;brushes with darkness;

you moonlight marauder, cursed eternal by malice . beware illusions beneath the moon's crimson borealis ; ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

re-est. '23, born '03. an era of the wild's oc blog for

👁 🅰🆂🅷🅰 👁

leyla more closely resembles a stalhorse to those that cannot see through the illusion

keese that typically flock to asha practically swarm her, making the sight of her atop a "stalhorse"-ed leyla and a dark fairy (ambra) to her side particularly harrowing

ambra, born of the light of the bloodmoon, usually appears before these nights as an omen; he is one of the few male fairies known to exist

eyes of malice split wide open and close shut unceremoniously all along asha's limbs, across her face, basically everywhere visible - its said the sight of this can cause insanity

good moment to note- those familiar with stories of (as she's come to be called these nights) the blood-moonlit marauder, have no idea this night rider is asha herself

she's good at code-switching, room-reading, and magical-girling her way through life, thanks to keeping a relatively low profile and being on a "need to know" basic (basically, private af)

while she had peel away from society during bloodmoons throughout her childhood/teen years, her cave-dwelling lifestyle makes it much easier to conceal this secret now

her augmented "all nights mask + hero's charm" face shield combines both treasures' boons: keeping her "awake"/lucid during bloodmoons, as well as allowing her insight into the life force of her foes

another good moment to note, that from nightfall to daybreak, everyone in her path becomes foe-coded c':

injuries inflicted upon her heal at an alarming rate that, by day, they're visibly gone for the most part aside from light scarring

firstly, i find it interesting that the lore behind the temple of time (tp) makes it apparent that the sky folk (localized as oocca which i use for simplicity sake tbh) were influential in its original construction - they were the race to establish the (first(?)) kingdom of hyrule, with closer ties to the royal family than arguably the sheikah, so it would make sense that they would be involved in an area so legendary that it houses the legendary sword itself, the master sword, sure-

plus, tp isn't subtle in stating that the oocca and sheikah were both close, for lack of better word, with the legend of their sky civilization being passed down by the tribe along with the ancient sky book that asha carries as passed down by her ancestra, asra, i digress - but the similarities of the dominion rod symbol + the sheikah teardrop insignia is too obvious i feel, for their only ties to be their binds in duties adjacent the royal family, like---

and the "magical energy" empowering the statues in the grove... the blue??

going by timeline, oocca and the founding of the kingdom of hyrule coincide with the story of the wind tribe from minish cap; it is a popular theory that the wind tribe took on a bird-esque form when leaving the surface to reside back in the heavens, but what really interests me is the automatons that are the wind tribe-created mazaal & wind waker's (as i once theorized zonai/sheikah-collaboration) gohdan,

as i theorized in that one aimlessly-long post about implications of the zonai + sheikah in wind waker, gohdan could be an example of zonai+sheikah technology that was created to test the legendary hero prior to gaining the power to repel evil,

but considering events as they are, could gohdan instead have been a wind tribe-sky folk/sheikah collaborative effort? could the sheikah's work with the wind tribe/sky folk have inspired the zonai's own magically-infused technology...?

or even more farfetched but with theoretical merit, could the zonai be one of the potentially-many racial makeups that the wind tribe adopted, after leaving back to the "heavens" hmm i do wonder... i mean, the red hair on the ancient hero's aspect, the design influences as seen in the sketch for the "oocca" humanoid sketch, cmoooon...

as far as the twili bit i threw in, i did want to point out the similarities with the dominion rod symbolism with motifs from twilight palace, as well as the city in the sky's architectural designs' similarities to the palace's...... could the oocca/wind tribe have been the ones truly responsible for the banishment of the (as i hypothesized, sheikah) dark interlopers to the twilight realm? as the sky people are 'closest to the gods', i mean.........

simplifying them into the roles of either "princess" - a woman stripped of her agency, in need of being saved by a prince - or "witch", a woman who rejects these ideologies and thus is outcasted as an undesirable.

Asha (in all of her verses) aligns more with the Witch archetype, as she grapples with the uphill battle that is reclaiming agency from the malice rooted within her - she has abandoned any and all hope that some outside force will work its hand in saving her, rejecting that notion and thus casting away the role of Princess by taking actions into her own hands. in turn, turning herself into an enemy of The World

and while these concepts might seem far more philosophical than needed, especially in the Zelda universe where women of all walks of life can take upon any role they please, these allegorical implications are magnified in her Yiga verse specifically in how she's become imprisoned beneath the desert depths, stuck in time - or, as symbolized in Utena, her "coffin", unable to free herself from the constraints that bind her.

aesthetic-wise, Asha's tomb is directly inspired as well by Anthy's, even lifting the motif of the "Swords of Humanity's Hatred" that perpetually pierce Anthy after she attempted to defy her passive role as a "princess" in order to save someone she loved

punished to suffer these blades for all eternity, and all for attempting to alter her place in the world; doomed to forever be a witch not worth "saving".

Utena at large inspires all of my creative endeavors, from its rich symbolism to these complicated themes that, while hard to sometimes stomach, shine light on the way society is built upon systemic, cyclical patterns of abuse towards women and other minorities + how these patterns endlessly uphold the disenfranchisement of these vulnerable groups

Asha is a victim of circumstance, and yet is villainized for it - though like Anthy, who discovers within her the bravery to "revolutionize the world" by breaking free from the cycle she once did not have the courage to confront, Asha's lingering shreds of hope may blossom from a dull flame into a raging furnace capable of melting the chains that constrain her as well..