliana only knows a little bit from her time in Hateno so she’s mostly learning from sheer experience after she starts traveling with Link.)

SIDON. 

You know damn well she was doomed the second he showed up on that bridge with that dramatic entrance. Even Link gets flustered by the Himbo prince. After Sidon introduces himself, Iliana and Link just kinda look at each other and then back up at the ten foot tall shark prince like O///O. 

When facing Ruta, I sort of imagine Link and Iliana just arguing with Sidon standing there in much confusion like. Just, 

Link: You get on his back. I’ll stop any attacks from behind.

Iliana: Wait, what? No! I can’t swim! 

Link: You’re the better archer. 

Iliana: I am not the better archer! You’re the chosen one here! I’m the support! Besides, you have the Zora armor! I’m not getting on the prince’s back! 

Link: You are the better archer. And he’ll keep you safe, while I keep him safe. You’ll be fine.

Sidon: ...I am not entirely sure what the problem is here, but I can assure you that I will not allow any harm to befall you. Should you fall, I will simply catch you and bring you back up to the surface. If need be, I can carry you up Ruta’s falls with you on my back. 

Link: 

Iliana: 

Link: See? Get on his back! 

Iliana: If I die, I’m coming back to haunt you. And if princey here gets wounded because of my incompetence, I’m going to be punching you in the face. Afterwards, I’m gonna need you to punch me in the face for listening to either of you!

Link: Is that a threat or a promise? 

Iliana: YES! 

Later, fighting Waterblight Ganon-

Iliana, hiding in the back shooting arrows at the phantom panicking: You got this Link! 

Link, letting out enraged panicked noises as he swings left-and-right at the phantom: 

Iliana: Oh frick-! 

Link, running straight towards her as Waterblight Ganon lunges, the blond freaking out: ...! 

Ganon proceeds to whack them both and send them flying.

They’re just. They’re just a chaotic dumbass duo. 

Zelda wonders how they manage to get anything done and Sidon is just, “Wow! You guys are incredible! Amazing! have I mentioned how amazing you are and how extremely grateful I am!? Because you are! And I am! You’re my most treasured friends of all time!” 

And then Mipha’s spirit appears, and Iliana and Link realize they both really have a thing for shark royalty. 

[chromatichorizon]

Happy International Women's Day 2021!

[tjerra14]

I've brought this up on the Discord before but since I've been procrastinating from writing thinking about this instead I feel like I'll have to throw this on here as well so that at least I can point at it when I ask myself why there were no words added to the doc in the past hour or so. Talking about Ikrie, Mailen and their quest as one does on the regular has spawned a new brain worm regarding the White Teeth's initiation. Something about it always struck me as odd, but I could never put my finger on it. There's this trial to determine which young hunters are accepted into the werak. It has draconic rules, hunters regularly die to them, and what's more, the people in charge don't seem to care too much, at least not in front of an outsider (which will certainly be a contributing factor). In the end, the person who joins the werak is not the one that is portrayed as having finished the trial successfully. The quest name, The Survivor, clearly refers to Ikrie, and as survival is the end goal of the trial, Ikrie's the one who has prevailed, but she broke the rules. It makes no sense. Unless that's the point of it. Now hear me out (gonna put this under a cut because it got long.)

No one's watching the hunters. They send them away and wait at Keener's Rock, which is even with Horizon's warped maps, not exactly next to the glacier. They can do whatever they want. But they've been sent into a situation where it's more likely to survive if you can depend on each other, which is a quality you would want in a werak that's out for big fights and glory. The White Teeth test the limits of young hunters, and either they overcome them or die. But surely a werak that places survival over everything else would accept survival at any cost? So, what if the White Teeth's initiation was never about surviving on their own, but to see if they were willing and able to bend the rules and depend on each other in life-threatening situations? The ancestors weren't separated on that glacier, they endured together. Why would you ask the opposite of your hunters under the cover of tradition, especially when weraks generally are about community, and being stronger together? You wouldn't want someone to watch your back who refuses to adapt to the circumstances. So technically Mailen failed it the moment she insisted on sticking to the rules.

She argues her weakness would've put Ikrie in danger, so abandoning her would've been the right thing to do, but the Banuk don't strike me as a tribe that would just throw lives away willingly, not ones--like in this case--they could easily save. And yes, they're a proud people, but taking pride in abandoning people which will definitely lead to their deaths? What do they have the weraks for, then, if not to help each other, especially those that are in need of assistance?

You could argue the White Teeth only accept the strongest hunters, but they're also described as "one of the greatest weraks" of which "not so many are left". "Great" implies they have a reputation, a reputation is built over time, and to last, people have to help each other. Even the--by their definition--strongest hunter can have an accident, and if no one's there for them, the werak will inevitably grow weaker, and finally vanish. So they must look out for each other if they want to survive. Which brings me back to the initial point: a test to see who lives and who dies according to the rules is not to weed out the "weak" but those who don't cooperate, who are not willing to adapt.

It just doesn't make sense to found and lead a werak on the principal of the survival of the fittest because inevitably there will be no one left. They seem strict towards their initiates, but we never get to see how they interact with each other once you've been accepted. Mailen is injured, and badly enough that she would've likely died without Ikrie's and Aloy's help being in no shape to return, and will be a hindrance for a while. They seem to have no issue with that. I outright refuse to believe they just leave more seriously injured or sick people to die, like Mailen believes is the right way to go about it as in her mind, taking care of them would endanger others that are still healthy. Which is incredibly tortured logic I just can't see working in a group that has existed, in one form or another, for enough time to make a name for themselves. So tl;dr: I don't think the White Teeth and their rules are the problem, as they likely don't even care as much as they pretend to. Mailen's mindset is.

[rayless-reblogs]

Finding Mailen.

[baguettelord]

Horizon Zero Dawn screenshots [197/?]